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thorraborinn · 2 years

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i follow odin (NOT as a folkish/odinist freak, to be clear), which often feels like it raises some weird conflicts as a newbie anarchist. like, considering his whole. situation it seems likely that pops up there would happily accept cops, fash, etc. into valhalla, if only to pad out the troops, yknow? it doesn’t seem like he goes out of his way to only ghost-enlist good drengir or anything. you ever think about that? what’s your outlook on valhalla in general?

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. There's a real contradiction here. A lot of people are going to have different ways of dealing with this, and yours might be different from mine, but I'll share what I can and maybe it'll help.

I guess I should be up-front and admit right away that I don't believe in Valhöll. And I'm glad I don't believe in it, because I also don't like it. I think it's better to just state that outright than to do what some heathens do and either reinterpret it until it's something that makes sense to them, but barely resembles any of the sources about it; or try to argue that "real" heathens didn't believe it themselves (surely, some did and some didn't). We're gonna have contradictions and differences with each other and with our predecessors because we have no centralized religious authorities, and this is all a good thing as long as we can be cool about it and respect difference.

Side note: while I personally don't think it's helpful to reinterpret Valhöll into a place where the downtrodden get rewarded for all their unseen and unappreciated struggles and sacrifices, I at least have more in common with a person who does believe that than with someone who actually believes in the Eddas' description of Valhöll and thinks that sounds good.

Disbelief doesn't get me out of needing to think about it, it just moves the problem. If what I believe is that it's a projection of the ideal life of the aristocratic warrior conqueror, I can disbelieve in Valhöll but still have to deal with the aristocratic warrior conqueror who was a historical reality. Obviously Valhöll is the one thing everyone "knows" about Old Norse culture and it completely dominates the discussion about afterlife concepts but let's think about why that is. Our main sources of information about the mythology at all were produced by the same group of people that Valhöll was most relevant to: the warrior aristocrats who laid the groundwork to establish the kingdom of Norway. The whole thing is an extension and idealization of their way of life, running on magic rather than the slaves, farmers, other workers, and women with rare exception, whose work was needed to keep the aristocracy afloat here in the living world. We don't get nearly the same volume of myth that might have been more relevant to those slaves, farmers, other workers, and women. As much as that sucks and isn't fair to either them or us, it's the reality, and we're better off accounting for that absence than ignoring it.

I don't actually think someone consciously invented Valhöll, I think one root of it is extrapolation from an idea we see elsewhere, that a person's experience following death is somehow continuous with the manner in which they died. So someone who drowns in a shipwreck has an afterlife in the sea; Hel might be characterized by illness and famine because those are ways that a lot of people get there. I expect that the idea of Valhöll started out the same way, that people who died in violent conflict remained in violent conflict after their deaths. In that case it isn't inherently a reward or punishment, and its later glorification comes about because the tradition passed through many people who glorified violence. I also think that a lot of what we think we know about it was actually embellished in retrospect by the Christian descendants of these people, and was probably done in such a way as to exaggerate the manly valor of anyone who would consider being hacked to death every day until the end of time a sort of "heaven." But we also shouldn't rule out the possibility that heathens themselves developed it as they developed their own identity in contrast to Christianity.

But once it emerged into the ecosystem of spiritual beliefs it probably served a bunch of needs that would have solidified its position. As many have pointed out, it probably helped people deal with the fact that they'd never see their dead children or even be able to give them a proper funeral in accordance with whatever their local custom was, including offering grave goods and putting the remains with the rest of the family, or somewhere accessible in the landscape. The aspect I've usually emphasized is that it was probably extremely useful for warlords who needed to convince children to die for them. Around the turn of the millennium it may have become more relevant to make promises of a good afterlife, as Scandinavians became increasingly aware of what Christianity was offering. Indeed, since we get some indications that some Norse people believed in reincarnation, this might be the time period where the concept of the afterlife being permanent consolidated.

Fortunately we do actually get an alternative view of something very similar, but from people embodying a different ethic. Þórólfr Mostrarskegg was a wealthy and powerful aristocrat known for his generosity in Norway during the time that Haraldr fairhair, the semi-legendary first king of Norway (and a central figure for the warrior-aristocratic context we're examining), was expanding his empire. Þórólfr harbored a fugitive (Björn Ketilsson) who had been declared an outlaw by Haraldr, and as a result had to flee Norway himself, choosing to uproot his own life and lose a great deal of his wealth and power rather than fail to offer aid to a fugitive. Þórólfr and his entire homestead fled to Iceland. He was kind of an over-the-top blowhard but continued to be known for his generosity. His son Þorsteinn took over the farm when he died and took after his father. It isn't specified that Þorsteinn had a specific habit of freeing slaves, but it is said that he had a retinue of some 60 freedmen. When Þorsteinn died, a shepherd saw the mountain Helgafell ('holy-mountain'), near Þorsteinn's farm, open up to reveal a huge feast and celebration happening inside, and he saw that Þorsteinn and his comrades who had died with him were going to go sit down across from his father Þórólfr. To be clear, these guys were still aristocrats. The ability to free slaves means they also had the power not to, and I don't want to romanticize these guys. But they still rejected violent conquest and chose personal loss for the good of others, and the afterlives they're depicted as having (basically Valhöll but connected to the land they lived in, and without all the violence and weird class elements) is surely related to that. This is all part of Eyrbyggja saga (no, it may not be reliable historical fact, but it is how they were remembered, which is important for its own reasons).

So I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is that we're all pretty good at reminding each other "there were a variety of beliefs" but we don't always have an opportunity to examine what they actually were, and what there position was in an ecosystem of beliefs, symbolic power, social values, political conflict, etc.; or why some of those beliefs were more likely to be written down, copied, and selected as important by later authors.

There's also a contradiction here, because Þorsteinn drowned while fishing. If Norse people all had the same concept of an afterlife, he should have gone to Rán in the afterlife, but they didn't all believe the same stuff. There's also one thing about these guys that might make the example less helpful -- in case you couldn't figure it out from their names, they were super into Thor specifically. We don't get a lot of examples of regular people who worshiped Odin, he wasn't big among the people who went to Iceland whose experiences were written about by their descendants. If we had something like the Icelandic sagas but for Denmark, maybe we'd have a broader and more nuanced understanding of these things.

I guess to summarize the main point I'm trying to make so far is that we don't need to turn off the criticism for something just because it's projected into the realm of the supernatural or afterlife or whatever, considering that the actual once-living people those ideas come from are subject to that criticism. Heathens have a really bad habit of acting like they believe there was, like, a cohesive Old Norse Religion and if we're to belong to it than we're handed a predetermined package of beliefs, and a lot of the arguments and discourse are about what's in that package. But that just isn't true. A lot of the lore we have has more to do with regional rulers trying to one-up each other, which generates change and innovation rather than being a witness to what came before them. And some of it is even shrouded in the same fake conservatism, the same "back in the good old days when [thing that never happened]" that we still have today. I have a lot of other thoughts about Valhöll so if any of this is confusing or if it would help to go deeper on something I've said, let me know, but this is getting unwieldy now.

I think there's more to be said about what an anarchist is to make of Odin in general (in addition to what I've already said), but my thoughts on that are less cohesive and I've come to fewer conclusions. In some cases we may be better off sitting with those contradictions than trying to resolve them. One thing I'll offer is that I think that when the gods do unambiguously bad, twisted shit in myths it's because it's supposed to hurt. Like, I think it's supposed to feel like when you yourself think about a time when you've done something fucked up and repeatedly ask yourself why you did it or why you can't go back and do it different, because the only way to give those moments any kind of meaning is to be transformed by them into something better than you previously were. Some of Hávamál is even explicitly framed as hoping the audience will learn from Odin's own fuckups (Háv 11-13: "Don't drink too much"; Háv 13-14: "There was this one time when I drank too much...").

I tend to interpret the Ragnarök story as being about how allowing the breakdown of communal relations based in mutual respect and solidarity, in favor of personal advantage or even out of a sense of duty, inevitably leads to total system collapse, ensuring that any "victory" is Pyrrhic; and about how literally having this spelled out for people won't necessarily prevent them from rushing headlong into it even in their attempts to avoid it. IMO, it's a mythic playing out of ideas and emotions that pertain to living in a blood-feud culture, where honor fuels an engine of ever-escalating violence that leaves no room for anything but tragedy on every side, often in the name of "doing the right thing." (incidentally, the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace is the product of peoples who grappled with the same problem, but actually made it out to the other side). If that's true, then not only does Norse mythology not present a single, coherent, monolithic religion; it actually contains within it, along with lot of other, sometimes conflicting things, a desperate grasping toward something better, and any modern person whose identity is formed in relation to them is also taking on a responsibility of carrying that on. Anyway I'm definitely in the weeds now so I better stop but the stuff I've described in this paragraph is kind of constantly running in the background whenever I read about Odin as a narrative figure and is the more religiously interpretive side of why I can't with any einherjar=good.

#ask #anon #heathenry

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saffron-not-so-joy · 2 years

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A Personal Reflection on The Action Button Review of Boku No Natsuyasumi

Genuinely the action button review of boku no natsuyasumi has unlocked something i have been trying to in my brain in regards to my whole outlook on how i create and reflect on life. I just finished it this morning and it has give me some kind of bewildering clarity that has allowed me to be more vulnerable with myself then i think i have ever been able. All because what tim rogers shared in that 6 hour review about a video game i will probably never play.

I cried for over 40 minutes of the last hour and a half or so of the video. I think ive never been so moved by something in my life. which is a lil weird to say about a review video but as someone who struggles to engage fully with much of the media and literature around me for multiple abstract reasons... it just felt so eye opening. I didnt felt seen in the ways i have felt reading some of the works of nagata kubi or mariko kikuchi, but it truely had me thinking and reflecting on my own life and that of another in ways i thought not possible, or atleast not truely attainable. The parts of himself he was sharing with us spoke to a part me that i struggle to communicate with in an earth shattering way.

It had me reflect on the person ive wished myself to be for so long, the person i wish i wasnt, the things i want to do, my childhood, my goals. It made me first think of how much i have been admiring his work, how microscopic it all is, early in the video i thought he must have just been one of those people that journal in minute detail, just to be thrown into the reality that he doesnt really have a choice in the matter of how much detail he holds on too. Its a bit selfish to say that point broke down a bit of a wall around my own inability to maintain that kind of information, allowed me to give myself grace in regards to the depths or lack there of i have known myself and the pasts buildt together with many of those around me. It made me feel lucky that i had a choice in what i do manage to hold onto. specifically i try to maintain what i can recall of certain thoughts i had as a child in school as deeply as i can so that i can use that to maintain a sense of the personhood and mental capacity of the children i work with. Since i find many adults forget all to easily how whole and how complexy children can understand the situations around them without you realising.

When he shared how his embarrassing memories would make him feel, it made me wish i could share this post i read here on tumblr probably over a year ago about the concept of religious grace being something you can apply without any religion really. im sure he has his own copeing mechanisms but it has been extremely helpful working through some of the anxiety induced delayed shame of my own embarrassing memories. Although my memories fade more in details over time then his do, these memories have definitely made me feel and think in similar ways to how he described he felt in the video.

The topic of grief is a central theme in the video, and grief is something i have not fully come into understanding within my own life as of yet. I dont think i have properly greaved for the lives and parts of people they leave behind in the way he has described, in part because of my tangible disconnect from some of my deepest thoughts, but also because i have been lucky enough not to many people within a close proximity of myself. The most major death in my family has been my grandfather on my mother's side, and i think most of my grief is similar to the grief i felt when tim said that his uncle who sounded cool as hell had passed away from covid and we would never be able to gain the part of tim's uncle that he would have shared with us. Which sounds kinda weird, but i was kinda in the head space of thinking about the parts of people we carry withus that are never apart of our lives, but can still effect us and change us through the words that they shared. Maybe thats why i burst into tears for the first time at that part. I think uncounously it hit a similar cord in my brain when i think about how unfamiliar and distant i was with my grandfather even though i honestly find much in retrospect that i could have connected with him on, and how that cant be changed.

Tim walked through his own missed connections, and talked about process which he dealt with the grief of his friend who had taken her own life. The little pieces of these people and so many others that he had to hold onto, the pieces of himself that he had no way to know of or control, the pieces that the family in boku no yatsunatsume shared with eachother and the players of the game. The pieces of people in my own life, the pieces of myself. All swirled around in my mind as the video closed. Im not sure if i have fully formed thoughts on the mater, but i cried all the same during his discussion mixed with my own internal interpretation and forming take aways.

Id probably have to watch the whole video again to actually have more complete thoughts on the themes of the game itself because of how much space the pieces of tim he shared with us have picked at my own interal walls. Right after watching i sent a message to my partner describing the game as "a microscopically truthful endeavor to capture the vibes of a summer well spent with those around you". Microscopic truthfullness is one of the things i find most endearing in works of media, i was tought about the concept by my father who although i do not have a great relationship with, i do appreciate what he was able share with me when not being a total dickbag. He said most of the best works of art imploys this level of emotional truthfullness, getting down to what you may have really felt in such a way that it cannot be denied as capturing a moment within the human condition. I have for many months considered this one of the best things about tims content, that he himself is so microscopically truthful in his depictions and explorations of games and the stories he tells of his life.

The truthful part of himself he shared within that six hour video essay has torn away at the parts of my own brain that wish to make creative works of many kinds, and allowed me to fully reflect on some of whats in my way. I have not been able to be truely microscopically truthful within myself, some of those reasons are very abstract to me personally, but one struggle that feels like such a road block in my progress is that i fear rereading any of my own writting. I have had issues with reading and writting since i was younge, i think its undiagnosed mild dyslexia and undiagnosed nerodivergence with neglectfuly done unschooling attempted by my parents until i was in 4th grade. My vocabulary was still higher then average, but i very clearly remember the day i actually retained the spelling of the word "the" and "are". There, their, and they're still triped me up whils i was old enough to be using this website and i dont entirely know how to sound out words properly so i make alot of mistakes reading outloud, or when i think too hard about the spelling of names that dont sound the way they look, and i do very badly when words are spelled out in songs. All of these combined with a bitch of a 5th grade english teacher, who i dont know if she understood what my deal was or not, shamed me about many things i did wrong. The major thing that stood out in my mind was when she told me to stop writting in cursive because my hand writting was so eligible, which would be fine if not for her tone and dismissiveness of the fact i was teaching myself how to write like that from scratch based of the cursive chart she had on the wall!!! I was proud and making an effort!!!

Even through all these issues i was still able to be in the top percentage of the grade when 6th grade rolled around because i had finally caught up in my ability to read, even if i wasnt actually retaining much of the information i could read what was on the pages. None of this mattered in the long run because by the time i was in high school and college it became evident that i could not read through my papers to do corrections, and thus even now i am writting this with the best formating i can on the first pass.

I mention all this trama because something about this video, and the pieces of microscopically truthful moments shared by the game devs of bokunatsu and tim have truthfully allowed me to maks emotional progress on this issue. I need to make an improvement here or it will continue to hinder any planning i want to do, any thoughts i dont want to run away from me. Im tired of living my life fearful of myself, my thoughts, and memories. The pieces tim shared of himself and share of those he carries with him unlocked some part of my brain and i just need someone else to know or ill continue to be locked in some ruminating cycle of my own making that i need not hold myself in. In writting this i hope i can take more steps into the light of writting, drawing, paintjng and creating truth for myself and others.

If you made it this far thank you for reading, i hope this part of myself i shared today helps you find kindness to give to yourself and others.

#long post #personal #action button #boku no natsuyasumi #action button reviews #tw: suidice #tw: trama #me #response #personal essay #selfish writting #i try not to get too parasocial with people this shit just hit me like a truck today omg

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k-roi · 2 years

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REQUEST GUIDELINES

back to the masterlist ʕ •ᴥ•ʔゝ☆

below are boundaries and limits in who i write, what i do write, what i do not write, what i might write for, suggestions on how to request and an important end note

☆ who do i write for?

avatar franchise, including movies one and two! not including the comics as i haven’t read them.

i love writing especially in lo’ak’s pov concerning his ships, but will write in other’s if specifically asked for!

stray fandoms include: voltron, bnha, peter parker/spiderman (tom holland’s version), etc

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

☆ what i do write?

baseline tropes (such as wholesome fics, fluff, romance)

rarepairs and canon pairs welcomed! i don’t necessarily have to ship your rarepair for me to write it, because i know how awful it is to have crumbs for your favourite ship.

introspective pieces for single characters that don’t have relationships attatched to them. this can focus on certain struggles, outlook on life, platonic relationships with other people, or figuring out their sexuality without romance

angst, angst with a happy ending, angst without a happy ending. be direct in what you want though! misunderstandings, falling out of love, etc

obscure au’s, perhaps involving human au’s, odd situations and crack taken seriously. i love seeing how your minds work and you might think up an idea i’d have never thought of!

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

☆ what i won’t write?

underage explicit material. very self-explanatory, i just don’t feel comfortable with it.

angst involving cheating is a HARD no

certain ships/dynamics in this list to be added -> aonunete (not my cup of tea), poly relationships (i have zero experience in this and would definitely mess up dynamics unfortunately), movie actors (that’s weird!), x reader (never written before, don’t know how i’d do, sorry)

dead dove material, such as heavy unprompted gore, explicit self-harm, dark insane behaviour to a worrying degree, sexual harm, sexual abuse, drug abuse, heavy themes of depression, incest, pedophilia, minor x adult, necrophilia, politics, racism, heavy discrimination, age differences and religious themes

oc x canon, unless it’s an oc i’ve referenced before in one of my other fics, such as Ra’yan

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

☆ what i might write?

i’m very hit or miss to be honest. if i feel like it, i’ll write your explicit prompts with of-age characters, but if not i’ll probably shelf it for a long time. some crackships/rarepairs i don’t have enough of a grasp on their personalities or interactions, so i may or may not write your prompt for them, my apologies! also these boundaries only exist for prompts given to me—i might decide to write dead dove works (like gore or depression, not the… odder ones) on my own one day, but it would be out of my own willing violation.

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

☆ how do i want you to request?

be my little pookie and say please and thank you when requesting something, it goes a long way and might make me more inclined to write your prompt faster! i write out of order and it is not a first come first serve basis—it’s whatever catches my attention and what i write faster. i only write prompts given to me in my ask inbox, NOT in ao3 comments. this is because it is more organized and easier to ticket

go crazy, just don’t make it hyper hyper specific or i’ll get turned off :( i’ll usually write everything as an ao3 fic, but if you just want a mini drabble or headcanons post then lmk ! its easier and fun too

only have a ship in mind? i bitch about not having substance to work with but honestly ignore my whining i’ll usually come up with a situation anyway! like a mystery box

please add a note if you do not want a certain ship or character in the background of your prompt, because my aonoak hindbrain will usually add it in anyway! not including prompt ships involving character x aonung or lo’ak to begin with, just in the background ships.

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☆ please note

writing takes a lot of time, and it can take weeks for me to complete and publish my works. don’t spam me for updates please! don’t send me anything you’ve sent or will send to another blog. don’t request a certain fic length—that’s up to me to decide and write out. you do not have to violate any of these boundaries for me to not want to write your prompt. my rules can and will change over time as i grow and change as a person. if i start to dislike one of my fics, i won’t delete it, but i may orphan or put it under anonymous, and remove it off my masterlist. it’ll still exist on ao3, but i will have cut ties with it. IMPORTANT: if you request something explicit, you must not be anon and you must have your age in your bio showing you are 18+

please note: you can chat w me in my inbox for whatever! i love these more than prompts sometimes <3 send in a 🐳 emoji with your prompt to prove you read through this all! and also pls stop bringing up a*nunete and why i don’t like them, i don’t ship them and frankly never will

#requesting guidelines #rules #boundaries and limits #ao3 #fanfic #request #fanfiction #writer #prompts #atwow #awow #avatar way of water #avatar prompts

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allthemusic · 5 months

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Week ending: 31 March

Oh my word, four songs! What a treat! Some familiar names here, but one very exciting new one, too - and only one familiar song. 1955 has hit its stride, apparently.

(I'm Always Hearing) Wedding Bells - Eddie Fisher (peaked at Number 5)

I'm going to go out on a pre-emptive limb, from what I know about Eddie Fisher, and guess that the gist of this song will be that everyone around Eddie is getting married, and he's left looking on. A sort of I'm Walking Behind You situation, if you will. Just a hunch.

But then we start with some rather ghostly backing singers, and I begin to think I've misjudged this. It's pretty, in a much happier way than I expected. Is it just about Eddie wanting to get married?

Apparently so! We start laying it out clearly enough: I don't think I'm crazy / My feet are on the ground / But I'm always hearing wedding bells / Whenever you're around. Which is sweet, if a little intense. But I like it. Admirably straightforward.

Even sweeter, he sings about how he didn't think he'd fall in love, but did, quicker than he believed possible. Which plays into the "I won't fall in love" denial trope that I do kind of love. We learn how your kiss rang a wedding bell, and it's all very cute.

There's something a bit old-fashioned about the focus on marriage as the goal of a relationship - a reminder that we're in the 1950s, I guess. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, it's just a bit unusual. Certainly, we have songs about being or getting married now, but it's maybe less of a lyrical priority.

And we end up with a trumpet solo, too, which is nifty. I like a trumpet solo, and this one has a lazy sort of style that I do really like - more of these in modern music, please!

Tomorrow - Johnny Brandon & The Phantoms (8)

And the prize for the coolest name of the week goes to this group. Seriously, it doesn't get much cooler than "Johnny and the Phantoms". And the song title gives me nothing to work off, so I've no idea if they live up to their awesome name.

We start with gentle old-timey guitar and then a chill sort of clarinet, and you know what, it's a combination I can really get behind!

When the voice comes in, though it's not at all what I expected - less rock and roll, more lounge-y. And British, but the accent is decidedly weird, it's not the RP clarity you seem to typically get in the 1950s from British artists, but it's not fully regional or accented. There are just some words that sound... odd. It's a voice I'd normally find annoying, and there's a definite touch of smugness to it that would usually rankle.

Usually, I say, except I can't really bring myself to dislike this song. The voice feels like a relic of the 1950s, but the song itself turns out to be just super endearing? It's got a cheery sort of tune, and it's all about having an optimistic outlook on things. From the first line, reassuring you that Things will turn out fine tomorrow, to the insistence that Though it's cloudy everywhere / Don't despair / There's happiness for all to share / Tomorrow.

I particularly appreciate that it doesn't try and pretend everything is fine today. We still have skies that are dark and grey, things aren't automatically perfect, but it's going to get better - and perhaps I'm tipping my hand a bit too much here, but this song came along at just the right time for me to hear that message.

I also like the fact that it's not very clear on what's making the world seem difficult. Sure, there's one line about how You will fall in love tomorrow. But generally it keeps it vague, which lets it work as a song about almost anything that's getting you down, rather than being, say, a song about loneliness, or heartbreak, or unrequited love.

Then we get a lovely little shift in the vibe, as we go from cheery lyrics about how tomorrow's going to be fine, to slower, softer lyrics describing a sudden sleepiness. It's deft scene-setting. Suddenly the listener's not just down in the dumps - they're having a sleepless night, and Johnny's encouraging them to just give in and sleep so that tomorrow can actually come: Without a word of warning / You're yawning / And then / The night will fade / And morning / Is dawning / Again. It's good, practical advice - sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care etc.

And more relevantly, it just came along at the right point for me to hear it, after a particularly rubbish day. Lyrics like Yesterday's a mystery / Tomorrow will soon be history / But what a day it's gonna be / Tomorrow may be cliché and cheesy, but I can confirm that when you need them, they hit the spot. So again, I can't hold much against this song, period.

We get a nice wind-up towards the end, too, as backing singers come in and some brass. It gives the end of the song a renewed bit of energy and vigour, arming you to face tomorrow. I appreciate it, you know?

A Blossom Fell - Dickie Valentine (9)

Well, it's another version of this song. Like most cover songs in the 1950s, this isn't a massive improvement or hit-job on the original. Instead, it hews pretty close to Nat King Cole's original - and yes, even without checking I could have guessed it was Nat's song. Something in the melancholy softness of it - it's something that Dickie can't quite sell here.

Not that he doesn't give it a game go. He's definitely leaning into those big long notes, and I can tell he's deliberately trying to keep it soft and gentle. There's no belting, no real welly - and yet, something in the enunciated words and carefully held notes still feels a little less natural than Nat's version.

In good news, we have more old-timey electric guitar - the sound of 1955? We've certainly heard enough of it lately, and I, for one, am not complaining.

I enjoyed the original song's choice to eschew a Big Old Ending, and this verison keeps that, too, ending instead on a quieter note and a fun little piano glissando.

Overall, I think this sounds maybe a little lower in term of production quality than Nat's version. Which might be a cover version issue, or might be a British vs. American production issue. It's not a huge problem, or anything, though - I can still appreciate and even enjoy this version.

If Anyone Finds This, I Love You - Ruby Murray & Anne Warren (4)

Well, the title is interesting. Who is this writing desert-island-style missives, declaring their love desperately to a complete unknown stranger? I have questions, which is usually a good way to start a song.

And the song starts promising, building intrigue by telling a story about how As I walked along in the country one day / At my feet there fluttered a note. And can you guess what it said?

Yup, it's our title! Except as soon as it comes in, we get a weird echoey, slowed-down effect. It's still clearly Ruby singing, but her voice has gone all quavery, like Snow White is singing to you from the bottom of a well that she's fallen down (hence having to throw notes out to strangers, perhaps?)

Unfortunately, the effect, combined with an angelic harp, and the repetition of I love you, I love you, I love you, honest and truly I do, is pretty sickening. My skin is already beginning to crawl, at this point.

This is not helped by the next verse's solid horror movie vibes, as Ruby throws the note aside, only to find that it haunted me day and night. Possessed by this madness, she goes back to pick up the note. At this point, I have a genuine sense of foreboding. Don't do it, Ruby!

When she arrives, she turns, only to see that Nearby was a house with a sign on the door / And there 'Home for orphans' I read. A small face is looking down from a window, and suddenly she realises that it must have been that orphan looking out at her. Which I guess is supposed to be heartwarming?

Except it really raises so many more questions for me. Like, what exactly is up in this orphanage that the kid is resorting to throwing out desperate "I love you, please rescue me" notes?? Also, that kid does not love you. That kid does not know you. That kid is just desperate, because apparently they are stuck in a cartoon orphanage from a Charles Dickens novel.

And then something even worse happens: Anne Warren arrives to the party. Turns out Anne was a child singer, and if you have read much of this blog, you will know that I dislike child singers. Not as a general concept, I hasten to add - I'm all for kids singing - but in songs, they rarely add anything good. And this one certainly doesn't. It just feels like it's trying to go for "cutesy" in a vaguely manipulative way that I strongly dislike.

Actually, the ending as a whole feels pretty manipulative. I mean "throw some sad orphans in" is textbook audience manipulation. How can you not love this song? It's got cute orphans? You hate cute orphans? You monster!

The only redeeming thing about the song's ending is that it doesn't hang around. Actually, it's almost disconcertingly abrupt - not many narrative songs end on a cliffhanger, but this one kind of manages it, as we hear about how And then toward that window my heart seemed to soar / I walked up the path and knocked at the door. Ruby knocks, there's a huge timpani roll and crescendo and trumpet fanfare and BAM! SONG DONE!

Did she adopt the orphan? Did she learn why they were so sad? did they live happily ever after? What did the orphanage have to say about this all? The song certianly doesn't say.

Grrr I dislike this one.

Well, those were four songs I sure felt a few different ways about. I think overall I liked this batch of songs, though. I feel like we're settling into a sort of transitional period - I'm hearing much less of the super enunciated voices and operatic, overblown stylings I used to hear, and we're getting a lot more electric guitar. All welcome changes, even if we're still mostly not shaking, rattling or rolling.

Favourite song of the bunch: Tomorrow

#uk charts #1955 #eddie fisher #johnny brandon and the phantoms #dickie valentine #ruby murray #anne warren

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ducknotinarow · 8 months

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🎶 for all your Raph muses tbe music meme give me all the songs bich you can delete the post but that ain’t gonna stop meeeeeeeeeeed

| Send me "🎶🎶🎶" and I will share with you 1-3 music tracks that I associate my muse(s) with!

*Considering I have playlists for them all I just had to pick three songs XD Keep in mind a lot of these choices are solely based on events in rp on the blog at least stuff that has enough development for me to comment on in terms of songs. Or goes into my protryal of Raphael over all.

We didn't start the fire

Is this love that i'm feeling

Beat It

*When it comes to all my 80's playlists I try so hard to keep the songs in that time frame but I have broken that over time XD but mainly it is still a good 80's mix. Anyway when picking his songs I tried to stick to his time frame. Can't say i'll be as dedicated on the others pft. Anyway time for my pop tart boy.

We didn't start the fire: I picked because it seems like a song reference he would make when it comes to how often him and his brothers wind up roped into situations he doesn't fully believe are their problem to deal with. But end up being their problem anyway. Like don't get him wrong when he feels it is their issue Raph's attitude is different like in the first season when it came to Splinter.

Is this love that im feeling: yes course this gonna be about Casey. Raphael just thought he had no real interest in romance why would he after all? He is a mutant turtle? maybe if there was a female mutant turtle? But even then he had doubts. The only time he kind of liked a girl was when he was hit with a love potion after all. He didn't seem to like girls so he wondered if he liked well men instead? based off his own comments he thought were just jokes. Then in came Casey Jones. Who he fell for pretty quick sure at first he found them nuts but he was attacking his brothers. And it didn't stop him from fighting Casey again later. But didn't keep Raph once they had a more friendship going on to wonder what was there. Turns out it was love its why he changed his tune to like Casey clearly. I also just like it for when he and Casey date. Sure loving someone is enough to date them but dating is how you see if you continue to love them. And that what Raph figured out. Also I like to think this is a song Raph would sign towards Casey uwu

Beat it: I find it funny and clear proof others don't watch the 87's series. Cause they have this weird outlook of Raph not lighting ti fight or being a fighter. And I agree he isn't looking to pick a fight but he is fucking petty and will start a fight. Raph is a very "I didn't start it but i'll finish" it type of fighter in this series. So a good song about throwing down to fight seems fitting for Raph's rude behavior.

*Normally I put 03/07 together but I feel some songs will fit better for some themes in 07 story plots.

1. Hercules

2. Brother

3. I'll be good

+4. Bonus song My best friends Ex

Hercules: Generally I love this song because it really works to dip into Raph's need to protect. It's not just in a physical way either Raph despite calling himself a lone wolf is someone who really just looks out and cares for others. He comes off selfish and uncaring but then you see how he is quick to put others before himself. Down plays anything going on with him but will put more worry into it for others. He loves to have space but is quick to try and reach out to someone else if he feels they need it. His stubborn ass is what makes him so loyal he has so much faith in others. He really will shield others from harm when they can't themself.

Brother: I love this song for TMNT in generally because a brotherhood is just such a strong theming for the series. BUT I'm directing this to his brothers. Raph's heart is one of four, his brothers are his whole world. Anything happens to one of them? and best look out he will die if it meat protecting his brother or getting revenge for them. Raph can seem harsh and distract but in the moments that matter most? he is the one by his brothers sides first. When need be he will step up into leader role so to make sure the rest are safe if Leo isn't around like when Leo left to see the Ancient one and they got attacked by Karai. One thing you don't get between is Raph and his brothers even when Raph distances himself them he knows they have him and he knows they know he has them. Why they count on him and will call out for him when needed especially Donnie.

I'll be good: It's not secret that Raph is his own worst critic. It's why I feel Splinter never got on Raph's case as much as he dose Leo during Leo's emo arc. Splinter will step in if Raph's going to far and offer advice but he knows no amount of scolding is anywhere as bad or deep hitting as what. It's hard for Raph to understand where his anger comes from. He wants to protect his family and it scares him to see how big the world is out there if they stayed in a much smaller area easier to maintain it be easier to protect them. Raphael just feels like he can't do right he fears being the one to hurt his brothers why he has nightmares of him being the shredder. He regrets any fight he has with Leo, the times he went to far with Mikey hell he got regrets with Donnie too. He wants to be good he wants to be more positive like Mikey can be but he just can't he feels something wrong he feels if he could cut into himself deep enough maybe just maybe he can find what it is and take it out.

My best friends ex: I couldn't give up the last three for this song but didn't wanna leave it out XD. Raph and Von's friendship in 03 verse is just so damn good to me I love it I love them being besties so much. It's funny cause I feel you wouldn't see these two being so close. But I think Von just not caring to fall for the image Raph sets up allowed her to get close to Raph. Maybe cause of her background who knows. Just in my mind if Von ever dated anyone outside Donnie they knew/or knew about Raph that friend thats hates them funnier if Raph don't know them he hates them uwu.

Danger to myself

Wannabe

Killing me

Danger to myself: For sure where Raph was at just after Leo had taken off. There was just a lot going on. Raphael hated that they were told they couldn't basically go on with their lives with Leo gone. Raph lost a good source of his distractions because of that and struggled with things going on with himself. Slowly he started to make things worse shut out his family, and pushing away those who he needed most. Donnie someone who always makes him feel a bit more grounded. But Raph lost his footing. Casey someone who always made him feel loved and needed. But Raph didn't love himself or feel he was needed. Night Watcher was so easy for him to hide anyway into. If he was the Night Watcher he didn't need to be anything more.

wannabe: Why this song? how do a spice girl song fit Raph. I feel like each of the adults have had moments where they are watch both Summer and Ariel on their own. Raph's soft for the two on their own as is. When they are together? He might as well be a floor mat for them. Just image them in a classic moment of the girls finding a way to rope Raph into thier antic and feel one is singing along to songs well messing around. Raph can act like he dont wanna be part of thier sleep over antics but I feel Casey walked in and found Raph singing along to the Spice girls with his daughters. XD basically it more a song that just makes me think of Raph in a parental route.

Killing me: May seem a bit misleading on how Im gonna be using this song but this is more meant for when Casey is going though his mid life crisis. You think Summer felt her dad just left? Oh trust Raphael felt the same way. But where Summer can speak on that and express how she feels Raphael will not. No different from how with his own family Raph seeing Casey going through what he was he in part knew that Casey needed to be allowed to. Raph had to go through his own stupid shit for a time. He saw Leo have to as well and even Donnie. But it wasn't easy, Raph had to keep things in home well in order. Had to make sure Summer was taken care of. Seeing Casey not in the right state. In truth I feel Raph reached out to April A LOT during this time. If he could swing it with disguises he of course takes Summer to practice himself. Raph didn't really have a support when he fell apart (he pushed them away that why) so he wanna try and give Casey the room to fall apart too and show Raph is there to help pull him back together like Casey has for him. But even Raph dose feel Casey's absence and it's killing him uwu

Lost

Sharks

Fine

Lost: Some of my favorite scenes dealing with Raph are when they see Splinter get thrown down into the sewers. And in his fit of rage Mikey hugs him to snap him out of it. And again during the space arc when one the angry planet Raph once more snaps and Leo hugs him. What snapped him out of it? Love uwu. Raphael is someone seen as uncaring he is quick to say he don't like ti deal with certain emotions. He is meant to be big bad tough Raphael. Yet, he is full of pain and a feeling of being just lost. Where he should be aware he is loved and needed sometimes he needs that assurance because Raph sees the worst in himself. Raph is hurting deep down and it come out in his anger and he wishes he knew better how to handle it to even understand why it's there so sometimes a bit of affection paid his way helps. Raph isn't bad a kid hes just very unheard. It shows that he can be heard by some and it should make Raph look weak that he dose need that at times. But to him dose. He just lost in the storm always in his mind. Sometimes he just needs to grab on to someone a moment.

Sharks: It's funny how often you can mirror Raph with some of the villains. You got of course his often foil in 2012 Fish face, the more obvious Slash before he was redeemed even being shown like a worse case for what Raph could become. And of course, there is the fact he and Leo are like a new generation of Yoshi and Saki. Often I feel why Splinter is how he can when it comes to Raph's anger and complaints on Raph likes to think he is better because hes good so he should be better he wouldn't sink to their levels. But he has he can even Slash alone showed what would happen if Raph let his anger consume him too much the beast he could become if he didn't have his brothers around? Raph would become so much worse. If he didn't have family he loves and looks out for than what would he have to keep him grounded?

Fine: Raph is the stereotypical character who talks shit about love and romance. Act like he so above his brothers who more open to showing they would like to fall in love. Raph very much that person who just can't understand someone loving him because of his own self hate. And he sort of projects that on the him and his brothers Who would love them. And yet? He wants it he wants to be stupid over someone, he and try and deny how he felt for hockey playing idiots all he wants but he don't want that he wants to also turn and say he's an idiot and he feels those things too. Cause deep down Raph is just a sappy romantic. He wanna just embrace those things too given the chance. So why not go ahead and show he might have intrest in his best friend just a bit uwu

Can't take me down

chills

I like it heavey

Can't take me Down: This is just a feel good song for Raph in general he is very much got this I can't be stopped mind set (boy do I look forward to him getting humbled or shown other wise that he isn't strong enough >:3) This is very much a how I carry myself kind of song. Despite how clearly everyone around him seems to look at him and see him needing some help professional level even or any time someone remarks on him going a bit too far? Raph will either defend it with a look of 'what do you mean?" or blow it off. He goes in loud with out a second thought. You can't take him down and much as they all hoped he thinks that's what will get people to love him uwu

Chills: I just like this for our rasey for mm with your take on MM casey uwu Since we always tend to give Casey the theming of ice. But it also just fits because Raph never been in love before not really something he thought of only to make fun of Leo over. The. Comes Casey someone who gives him litteralt chills uwu

l like it heavey: someone thar is a mutant? Yeah, this start of the song dots alone as is. But Raph himself? Someone who dose have a bit a different taste in well everything from his more violent tendencies to his love for wrestling even to point if hiw he wants to present considering he uses protine powders to help muscle growth. Even his sens of style? Some like it pretty, but Raph likes it heavey. Slightly to play into the sing above this jsut plays into why Raph himself don't think he goes to far or maybe even need help (he dose u_u) he just himself and wants someone who gets that who he is.

1. Hot n' cold

2. Chateu

3. The phoenix

Hot n' Cold: I'm sorry but not sorry hot n' cold os just Raoh generally over all. He can really just shift through his moods swings fast enough to give someone whiplash. Raoh has his moments where he can be sweet and caring and those moments should really speak the loudest to others. But other times? He's a oranry bitch. And he's pretty up front about it.

Chateu: since Raphs known casey the longest in this verse, i feel these two have had a lot of time to be all fuck this place mind set over time. Between Raphs family drama and Casey own. Raph has had Casey in his corner from day one. This is just a very nice song for Casey and Raph in general I feel ;3; they need each other, they make eachnothers hearts bear. Course, there's a reason it took them time to get together, but they been able to give up on some things thiwr hangs up and such cause they got the other ;3;

The phoenix: in truth this song I played on repeat often well playing the game it self xD It just fits!!! Anyway in universe I would say it's because Raphael is pretty goal set in the game. He feel long as they stay together as brothers they will get Splinter back because well he needs to or he will get hopless himself. So he talks uo loving the fights and such and enjoys when they get to certien maps in the game. Honestly the most break in this is when they are looking for Casey he gose from. But he picks himself back up after every loss or miss chance to get thier Dad back. Raphael isn't someone to get knocked down too easily like his fiery rage this turtle will rise back up like. Phoenix

#muse| hamato raphael #madamkezzie #aflockoffeathers #meme answer #[ if you jumped off a bridge it's only cause i did first aflockoffeathers]#[ you think first i hit first -aflockoffeathers]#[ ones trash is another's treasure -aflockoffeathers]#[ it’s okay to feel sad it’s okay to cry - aflockoffeatherthes #((I think that covers all the relationships mentioned? XD))#stay queued #[87 verse]#[03 verse]#[07 verse]#[12 verse]#[mayhem verse]

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battlekidx2 · 2 years

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Amphibia - The Hardest Thing Thoughts

(art credit to @kayseix)

Ever since last Saturday I’ve been trying to write out my thoughts on The Hardest Thing and after four drafts and almost 10,000 words written and deleted I think I’ve finally figured out how to organize everything I have to say about this finale.

Series finales are the hardest thing to stick the landing on and in many ways they can make or break a series for many people. This episode managed to hit all its emotional beats home just like Amphibia has always done. I have a few issues but nothing that will keep me from revisiting this series in years to come.

I know I’m not the first nor will I be the last to say this but The Hardest Thing is saying goodbye. The girls have to say goodbye to the friends and family they made in Amphibia and in a way all these goodbyes encapsulate and close out their individual arcs and the show’s themes.

Marcy’s goodbyes were bittersweet in a way that was different from Anne and Sasha’s goodbyes. Unlike theirs hers was sad because of what could have been. She didn’t get to know Olivia and Yunan as well as she could have and now she won’t be able to. She befriended them but because of her outlook when she came to Amphibia she didn’t get to find a new family in them like Anne with the Plantars or Sasha with Grime. And her goodbye with Andrias was short and full of pain because if it weren’t for the core they could have been family but they can’t turn back the clock.

Andrias has broken free of the core but he can’t undo his betrayal of her. He can’t stop himself from stabbing her or letting the core possess her. He cared about her but when the moment of truth came he chose the core and his mission over her.

Marcy has insight into how the core treated and manipulated Andrias which gives her new understanding of him but it doesn’t negate his actions. It also doesn’t negate the impact he had on her life. It is a weird mess of emotions and complicated feelings because she did care for him and vice versa but so much has happened that they can never have that bond that the others have. But they will both forever carry the impact they had on each other.

Their story is tragic.

Marcy’s goodbyes are a new beginning. Her big moment in All In was the equivalent of Anne’s big moment in Reunion where she stands up to Sasha or Sasha’s big moment in Turning Point where she decides to do the right thing. These were beginnings where the girls made the decision to be better, become who they were meant to be, and work to reach their full potential. And their subsequent actions in those episodes solidified this change. These goodbyes were the solidification of Marcy’s decision to change.

In a way this isn’t the end of her story and arc that Amphibia brought about but the beginning and I think that works perfectly for Marcy.

Sasha and Grime’s goodbye was about more than one thing but it was most importantly a close to their emotional arcs. Both Grime and Sasha build walls around their hearts and put up a tough exterior to hide their genuine care for each other and others. Throughout the series we’ve seen time and time again that they have chosen each other above themselves. Sasha stuck with Grime after Reunion and protected him in Toadcatcher, Grime returned for Sasha in Turning Point, Grime sacrificed his arm to save Sasha’s life in All In, etc. They have had each other’s backs at every turn no matter how dire the situation. They may not say it aloud but they have become family.

Sasha and Grime have developed a father/daughter sort of bond through their adventures and seeing them finally let their walls fall and break down crying at their goodbye was emotional. Neither would have dared to show this type of emotion around others before this point in the series. Sasha was determined to hide her sadness and hurt behind confidence and anger and Grime would never show anything other than ruthlessness before Sasha. They bettered each other and broke down each other’s walls.

But Sasha’s goodbyes also play into the idea that you won’t always get closure for everything. Sasha gets to have this heartfelt goodbye with Grime but she never did get to see Percy and Braddock again. She never got to make things right. And that’s an important part of her arc.

Sasha for so long struggled to see the consequences of her actions and it caused her to lose Percy and Braddock and it almost cost her her friendship with Anne. She luckily got a chance to reconcile with Anne and build a stronger bond than ever because of it. But this isn’t the case with Percy and Braddock.

This adds extra weight to Barrel’s Warhammer. Sasha’s actions in that episode made it so that she didn’t get to ever see them again. Her actions had lasting consequences that she will never get to undo.

Even though that’s the case Sasha doesn’t stop trying to better herself and that’s important. She was very self destructive at the start and actively put her life in danger multiple times but now she wants to get better, to be better, for those around her but also herself.

Anne’s goodbyes come full circle as well. This goodbye really shows Anne and the Plantars’ personal growth. In season 2 during the episode A Day at the Aquarium they couldn’t bring themselves to say goodbye or even think of the fact that they would have to say goodbye but now they are faced with the reality that they will have to let go. They didn’t want to be reminded of their adventures because they thought it was too painful but after all this they surround themselves with mementos of each other and the time they spent together.

Anne and the Plantars are family they have been and always will be no matter what. This doesn’t change that. It can’t. They have irrevocably changed each other. Her goodbye with Sprig was understandably the one that was the biggest tearjerker out of all the Plantars.

The friendship between Sprig and Anne is what started this series. It’s what got Anne to grow and what motivated Anne to stand up for herself. It’s what gave Anne perspective on what a healthy friendship looks like. It is, in a way, the catalyst for much of the growth and change in the show for the characters and the world. If Sprig hadn’t become Anne’s “first non-toxic friend” (in the words of Matt Braly) then none of the girls would have grown into who they were meant to be.

Spranne against the world was a catchphrase they used that grew into something much more than what it was that first time they shouted it in early season one. Since then they’ve faced down tyrants, toad rebellions, the FBI, an immortal collection of Amphibia’s greatest minds, and the literal moon and have always had each other's backs.

Spranne kicked this adventure off and it’s their goodbye that closes it out.

It’s simple and beautiful and heartbreaking all at once.

Now to come back to the space battle and the moon. Sasha and Marcy’s calamity forms have been teased since Anne first accessed hers back in True Colors and we finally got to see them in action.

Amphibia didn’t hold back and gave us the most fun and colorful fight sequence in the whole show. I love how all of their calamity powers have to do with their activities from home that helped them most in Amphibia. Anne’s tennis skills and natural athleticism helped her fight even before her lessons from Tritonio which is most notable in Toad Tax. Sasha’s cheerleading helped her stay alive from the heron attack in prison break and feeds into her fighting ability. Marcy’s passion for fantasy and DnD plays into how she is able to do so well in Newtopia as mentioned in Marcy at the Gates. I love that this keeps coming back around in the story.

I love this frame of the girls grabbing onto each other and laughing while they spin in space. It just makes me really happy about how far they have come individually and as friends. The fact that they all grew so much and were able to come back together always hits me. It brings me back to that photo Matt Braly shared on twitter of the sketch of the three girls on the coach leaning into each other so with the caption “it’s complicated”. Through everything they all cared deeply about one another and managed to grow so they could get to this point.

Most importantly this part closes out the arc of the calamity trio as a whole. Anne started out this series as a follower. She did what Marcy and Sasha wanted and took the easy path but that’s not who she is anymore. She asks for their permission to take the lead and they allow her to.

She accepts her fate and makes the hard choice. In a way this is the hardest thing as well. Sasha and Marcy have to take a step back and give Anne their stones and their trust. Anne has to make this decision knowing that she will be giving up everything.

Anne has grown to be a light for so many people. She’s grown to love herself and through that has learned when to take the lead. She’s what Sprig dubbed her in the very first episode, a hero.

Anne makes the ultimate sacrifice and dies. The Anne we know does in fact die. A copy was made of her right before she expired; she is “for all intents and purposes the same Anne Boonchuy”. It’s been a week and I still don’t know how to tackle this subject but I do believe that this is Anne. I am happy that at least a part of Anne does in fact get to live her life. (To be honest I still don’t know if I’ve fully processes this part of the finale)

And we come to one of those things I’m conflicted about which is the creator of the stones. I’ve sat on this for a while now and I think I agree with this take right here. It would work better if there were any indication of there being a god outside of the line of foreshadowing within the episode Adventures in Catsitting and the photo on Anne’s bedroom wall.

No one before this point has been concerned about where the stones came from and there’s also the fact that someone/something we’ve never seen before in the series is what saves Anne from death. I don’t think either of these things fit the series as well as they should (The link explains this a lot better than I can).

That being said it works very well within the context of Anne’s arc and the themes of the show. Anne is given the chance to become a god and she turns it down. She isn’t perfect and she’s constantly growing, learning, and changing. Things aren’t set in stone.

Amphibia is centered around the theme of change. That nothing is permanent. And how that isn’t a bad thing. Bonds grow and change and sometimes you have to let them go but that doesn’t make their impact less meaningful. People change. They can seem set in their ways like Anne thought Sasha and Marcy were but they can surprise you and grow.

Nothing is perfect but with that comes beauty. The creator of the stones can’t grasp this. There is an inherent disconnect between an immortal being and a mortal one when it comes to this. They see Anne make this grand sacrifice and jump at the chance to make her their replacement. They claim she is perfect but she knows this isn’t the case. Anne understands this part of life now in a way she couldn’t before her journey.

Her understanding gives the god a new perspective and they allow her to go back and continue her life. Anne gets to continue her journey of growth and change. While she has an understanding and perspective beyond her thirteen years she still has so much life left to live and she deserves the chance to live it.

The epilogue shows a better world for Amphibia and shows just how much the world and its inhabitants have changed due to the trio. Sprig, Polly, and Ivy are going to go on more adventures and carry on in Anne’s memory by exploring a new continent. Grime, Olivia, and Yunan work together to facilitate peace and exploration. Hop Pop gets to grow his avocados. And Anne has a statue built in her honor.

Andrias roams helping fix the world he tore apart by planting seeds while carrying around the legacy and memory of Leif, Barrel, and Marcy through his keepsakes from each of them. He will never get the closure of his friends having seen him change and work to make up for past mistakes but he carries them with him and the lessons he’s learned from each. This ending fits perfectly with Amphibia’s themes.

I talked in depth about the earth epilogue here but to sum my thoughts up I think the dialogue doesn’t fully get across the intention behind it very well. It doesn’t get across that the girls did in fact keep in contact and that Marcy did visit after Amphibia but drifted apart due to time and differing life paths. I was genuinely disappointed in how the dialogue made the trio’s relationship after Amphibia sound but I love the idea and themes that it tries to get across.

I love the message that people do grow apart and that they can come back together again. I love how the trio meets up on Anne’s birthday, brings her presents, catches up, and takes a new photo. I love the idea that things aren’t permanent and that sometimes you will grow apart but that doesn’t make your experiences together and the love you share pointless, it just takes on a new meaning. I love that all these years later they could come back together and reconnect.

The final frame of the entire show is of the trio having taken a new photo. It’s a beautiful bookend to their story. The polaroid was such an important thing for every girl throughout the story but it grew and changed in significance with each of the girls. This new one symbolizes their new change in dynamic and friendship perfectly.

The fact that our first sighting of the group was this polaroid stuck in a tree in the rain during the opening and that this is the last sighting of the group right before “Complete” appears in Thai bringing the series to a close is so poetic. This series was about the friendship of these three girls falling apart and forcing them to grow separately as individuals before coming back together as true friends.

Amphibia is first and foremost a story about friendship and how each one can change you. How some while you may be separated the impact of that friendship will always remain. That sometimes you can reconnect with these old friendships even after all the time, space, and new experiences have changed you all.

Part of the journey is the end. This wasn’t a perfect goodbye to the series but it was a beautiful one that will be remembered. I know I will never forget it.

Extra thoughts

I want to give TJ Hill kudos once again. I love the upbeat rendition of no big deal that plays in the background of the trio’s space battle and the end credits music.

I have to say my favorite calamity form is Sasha’s. It’s just so extra with the flaming hair and abundance of spikes and it says more about who she is and what she represents than Anne or Marcy’s. (I still love their calamity forms too. Sasha’s just says the most about her in my opinion while Anne and Marcy’s have a lot of similarities to each other comparatively)

I absolutely love the moment where Andrias stands up to the core. They even hammer home the parallels between Anne and Andrias as well as Sasha and the core by having the scene where Andrias stands up to the core share the exact same dialogue as the scene where Anne does the same in Reunion. It even shares the red lighting and background.

I love how Grime kept Sasha’s sword. I love their bond so much.

My full expanded thoughts on the girls’ future careers is right here. I love all the career paths they took and feel like they were all extremely fitting and showed the effect Amphibia had on each of them.

Sasha is bi and I love it.

Olivia and Yunan are canon which I also love.

While it doesn’t hurt the finale for me I wish that we saw Sasha and Marcy’s parents. It just feels strange to have them teased in Froggy Little Christmas with the letters and All In during the phone call at the end only to never see them.

I also don’t think Anne will accept the god’s deal even after the next 78 years. Anne doesn’t want that kind of power and her response within the episode sums up how I think she will still feel after all that time. There is also an inherent tragedy to a mortal becoming an immortal, all-powerful being that I wouldn’t wish on Anne.

I also feel like the pacing of the first half of the episode was too fast. The calamity forms of the three girls is something that has been built up to for quite a while now and they come and go way too quickly. The pacing issue is very noticeable. I enjoyed what we got but it is jarring every time I’ve seen it.

#amphibia #marcy wu #anne boonchuy #sasha waybright #sprig #spranne against the world #polly #hop pop #grime #andrias

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apieters · 2 years

Text

Still getting caught up on Dracula Daily, but I’m at the section where he’s driving up to Dracula’s castle. All that’s been going on is that he’s enjoying the pretty mountains and noticing that the local peasants suddenly get all weird and creeped out when they figure out that he’s Dracula’s realtor going to pay the Count a visit.

Now, obviously, we know (since Dracula’s become a pop culture icon) why everyone is so freaked out, and we’re all collectively screaming “No, Jonny-boy, don’t go up there, listen to the peasants!” But one of the biggest sources of dramatic irony in Dracula is that the characters all assume they live in our world—the real world—a world where of course vampires and werewolves and ghosts and other Halloween creatures don’t exist because it’s the modern era, and nobody believes in those old superstitions anymore, except for uneducated peasants in backwater parts of the world, but certainly not sophisticated modern urban Englishmen. And literally everyone believes this, until the reality of their situation bites them—literally!

This assumption of our reality can be a source of terror or comedy, depending on how you read it. The terror comes when you realize that Dracula was basically an urban fantasy in its time, and that the events were supposed to seem as eerily realistic as possible, because everyone believes exactly the same things about reality as you do, and has no reason to think that there’s a demonic monster trying to move in just a few blocks down from your very real London flat because just like you they’re reasonable people who know vampires don’t exist, but the deal already went down last month.

Dun-dun-duuuuuuuun!!!!

But it’s also hilarious because we know that Jonathan Harker and friends all live in a horror story; that vampires are very, very real in their world; and that Dracula is very obviously a member of the undead. The fact that Harker and Co. all believe they’re still living in the real world in spite of very blatant evidence to the contrary is legitimately really, really funny.

Christian Content Incoming, Skip if you’re not into that kind of thing

(You have been warned)

In keeping with my Dracula-is-a-Christian-allegory belief, it’s interesting to notice how Stoker portrays the anti-supernaturalism/naturalistic outlook of his day.

On the one hand, it seems entirely rational. By the late 1800’s, most people did not accept a lot of Christianity’s supernatural beliefs. This was the heyday of classical Darwinism (especially Social Darwinism) and the liberal Protestant theologies that tried to de-mythologize the religion and re-interpret it basically as another ethical system. By the 1890’s it’s safe to say that amongst the fashionable and influential classes of society the default way of looking at the world was thoroughly non-supernatural. Many people in Jonathan Harker’s social class would have believed that life evolved from non-life over many eons in a dead, mechanistically predetermined but ultimately directionless universe operating on the principles of (Newtonian) physics and chemistry as conceived at the time, although there was believed to be a definite trend toward complexity and superiority from earlier to later life-forms and as humans evolved from apes into modern men and—as Neitzeche hoped—into “supermen.” This was a perfectly normal way of understanding the world, then as well as now, though in our era mechanistic pre-determination is less fashionable, Neitzche has given way to Sartre and Foucault, and we’ve upgraded our understanding of physics to the quantum mechanical models.

Still, the spiritual realm was then and is now largely denied and supernatural phenomenon are interpreted or reinterpreted in the categories of preferred study by the natural sciences. Visions and spiritual communion is understood in terms of psychological and neurological states, religions are studied primarily as social and political institutions, and even God Himself is often conceived of as the sum total of the energy in the physical universe in an way almost reminiscent of certain forms of pantheism.

But what if the old tales were not the errors of a prescientific, primitive culture trying to do science and failing miserably? What if they actual got it right—not on accident, or metaphorically, but were dead-accurate all along? What if people were living in a supernatural world and didn’t realize it, denied it even, to the point that obviously supernatural phenomena would be misunderstood as soon as it was seen?

That’s the fundamental difference that really exists between orthodox Christianity and modern naturalism, and Stoker decides to explore this clash of fundamentally different worldviews fictionally, except instead of addressing real issues of debate, he uses a placeholder—vampires. What if vampires were not only real, but the old peasant “superstitions” were dead right? And now let’s drop someone with a modern, naturalistic worldview, whose core tenant is the denial of the supernatural, into that world and see how they fare. The result is a dark comedy at best, and a terrifying horror story at worst.

Regardless, Stoker accurately portrays three important facts through his fictional story:

Reality is what it is, regardless of what we believe about it.

We perceive reality through our worldviews, our preconceptions about the what is or is not worth considering about reality.

If we believe incorrect things about reality, it can hurt us.

Stoker uses Dracula to explore the nature of belief and unbelief, and shows the dire consequences of persisting in untrue beliefs. The question we the readers are left with is:

In what kind of world to we live? And do we believe the truth about our world?

#Dracula #dracula daily #bram stoker #literary analysis #philosophizing

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belit0 · 3 years

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Hey, can you write Indra + size kink + cockworship + nasty cum stuff ?? Sorry, i'm hungry for that man

Sorry this took me SO FUCKING LONG omfg

No need to be sorry, I’m as hungry as you. I haven’t written smut in a while, so bear with me, I’m getting back at it:,(

Tw: Indra knows nothing about communication

When Indra enters the house, the sun has already set. He looks drained, tired. It’s been days since he started wearing his hair loose, devoid of his usual ponytail, and it only helps to make him look more massive than he is.

His steps are heavy as he heads to the bedroom, and when he looks at you with those expressionless serious eyes, you know he won’t be eating dinner today either. That’s okay, you’re not used to spending time together as a normal couple anyway, and you know you’d feel weird if he actually sat down with you and joined you for a meal.

His form disappears down the corridor and you know he has found the way to bed, seeking comfort from the adversities of the day. His shadow is dragged across the walls by the candlelight, and for a moment, it looks like the demon everyone says he is.

But of course, you know better than to believe those ridiculous tales.

It’s been months since this man appeared in your village, a place led by a poor wretch who was trying his best to get his people ahead. Only a few enjoyed good fortune, privilege, and wealth, and you were not one of them. Life before Indra, here, was based on working hard for pennies, finding food wherever possible, wearing the same clothes repeatedly for lack of more garments. Poverty was rampant among almost the entire village population, and despite the leader’s best efforts, nothing seemed to work for the betterment of the situation.

But a mysterious man with long hair and thick shoulders, tattooed eyes, impressive physique compared to the famine-stricken people... left everyone captivated. With just a couple of suggestions and commands, things turned around, and the outlook brightened for everybody. This mysterious man quickly rose in the hierarchical power of the village, and the current leader ended up giving up his place.

Indra became their ruler overnight, and hopes for the future of the town seemed to grow stronger and stronger again.

Town expansion was inevitable, welcoming visitors and travelers intrigued by the legends of this man who brought fortune to a doomed place. Enemies were also unavoidable. The Otsutsuki defended and used all his power to prevent the destruction of the foundations he had built with so much effort, leaving everyone terrified in his steps.

His red eyes became stories used by mothers to frighten disobedient children, his violet beast traveled on the tongues of all the merchants and their incessant rumors.

Respect mingled with fear, yet Indra never wavered.

He looked imposing as he walked the streets of the town, staring at nothing in particular, an expression forged by iron and ice. His towering figure seemed to cast a gigantic shadow over every other man nearby, and all the women were dying to take the vacant place at his side.

Everyone thought as he became leader he would choose one of the few wealthy ladies of the village as his wife, but he did not.

It was months after his ascension to power before he communicated with a woman. And that turned out to be you.

Although the village prospered and grew bigger every day, your life remained the same, complicated. Money was scarce as well as food, and working hard every morning was necessary if you wanted to get a crumb of bread.

You tended the garden of a prosperous family, kneeling in the morning dew, your clothes covered in dirt from the work you had started just a few minutes ago.

Footsteps in front of you broke your concentration, and when you looked up, a tall figure was staring down at you. A flowing robe floated in the wind, and that frown was visible even from the floor. Indra was intimidating without uttering a word.

“You look thoroughly filthy.” He had said. “I’m sorry, my lord.” You had replied, bowing your head in respect.

You did not finish that day’s work, for offering you a wide hand, Indra Otsutsuki himself lifted you from the dirt and escorted you to get a fresh change of clothes. Not one of the worn-out ones you used to wear, but an expensive one, of excellent quality, full of exquisite details. A garment of high society, one of the kind he himself usually wore.

From that moment on, he did not leave your side. It was only a matter of time before you moved into his residence, an immense house in the middle of town. You became the envy of all women, no one being able to understand how their leader could choose a servant girl as his partner.

And despite the fear you felt towards him at first, although his haughty looks seemed to be empty initially, you eventually grew to understand him. Dread turned into respect, affection, love.

After all, he saved you from that life of misery to give you one of luxury and privilege, asking for nothing in return. Even though you slept in the same bed every night, he never touched a single hair on your head, never came near you, never took the initiative you feared he may take.

“Why me?” you asked once, the blush on your face shielded by nighttime darkness inside the room. A large space lay between you both on the bed, and Indra, while you couldn’t see him, probably had his back to you. “You are the prettiest.” He replied simply, and you caught a note of amusement in his voice.

During the day it was rare for you to see him, but at sunset, you would both be in the bedroom. No lustful touches in the middle were necessary to make the night complete, for the silences which at first were awkward eventually were filled with chatter.

That intimidating look, that wide-backed warrior with blood-colored eyes, became a companion, a pleasant person to spend time with. Never smiled, never laughed, but you know he is calm, that he enjoys the moment as much as you do. You’ve seen him interact with other people, how his muscles tense when someone is way too close for his comfort, how his brow furrows when anyone speaks to him. You know you’re the only person he tolerates, appreciates, and loves around him.

That’s why seeing him arrive like this is something uncomfortable in your chest. Slowly following in his footsteps, you find his clothes lost all the way back to the room. You pick up garment by garment, and there is a certain satisfaction as you smell his clothes and feel his perfume. As you reach the doorway, he is already tucked into bed, buried under sheets. One of his arms supports his head and acts as a pillow while his other hand scratches his chest, which is slightly uncovered. One of his legs is bent, and covers slip off his skin, revealing a thigh and worked muscles. His eyes are closed, but he knows you are there.

Leaving his clothing on a chair, you approach him and sit on the edge of the bed, hands clasped in your lap. Rarely have you seen this scene, where he relaxes with all his rights in his own bed. Sex has never been addressed between the two of you, and it’s something you’re grateful for. Rumors travel faster than the wind, and many a woman has walked around claiming to have spent time in the bed of the mighty Indra. Whether that’s true, you don’t know, and you’ve never asked either.

If true, your experience is undoubtedly unparalleled.

Still, seeing him like this, becoming one with the bed and stretching out, getting a taste of his toned chest and his thick thigh... Curiosity suddenly demands more.

“You’re staring.” His eyes are still closed, but to be put on display is still just as humiliating. “I’m sorry...” You’re not sure if get up and leave at that moment, but it’s his voice that clears the uncertainty. “Why? I’m your partner, naturally.”

It feels like confirmation of your actions, and you become brave all at once.

“Can I help you... To feel better?....” Your voice is full of hesitation, yet one end of his lips lifts, revealing a wickedly tinged smirk.

“Be my guest.”

Climbing on top of him, your hands tremble with anxiety and anticipation. His eyes flutter open and he watches you intently, analyzing where your actions lead. The man really is huge, and being partially on top of him, the size difference is even greater. Indra seems to rejoice in your stupor, picking up on your intentions and stirring the sheets covering him as you settle between his legs.

Whatever nervousness you felt about what was to come only grows worse at the sight of his size, as even half-hard, his cock’s intimidatingly enormous length.

“Already frightened?” The teasing tone sliding across his tongue fills you with new determination, and with both hands, you hold his shaft. One at the base and one at the head. Your tongue timidly explores that unfamiliar surface, feeling in your grip how hardness invades his dick second after second.

Your lips wrap carefully around it, and pushing gently, inch by inch, his length finds its way into the pleasantly warm depths of your mouth. One of your hands slowly slides down, dragging skin in its wake.

Fixing your eyes on Indra while trying to deal with the raw, inexperienced situation and size, you notice impatience and need, lust swimming in red eyes dominates his expression.

From an instant to the next, your shoulders are enveloped by two gigantic hands, and position is turned around, a vast body hovering over you and trapping you underneath it.

“You teasing little fucker...”

Being handled like that awakens something on the inside that you rarely felt before, some sort of tingling urgently needing to be soothed. A broad palm grasps your chin, which moves your face in the direction Indra desires as he suddenly engulfed your lips.

You have never kissed this man before, and to be making out with him for the first time in these circumstances should feel wrong... but it only builds up more sensations in your lower belly, a treacherous emptiness, and an almost unfamiliar fire.

Your hands awkwardly find his back, and the need to press him against your face, to demand more, to extract more from those luscious lips is interesting. There is no more distance to close between the two of you, but you want to crush yourself against his labored chest until becoming one.

The moment ends quickly as you gasp for air, and trying to recover, a sultry Indra, who grins viciously seductive overpowers your gaze.

“I’ll introduce you to a thing or two...”

Before you comprehend what his words mean, the position changes again, and his two knees are one on either side of your head. He looks even more terrifying from this angle than in everyday life, and you don’t venture to peek at his dick. Two of his fingers slide across your lower lip, caressing your cheek, and suddenly squeeze your face harshly. Your mouth is forced open, but when his cock slides over your tongue and you understand the functionality of the pose, you ease back.

Your lack of experience was driving him crazy, and rather than loosening him up, you were upsetting him further. Managing the matter with his own hands, or rather with his own hips, Indra finds peace again.

Rising to height, one of his palms cradles your face, while the other supports himself against the wall. You try to find stability by holding onto his thighs, and as he buries himself lower in your mouth, sensations in your body become almost unbearable, coupled with his movements.

Indra is kind at first, gradually pushing into your inexperienced cavity slowly, closing his eyes tightly and fighting the urge to destroy your mouth.

Yet when your jaw relaxes completely, grasping the rhythm and feel of the situation, he lets go. The beast is finally released, and the Otsutsuki fucks your lips with abandon, hitting the end of your throat with each thrust. His hips move with agility, and imagining him between your legs with the same surrender and strength makes you hold on.

Tears decorate your cheeks and eyelashes, blending with the saliva dripping from your mouth every time that cock lunges at your face. Indra becomes completely abstracted, tilting his head back as deep growls rise from deep within his chest.

When air is inevitably needed and you can no longer avoid gagging, you repeatedly slap his thighs, drawing his attention. He leans his forehead against the wall and holds your face with both hands, withdrawing his dick from your throat and catching his breath with difficulty. His gaze is fixed on you, and although you could probably look better, you feel really appreciated under those red eyes.

The fluids from your mouth completely soaked your chest and cheeks, your clothes are soaked, and at the sight, the Otsutsuki slides his fingers across your wet skin, then strokes his shaft twice.

When you catch your breath, you place a kiss on the head which has been hitting the back of your throat for minutes, showing he may continue.

Without a second thought, he burrows deeply into your mouth, reaching a depth he hadn’t hit before. The grunt he exhales makes your skin crawl, and you really want to see him enjoy you like this for the rest of your life.

He gives you time to breathe again, and his thrusts become more shallow, seeking more contact with the softness of your tongue and the warmth of your cheeks. It isn’t long before his length is completely out of your cavity and he works it rapidly, seeking the longed-for finish. You’re not sure what you should do, so you simply watch him, amazed at the size of his hands.

After a few seconds, several white shots paint your face, staining your hair and chest, leaving practically nowhere without even a drop. It’s unexpected, but satisfying.

#naruto shippuden #otsutsuki indra #indra otsutsuki #otsutsuki indra x reader #indra x reader #indra otsutsuki x reader #indra #otsutsuki clan #naruto

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ectonurites · 4 years

Note

idk how to quote tags on mobile where is the conner kent essay i NEED it

ALRIGHT OKAY! here’s 5k+ words plus panels & screenshots of me comparing and contrasting the two drastically different versions of Superboy (comics vs young justice cartoon) and going over what makes them such distinctly separate characters. someday i’ll refine this a bit more its kinda just a word dump that’s been living in my brain that i wanted to actually articulate after i read through Reign of the Supermen but here we go:

Pretty frequently I see the question “Why is Superboy so different in the Young Justice cartoon?” float around in DC circles. I think there are two main approaches to answering this:

Why did the writers of the cartoon decide to create a very different version of Superboy?

What factors make this Superboy so different from the comic version?

For the first approach the answer is relatively straight-forward, from the start Young Justice as a cartoon was never meant to be a direct adaptation of the comics. They just used the title and a few elements so they could create their own approach to the DC universe with a focus on younger heroes. For example, Artemis Crock in their show is also COMPLETELY different from her comic counterpart, Zatanna is aged way down to be a member of the teen team, and Kaldur’ahm was created for this show (and integrated into the comics as Jackson Hyde). They were always trying to do different things than the main comics universe, so them making a different version of Conner also makes sense. Their approach to him is also very clearly influenced more by how he appeared in the Teen Titans comic run that was still coming out as Young Justice started airing (his design, and some other elements we’ll discuss along the way), as opposed to his original version from the 90′s/the Young Justice comic.

So the basic “why” is that from the start they wanted to create something unique to their universe, which they definitely did accomplish.

The much more interesting subject to dive into, though, is looking at the differences in Superboy’s story that contribute to him becoming such a different person.

The drastic changes made to the following factors are what I view as the main source of his differences in personality/outlook/characterization:

The conditions and history of the world at the time he is introduced

The circumstances around him being introduced/leaving Cadmus

The reaction Clark has to him and how their relationship starts

The people he first interacted with & became close to, and how he interacts with the world

The timing of him finding out about his connection to Luthor

The State of the Worlds

In the comics, Superboy is first introduced in Adventures of Superman #500 by iconically saying “Don’t ever call me Superboy!”

during a 1993 event called “Reign of the Supermen”, a follow up to the 1992 event “The Death of Superman”. Based on the title of the 1992 event, I think you can, uh, guess what one major difference in the setting here was vs. the state of the world at the time he was introduced in the cartoon. Obviously Clark didn’t stay dead forever, but Superboy first comes onto the scene as a young clone of Superman who insists he is the new Superman (one of the four characters trying to do so during the event). This is in the main DC universe in the early 90’s, which means that heroes in general, including teen heroes, aren’t a new thing! Not only has the Justice League been around for a while but so has the Teen Titans. Once Clark is alive again, Superboy goes off on his own to establish himself as an individual teen hero.

So how is that different in the cartoon?

In the cartoon, Superboy is first introduced in the pilot episodes “Independence Day” and “Fireworks”

on the 4th of July in (what most people consider to be) 2010. This was supposed to be the day that Robin (Dick Grayson), Speedy (Roy Harper), Kid Flash (Wally West), and Aqualad (Kaldur’ahm) would get to see the true Justice League HQ at the Hall of Justice, which... doesn’t go exactly as planned.

In this world, superheroes are a newer thing, this is something that the creators have talked about before. At this point, while there is an established Justice League, there are no known teams of teen superheroes. Just the fact that as of season one Dick Grayson is still Robin is a pretty good indicator that this world is early in it’s time with a Batman. Now, the sidekicks aren’t a secret, as they appear very publicly in this first episode, but they are almost always seen acting with their mentors at this point. Again, there is no Teen Titans in this setting, and there never has been.

So when they do form the first teen hero team? It is kept covert-ops. They do not publicize that they act as a superhero team, and the members who weren’t already publicly known heroes (mainly Miss Martian and Superboy) end up being pretty… unknown to a lot of the world outside the hero/villain community! Again their existence is not strictly kept a secret, but they keep the fact that there’s a team of minors who are heroes going on independent missions VERY under the radar on purpose. Thus, those who aren’t going around doing super public hero activities just don’t have nearly as much of a presence.

So to summarize:

In the comics, Superboy is immediately put in a spotlight (he befriends a reporter and is all over tv and literally trademarks the name Superman) becoming known to the world and establishes himself as a solo acting hero YEARS before joining any teams.

In the cartoon, Superboy is kept relatively out of the spotlight, immediately becomes part of a covert-ops team and doesn’t act solo very often. The well known teen heroes in this setting are sidekicks working under a mentor, and Superboy does not actually act as a sidekick.

What does this mean for Superboy?

Superboy in the comics gets to, right away, act on his own and get a taste of what being Superman is like. In the cartoon, he’s brought into the world at a time where there already is a Superman. I think back to this bit from the therapy episode, where he says:

“See, from the moment I first opened my eyes in that Cadmus pod, there’s been one thing I’ve wanted, and feared. To know what it is to be Superman.”

Comics Superboy started out getting to do that! He immediately got a shot at filling that role, and he then makes the choice to relinquish it back to the original once he’s alive again. He (begrudgingly at first) understood that it wasn’t yet his time to be Superman, and knows he’ll someday fill those shoes for real- but in the meantime being Superboy is gonna be his own thing and he’ll embrace it and make it work.

Cartoon Superboy is left in a shadow, not ever truly knowing what it’s like to fill those shoes (except in a doomsday scenario training exercise gone awry that he then just feels intense guilt over). This leaves him a lot more frustrated and lost, and I think is a major contributor to how angry this version of Superboy is compared to his much more ‘chill go with the flow’ attitude in the comics.

Cadmus

In the comics, in that same issue he’s introduced, we find out that Superboy broke out of his cloning tube prematurely and left Cadmus with the assistance of the second Newsboy Legion, who also gave him his first leather jacket, before the programming that would allow Cadmus to control him was implemented.

He quickly gets up to speed with the situation, that Clark is dead. So he comes on the scene starting to save people and saying he is Superman, or at least the clone of the original one. A major thing that does influence his character here is the fact that… this is the 90’s. He is designed around the idea of what is ‘cool’ back in 1993. (look, even his original character design sheets call him cool)

So right off the bat he’s got a stereotypical ‘cool teen guy in that era’ personality, which is often played for comedy to add a little lightness to some of the dark things happening during this event.

Anyways, he has left Cadmus, he’s acting on his own, and he starts realizing that his powers aren’t exactly the same as Superman’s over the course of the Reign of the Supermen story.

After the main conflict is settled and Clark is fully alive and acting as Superman again, the two of them end up going back to Cadmus to find out what the exact deal is with him. I’ll go into this more in a later point, but they find out he’s not exactly a clone of Superman (or Lex- him being actually involved as a DNA donor is a retcon that happened a decade later). They agree to let someone from Cadmus (Dubbilex- the grey guy with the horns in this pic) leave Metropolis with him, as he sets out on a press tour to establish himself as Superboy now that he relinquished the trademark on the Superman name back to Clark.

Let’s pause and look at how this is different in the cartoon.

In the cartoon, when the trio of Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad decide to prove themselves to their mentors they run off on their own to attend to a fire at Project Cadmus when the Justice League got called off to do something else. Upon arriving, they accidentally uncover some weird things about Cadmus, like the crazy amount of sublevels, the creatures roaming around, and the fact that it’s not on the main power grids. They eventually find Superboy, still in his cloning tube. They break him out, but then get captured themselves.

When they are then put into tubes by Cadmus personnel, they manage to convince Superboy to help free them by promising him things like getting to meet Superman, and see the moon. The group of four now working together manages to escape from the building and it topples down, where they are then greeted by the Justice League who are Not Happy.

Superman flies away shortly after, and the group of kids explain to their remaining mentors that sure, they disobeyed orders, but they accomplished something good here, and they are going to keep doing it, whether the League likes it or not. The compromise is the formation of The Team, to be covert-ops while the Justice League acts publicly, and the boys are joined by Miss Martian.

So to summarize:

In the comics, Superboy leaves Cadmus pretty independently (with some assistance) to go act on his own as a hero immediately. He returns to Cadmus later for more information, and they reveal truths to him about his existence. After he knows his truth, he goes off to continue establishing himself as a solo hero but lets Cadmus still supervise what he’s doing through Dubbilex.

In the cartoon, Superboy is rescued from Cadmus by Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad, without knowing pretty much anything about himself besides the fact that he is a clone of Superman, and is immediately put on the covert ops team.

What it means for Superboy:

Comic Superboy goes to act on his own, even after he admits he’s not the real Superman anymore. Yes he’s not 100% alone in terms of ‘he’s got people (Rex, Roxy, Dubbilex, Tana) around him’, but as a hero he’s a solo act and ends up taking residence in Hawaii. In the cartoon, by joining a team right away, he’s taking on a very different style of being a hero, especially because the team itself is covert-ops. Rather than regularly saving the day all on his own much like Superman, which can help comic Superboy feel like he’s still living up to the name more, cartoon Superboy is working under the radar in a group setting, while still wanting to desperately fill those Superman shoes.

He is overconfident in his abilities and wants to be the hero he was created to be, so him being put into this very different type of superhero situation is another major contributor to the frustration/anger. Even later on when comics Superboy is part of forming the Young Justice team, they were never a secret covert-ops team, they were always publicly known. (hell, a reporter is the one who gave them the team name Young Justice because he’d misheard Bart)

Superboy & Superman

In the comics, as we have established, Clark was dead at the time Superboy first came on the hero scene. Clark comes back to life, during a little bit of a lull in the middle of the huge conflict. He immediately accepts that Superboy is one of four who came forward to try to replace him, and one of the only two (Superboy & Steel) who genuinely only had good intentions in doing so. Clark, Steel, Supergirl, Hal Jordan, and Superboy then all work together in the big battle against the Cyborg Superman.

Once things are settled, Clark is curious about him, and where he came from and his origin, so they end up going to Cadmus together with Guardian and learning more about him, as I previously mentioned. Once it is established that Superboy is in fact a metahuman clone who was created to mimic Superman, but is not actually a clone of him, Superman still accepts him and thinks he’s earned his right to continue using the ’S’ shield and have the name of Superboy.

They part ways so Superboy can go on his press tour, but in general they have pretty positive interactions where they mutually respect each other! Not too much later in the comics even (I forget exaaactly when this happens but it’s definitely before the 1998 Young justice comic), Superman is the first one to give Superboy a real name, “Kon-El”, something he is so happy about he literally cries.

How is this different in the cartoon?

When the boys first escaped, and Superboy first meets the Justice League, Clark is standoffish. Other members of the league need to nudge him over to go actually talk to Superboy, and it’s not much of a conversation before he flies off and away, leaving Superboy frustrated and alone.

This… turns into the standard for almost the entire first season. Other characters constantly telling Clark that he needs to reach out and be support for the boy (like in this iconic diner scene with Bruce and Clark), but Clark consistently being too freaked out by the fact that someone made a clone of him without his knowledge to properly accept Conner. While this does over time get better, this being the immediate reaction when Superboy is brand new in the world definitely… has an impact!

He is rejected by the person he idolizes, and feels neglected and abandoned, and definitely kinda overcompensates with ego to try to make up for it.

So:

In the comics, Superman and Superboy work together from the start, not falling into a hero/sidekick situation but rather acknowledging each other as individual heroes with respect for one another. They grow to see each other as family much faster, and little tension between them. A crucial difference in situations, though, is that at the time these versions first meet Superboy is not actually a clone of Superman.

In the cartoon, Superman at first avoids Superboy, and does not offer guidance or mentorship or anything the boy needs. It is clear that he wants to work with Superman and be like him, since it was what he was created to do. It takes a lot of time for Clark to accept Conner in this setting, and there is a lot of tension for the first several months Conner exists. (they seem to settle this towards the end of season 1/during the gap between season 2, but it still has it’s impact on who Conner is early in his life)

What does this mean?

I feel like this is another major factor that contributes to Conner being so angry all the time in the cartoon, he feels immediately rejected by the person he’s supposed to be someday, rather than accepted by him. Again, very different from how comics Superboy got a chance to be Superman, and a chance to then work with the real deal as equals.

Friendships, Relationships and Identity

When Superboy is freed by the second Newsboy Legion, it’s primarily out of a ‘we’re clones who are stuck here, but you need to be out there, you’re what Metropolis needs right now!’ kind of idea. The first person he actually becomes close to is a reporter named Tana Moon.

Tana and Superboy’s relationship is… bad once it actually becomes romantic due to their huge age difference (she’s around 23, he is for all intents and purposes 16), but during the Reign of the Supermen where they’re still just friends for the most part, it’s not as bad. Tana becomes the GBS correspondent who focuses on everything Superboy (at this time still insisting he is the new Superman) is doing as a hero, and they become close friends.

GBS then also brings in Rex Leech (and his daughter Roxy) to be his agent, to promote Superboy and manage things for him. Rex is exploitative as hell, but Roxy does become another really important person to Superboy. These characters along with Dubbilex are his main supporting cast at the start of his solo comic when he’s in Hawaii.

In this whole era, Superboy is pretty much a celebrity. He’s cool, he’s a superhero, and I think it’s very notable he does not have a secret Identity. For a decent chunk of time, he is always just ‘Superboy’ (until, as I mentioned earlier, Clark gives him the name Kon-El. Even so, he doesn’t adopt a regular secret identity [Conner Kent, although he actually used a different one, Carl Grummett, before that!] until he begins living with the Kents in the early 2000s). By the time he joins any teams, Kon is pretty damn confident in who he is as a hero and has a relatively good grasp on who he is in general, if anything he’s a little too confident.

Young Justice was created in the aftermath of World Without Grown Ups when the trio of Superboy, Robin (Tim Drake) and Impulse (Bart Allen) had teamed up. After they saved the day they realized they worked well together and formed their team, utilizing the old Justice League base in Mount Justice. They were eventually joined by more members, especially relevant here is Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) who Kon later dates for a portion of the Teen Titans run that these four are in after Young Justice ends.

The four of them become close, and when Kon dies during Infinite Crisis it rips a hole in everything they had established growing up together over the past several years (Cassie joins a cult dedicated to bringing him back, Tim tries to clone a new Kon, Bart got aged up and took on the mantle of the Flash, etc) and Bart’s death that followed similarly shook the remaining Cassie and Tim. This group eventually does get to reunite, with Kon and Bart coming back during Final Crisis, solidifying how even things like death don’t keep them apart for long. It’s hard to look at the comic book versions of these four characters and imagine how they would be without their connections to each other... until you look at the YJ cartoon and see a world where they’re not even all part of the same generation, let alone a friend group.

Now in the cartoon…

The first people Conner primarily interacts with are Dick, Wally, Kaldur, and M’gann, along with the League members who interact with The Team pretty regularly, Red Tornado, Batman, and Black Canary. He’s shown to be friends with the other memebers of the team and get along with them relatively well, but in general he’s not much of a social person.

Much like in the comics, Superboy is considered very attractive, and immediately upon their meeting, M’gann is interested in him. Very, very interested in him.

At first it definitely does seem more just like an innocent crush, but it’s later revealed to be a little more… concerning than that. As in ‘Megan subtlety influencing Superboy to become her dream boyfriend based on a TV show she likes’ concerning. Like… she literally gives him the name ‘Conner’ after the TV show character that was the boyfriend of the character she bases her human self and entire identity on. The two date and once that becomes a thing, a lot of their plot lines in the following seasons revolve around the ups and downs of their relationship.

In general in this show, Superboy doesn’t really get much of a chance to establish himself on his own terms. Within months of him leaving his cloning pod, he and M’gann start going to high school with secret identities, so he’s already having to hide who he truly is to blend in with other people, before he even knows who he truly is.

So to compare:

In the comics, Superboy gets to figure out who he is as Superman’s Clone/Superboy very publicly, has multiple love interests and a celebrity status, and over time becomes part of a tight-knit group of friends. He doesn’t use a regular secret identity for the first several years he’s active.

In the cartoon, Superboy has one love interest with a very large impact on him, not nearly as much focus is given to his other friendships, and he immediately adopts a secret identity meaning he needs to hide who he is from the start.

What it means:

These factors play a big difference in his attitude, particularly highlighting how extroverted his comic version is and how introverted his cartoon version is. Comic Superboy never really needed to hide who he was until years into his career, vs being told to do so early on in his life. When you get used to needing to hide things so early, that can definitely lead to being more private/disconnected from others. Also somewhat related- in the comics, when Kon is given knowledge in his cloning tube, more pop culture got included. He mentions knowing Star Wars without having seen it, and references a ton of TV and Movies, vs the cartoon version of him that seems to have been given a lot of history of the world but not the current fun stuff. It’s the difference between knowing what’s going on in the world and what’s popular, vs only knowing the past and what’s fundamental. Not knowing pop culture like this can also really contribute to feeling alienated and lead to introversion. (I just... I think about how in the comics Kon’s favorite TV show is Wendy The Werewolf Stalker, in the cartoon Conner just... watches white noise static)

Also, having a completely different set of friends with different personalities has a big effect, people are always gonna be influenced by the people they’re close to to some extent. Bumping Conner up to Dick’s generation of heroes instead of Tim’s not only gives him completely different friends, but it also puts him in this position of being one of the ‘Original Team Members’. By this I mean, a member of the first iteration of the only teen team, one of the people that younger heroes coming onto the scene and joining the team in later seasons see as an experienced and older team member to look up to (despite the fact that cartoon Conner is permanently 16- they never fixed that for him like in the comics). That just creates a different dynamic entirely, because in the comics even when the Tim/Kon/Cassie/Bart group are more experienced on their team late in the Teen Titans run, they are still always going to have heroes like Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, Wally West etc as the older generation of ‘original teen heroes’ who came before them.

Also, while I am talking mostly about in-universe reasoning here, I do wanna bring up one slightly more meta reason that might also have contributed to them choosing to go for a more ‘introverted brooding hero’ characterization with him: the fact that their version of Wally already filled the ‘flirty jokey’ archetype original Comics Kon fits into. Having two characters like that in the show from the start would definitely get... overwhelming. And at the time this show was first airing, in the comics, he was relatively devoted to Cassie and not nearly as flirty anymore anyways.

Lex Luthor / Details of Cloning

In the comics, as I have already mentioned and will now actually explain, when Superboy was first introduced he was not the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor as we know him to be today. Kon was a metahuman clone, made with the DNA of Paul Westfield who worked at Cadmus, that they genetically altered to look like Superman, and gave powers based on the energy aura they discovered to exist around Clark’s dead body. This telekinetic field gave Kon the distinct powers he had for his first decade of existence: His Tactile Telekinesis (often referred to by him as TTK)

Lex Luthor was originally not directly involved in his creation, but he was aware that it was going on as is revealed during the Reign of the Supermen arc. Kon’s TTK allowed him to mimic Superman’s flight and strength, but not all of his powers. TTK also gave him powers Superman DOESN’T have, such as his ability to dismantle machinery or mold materials he is touching into different shapes. (The reason this is called Tactile Telekinesis is because there needs to be a tactile element, he needs to be touching the things)

It is not until 2003, a decade after Superboy was created, that writer Geoff Johns in his Teen Titans run decided to alter Superboy’s origin. He established that Lex Luthor had been the real human DNA donor and that Superman’s Kryptonian DNA was actually used in the cloning process. Around this time, Conner also begins to exhibit more of the typical Kryptonian powers, like Clark did around this age.

This information is at first only known by Conner and Tim, because the email had actually been sent to Tim directly. The two keep it a secret as Conner was not ready to tell the rest of the team, because he fears the implications it has, and is afraid of becoming evil or being rejected. This revelation about Lex being one of his ‘parents’ DNA-wise coming years into his hero career changes a lot of things for Conner, and makes him begin to question who he is. Unfortunately, Lex does at one point take control of Conner and force him to break Tim’s arm and attack Cassie directly (as well as the rest of the team, but these two specifically are what Conner expresses the most guilt over after the fact). This era of Conner in the comics is where he’s definitely closest to his cartoon counterpart, because he’s very troubled and dealing with a lot of heavy stuff regarding himself as a person. Yet there’s still traces of who he has always been in there. I mean, if you’re only familiar with cartoon Conner, can you really imagine his final words as he’s dying after saving the world being “Isn’t it cool?”

Now, looking at the cartoon…

Conner finds out about his connection to Lex in November, only a few months after having existed outside of a cloning tube. He finds it out on his own, from Lex speaking to him directly, after Conner went back to investigate the remains of Cadmus and ended up having a fight with Match (another clone who is able to pass for Conner’s duplicate who they… their version of Match is another thing they drastically changed from the comic version but as we’ve established that’s something they like to do so I’m not gonna dwell on it).

In the cartoon, Conner’s powerset is, from the start, different from both Superman and comic Superboy. Here he has heightened senses and strength and the ability to leap really far, but he lacks actual flight and some of the other standard Kryptonian powers, and has no TTK. The cartoon explains these gaps in his powers as being due to his half human DNA, and they introduce these patches that are able to suppress his human DNA and give him temporary access to full powers. Lex uses these patches as a way to manipulate him. Much like in the comics, Lex has a code word programmed into Conner that effects him, although it isn’t quite used for the same amount of ‘total mind control’, and he doesn’t get fully brainwashed and turn against the team or anything. Instead, the code word (here “Red Sun” rather than “Aut vincere, aut mori” [Translated as “to conquer or die" / "victory or death”]) just leaves him stuck in a hypnotic trance.

So:

In the comics, Kon finds out after years of believing he was a metahuman clone who was given powers to mimic Superman, that he is actually a clone of Lex Luthor and Superman, which alters his entire perspective on himself! This causes him to become a lot more unsure and anxious about who he is, in stark contrast with how confident he was before. There are still traces of his old self within him, but this is a development in his character that influences him moving forward, making him a bit more serious but still at his core the same person he used to be.

In the cartoon, Conner finds out after months of thinking he was a clone of just Superman, that he has half human DNA and the donor was Lex Luthor. While he always had confidence in his abilities, he was still somewhat lost as a person in knowing who he really was outside of things other people have assigned to him (teammate, boyfriend, superhero, etc), and finding out this information about himself just adds to the uncertainty and frustration.

What it means:

Having this struggle be something Conner has to deal with so early in his existence is one of the most fundamental changes in my opinion. Finding out that Lex Luthor is one of your clone parents is something that will alter your entire perception of yourself and who you are! In the comics, Conner had already been confident in who he was so it shakes his world in a really big way, but in the cartoon he still didn’t know who he really was so it just adds to further confusion.

I think that even with the more serious characterization Kon starts getting in the 2003 Teen TItans run, his history and past as the fun cool 90′s Metropolis Kid isn’t entirely forgotten, it’s still a part of who he is/was. Sure, maybe he’s sometimes even embarrassed by how he used to be, but it’s not treated as though it didn’t happen. All of his history comes together to create the character and who he is by the time he wears just a T shirt as a costume.

By skipping over the fun era of his life and jumping right into who he was when he started facing these huge changes, it creates such a completely different set of challenges for him and that contributes directly to how he’s characterized.

Putting it all together

The ultimate point I am trying to reach in all of this is that, beyond just ‘they made a writing choice to make him different’ the environment that Superboy was brought into and the events that took place right when he came into the world greatly influenced the type of character he would become. Every time an adaptation is made of something like comics, there are going to be changes and alterations to fit the world the creators want to make. Sometimes these changes are minor and don’t actually change who a character is (an example for the YJ cartoon’s universe itself: In the tie-in comics [issue 6] it’s established in this universe that the Flying Graysons weren’t just Dick and his parents, but other family members were active parts of it too. One was an uncle also named Richard, who actually survived the fall that killed the rest of his family but was left paralyzed and thus unable to care for him. This uncle already used the nickname ‘Rick’ which is likely why Dick ended up using ‘Dick’ as a name in a modern setting even though it has fallen out of popularity as a nickname because uh, connotations. This is something that is mostly unique to their world and helps to explain some things, but it’s not like tragically losing a few more family members changed their version of Dick and his backstory that drastically. At his core, he still has many similarities to his comic self) but they’re still changes, and that’s okay. Superboy, though, is such an extreme case where they made so many changes that at his core he really does become a completely separate character. Sure he has the name and design, but I was able to write five thousand words about differences here and am struggling to come up with more similarities beyond that.

I think there still could be specks of the original Superboy buried inside cartoon Conner, and that maybe he could have been more like his original version under other circumstances. Looking at these differences and where they come from is, I think, a cool way to begin to understand what elements contribute to who each version of Conner Kent really is. I think it’s clear from how I wrote this that I prefer the comic version, but there are definitely things that are fun to look at and think about with both.

if u read all of this UH thanks for listenin to me ramble! sorry if this is incomprehensibe!

#rainbowroadimpulse #sam writes #conner kent #superboy

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queen-of-the-night-lights · 3 years

Text

Imagine Being Apart of Crosshair’s Team:

Crosshair had mixed feelings about you, but everyone just assumed it was his usual dislike of everyone. You were different than the rest. You caused memories in his head he didn’t want. He couldn’t say anything because just disliking you wasn’t a viable excuse for a reassignment. Anything that was asked of you, you did. Sure you did it in a way that was unusual, but you did your job so he was stuck with you. He also couldn’t kill you, he didn’t want to, maybe it was because deep down he would miss you.

You had a strong sense of leadership and knew how to read people. The others gravitated more towards you because of this gift. They could tell you anything without having the fear of being reported to Rampart. On missions, you knew what the limits were for everyone’s abilities. This at first bothered Crosshair of course. Were you questioning his decision, his direct orders? However as time went on you ended being right. He would never admit that, but it was taken note of.

You knew when things were wrong with him. Things here and there would poke through his cold demeanor, which you read. Being as observant as you were you would know he was struggling. Knowing when to ask and what tone to use made him feel like he could tolerate it. Then one day after a mission he practically hissed with anger “ Why do you care?! How could you possibly know what is going on with everyone at all times!?” You shrugged “ I can just sense when people are hurting.” He hated that word, he hated that that was how you described this particular trait of yours. You could sense things, just like Hunter would sense when one of them lied as cadets, or was hurt, or when Crosshair was upset.

A particular time that annoyed him was when he caught you talking with another member, ES-03, had a large crack in their helmet and was started stressing about getting a new one issued. You told them to hand over their helmet so you could take a look at it. While cleaning his riffle he would occasionally glance over to what you were doing. The way you would gently run your hands over it, the way you would have different tools sprawled out all over the place, and hearing you explained what you were doing as you were doing it, reminded him of Tech. The worst part was after you took off the goggles you were using to make sure your eyes wouldn’t water from the chemicals, they left rings around your eyes. Ones that were all to similar to Tech’s.

When he walked out of the room to attempt to regain focus and composure he heard ES-03 tease “ So, you act different around the Commander.” You scoffed and rolled your eyes “ No I don’t.” ES-03 then continued “ Maybe, but what do you think about him?” You were quick to answer “ I don’t know, he scares me. He’s a scary dude.” Crosshair didn’t know why that hurt so much coming from you. He liked that the others feared him, it was how he ensured their loyalty. As soon as you vocalized it, it bothered him. From that day he would think about your actions wondering if they were because you were a good solider or if it was because you feared him.

Those thoughts would be quickly pushed out of his head when you would vocalize your outlook on situations. You always found a bright side, even if the mission was a complete failure you found something good about it. He could never grasp how it was possible to see anything but failure, but you always thought otherwise. You would get excited when a new mission would come up. One time while overhearing why you all talk about why you joined the Empire you simply stated “ I was bored and needed something that would keep me out of trouble.” Really? That was your answer? This confirmed that lie that Rampart told to him and Tarkin long ago about getting loyal recruits.

He would be furious at you if you didn’t constantly sound like his brother. You always seemed like a ball of light. Spreading good feelings and emotions even if it was for a little while. This wonder that you had and bright demeanor, Crosshair could almost hear Wreckers voice in your words. He thanked the stars that he was wearing his helmet most of the time. Without it everyone would see the small smile that would paint itself across his lips. They would tell that he favored this side of you.

You were a good solider. You were experienced in fighting, to what extent he was never sure, but it was at least something. Always acknowledging the order and knowing more of the army’s lingo than the others. Perhaps that is why Crosshair grew accustomed to talking with you more. This also made him feel like he could bounce strategies off of you. You two would make up different plans together for hours. It weirded you out at first, you had never heard more than a couple of sentences out of him before. Now it sounds odd when others describe him as quiet.

After a frustrating session you had finally and sarcastically voiced an idea for a take over. After glaring for a moment a realization of its probably of success popped into his mind. This caused him to voice “ That’s not actually a bad idea.” With wide eyes and a smirk you commented “ Commander, did I actually hear a compliment? Or was that my imagination?” He smirked and rolled his eyes warning “ Don’t get too cocky.” You smiled and said “ Me? Of course not.” While he didn’t know his brother Echo as long as the others the sarcastic tone and smile of yours reminded him so much of the newer member.

One thing that he will admit he hates about you is about when you get angry. That’s not a pretty sight for anyone. The others have left the room or area countless times when you two would butt heads. There were times when you were too snarky for your own good. During these disagreements you knew exactly what buttons to push and how to push them. Many times Crosshair would shove you out of anger. You wouldn’t talk to him for days sometimes after harsh fights. He hated this not only because he would secretly miss your company, but because he hated what you made him see. At the end of every fight he saw a reflection of himself in you.

The great mystery of you would plague his mind at night. You were a constant reminder of what he lost, of what was taken from him. Yet you had this ability to make him feel warmth in his heart that was only there when he was with his family. It was a feeling that was hard to describe. It made him battle with himself and with his feelings towards you. When his guard was down, right before he would fall asleep, he would admit to himself that loving you was a beautiful gift and a curse.

#So this is just a little something I thought of.#Please bear with me with this strange idea.#bad batch x reader #bad batch imagine #the bad batch series #the bad batch #bad batch #crosshair x reader #imperial crosshair #clone trooper crosshair #crosshair imagine #Crosshair

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sunbeams-and-honey · 4 years

Note

what are your thoughts and words of advice on/for these placements?:

Virgo Sun and Mercury (7h), Pisces Moon and Ascendant (1h), Scorpio Venus (9h), Taurus Mars (3h), Libra Jupiter (8h), Pisces Uranus (1h), Aquarius Neptune (12h), Sagittarius Midheaven and Pluto (10h), Capricorn Chiron (11h), and Leo Lilith and Saturn (6h)

Hi darling! Thanks for the question and sorry about the wait. I don't mean to sound weird at all, but we have so many similar placements, it's insane. I'm wondering if you were born a few days after me...

Anyways, I've already gone over the following placements! Click on each one to find each respective post:

Virgo Mercury

Scorpio Venus

Leo Saturn

Pisces Uranus

Aquarius Neptune

Capricorn Chiron

Moving on, your Virgo Sun Pisces Moon combination makes you logical and idealistic, with a strong and vibrant imagination. You are very opportunistic, so you know how to make the best of whatever comes your way. You are definitely someone who can trust in both your intuition and your intellect. You provide very deep and important insight on a variety of matters, so people often turn to you for advice. You are quite logical as well as a person who can trust your hunches. You are quite a wise soul; you can be thrust into almost any situation and you already seem to know what to do. You can deal with concepts and meanings that are difficult for most people to understand.

Your Sun in the 7th means that being in a romantic relationships is very important to you. Being with someone in that sense brings out the best in you as you can mirror and compliment the other person(s). However, this can make you miserable and feel as though you are without purpose when single. You only know how to base your personality and behaviours off someone else rather than being your own person and finding out who you truly are. You would like a career where you work with the public, but this may prove a challenge as you are heavily influenced by what other people think of you.

Your Mercury is in the 7th too, which makes you someone who prefers to solve problems by communicating and talking through what went wrong. You want to get the point of view of whoever else is involved in the issue rather than solely focusing on yourself. You are quite sociable and much prefer to be out and about rather than being stuck at home (I dread to think how you're coping with the pandemic, good lord). You easily become bored when left to your own devices. Your relationships tend to be very healthy and successful because you know how to properly communicate with the other person. You quickly come to an understanding with the other and frequently share ideas with them.

You have your Moon in the 1st House, which means you are rather emotional and delicate, not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. You are constantly thinking of others and of how you can help them, regardless of how well you're doing in your own life. You are ready to jump up and lend a helping hand at a moment's notice. You aren't too worried about always having a plan to follow; simply going with the flow doesn't tend to stress you out much. You are honest about your feelings, not really one to hide them or be ashamed of them. Your heightened sensitivity can cause relationships issues as you have the tendency to overreact to certain situations and people.

Your Pisces Rising makes you a very optimistic person who also wants to share that positive attitude with the world. You may view things with rose-tinted glasses which can lead to you having expectations which are way too high. Just remember to stay realistic while keeping your optimism. You feel things very strongly but are rarely aggressive. You get along with pretty much anyone due to your friendly and relaxed manner. You assume that others always have good intentions, which may be a nice outlook to have on people, but can put you at risk of being manipulated or exploited by others.

Your Venus in the 9th means that you might be one to fall in love too easily, especially if its with someone who brings something new to your life. You are very appreciative and interested in others' cultures and want the people around you to be the same. You are very warm and adaptable, and love having freedom and independence in your relationships. You are definitely not clingy or needy. You will not hesitate to end a relationship if the other person is restricting you in some way. Your ideal partner needs to be open to adventure and new experiences. You don't tend to appreciate what you have now, always looking to the future and what it might hold for you. This can mean that precious moments slip right past you and you don't even realise it. Learn to love the present for what it is every now and then.

Your Mars is in Taurus, which makes you quite comfortable with who you are as a person. You prioritise the things in your life that make you happy, not too worried or focused on the things you do just because you have to. You're definitely here for a good time. Though that's not to say that you're reckless or anything like that. You also want a future that is stable and secure as well as fun and exciting. You're very driven to achieve this for yourself and are willing to work hard for it. You are a bit materialistic and can depend on your possessions too much at times. Comfort of the utmost importance for you.

You have your Mars in the 3rd House, which means you a pretty straightforward with your communication. There's no beating around the bush with you, that's for sure. You're not in the least bit afraid to talk about sensible and serious matters, and are also unafraid of expressing yourself how you see fit. You are always ready and willing to open other people's minds. You're very energetic, almost to the point where you have this kind of nervous energy about you. You find it very difficult to just slow down and rest. You have a strong faith in your own ideas and have enough ambition to want to pursue them. You always want to experience new things.

Your Libra Jupiter makes you have a deep desire to have everyone just get along. You're not really a huge fan of conflict. However, this desire can make you miserable as you feel guilty if you don't get along with someone. It's important that you understand that it's completely normal to not get along with some people and it doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong or that you just need to try harder. This placement can make you somewhat of a wandering spirit. You love to meet new and interesting people, partly just for the joy of it, partly because you're desperate to meet your soulmate.

Your Jupiter in the 8th means you are quite spiritual and sociable, and definitely someone who seeks pleasure from all areas of your life. Your intuition is on point and highly accurate, which makes you very good at determining the root of a problem. It's because of this that you may find that people often turn to you to help them deal with issues. You absolutely love solving complex mysteries, always happy to test your mind. You really do mean well but you can be overly emotional at times. You're also prone to manipulating others, whether you realise you're doing it or not.

Your Uranus is in the 1st, which makes you an eccentric at heart. You are someone who wants to support the people around you in becoming more confident in their identity and originality. People may consider you to be ahead of your time. You might find that a lot of unexpected things happen to you in your life; you'll definitely have a lot of stories to tell when you're older! You don't care much for rules, especially when they start to restrict who you are as a person and how you express that. That doesn't mean, however, that you don't want to help and care for the people around you.

You have your Neptune in the 12th House, which means that you're easily misunderstood by others. This is because while you do mean well, you don't tend to express your true nature. In reality, you are extremely kind and compassionate, you just struggle with putting this out there. You can be quite pessimistic, always focusing on what's wrong in your life and stressing over everyday issues. You should try to look after your own happiness and wellbeing more. You're very empathetic, but this can mean that others' negativity affects you deeply. Remember to put up boundaries if and when you need them; your true friends will understand.

Your Sagittarius Midheaven makes you someone who has a great love for life and everything it has to offer. You constantly want to learn more about anything and everything and then share that knowledge with others. People are attracted to you thanks to your friendly, sincere and energetic persona. You love chatting to people who are very different to you as you love learning about others' life experiences. You like to look at theories and then try to make sense of them, or to simply make up your own. You may often ponder the big questions of the universe and try to decide your point of view on it all. Despite this, your mind is always open to new ideas and you love to hear what other people think.

Your Pluto in Sagittarius means you are very spiritually attuned to the world; spirituality is just something that comes to you naturally. You can tap into your innate power with ease. You absolutely have the ability to help change the world for the better. You are constantly on the lookout for new experiences, always wanting to do things you can look back on and smile about. You are very free-spirited, not really one to be happy to just follow the rules as they are without good reason. You dream of a bright and happy future and you have to realise that you can absolutely make this happen.

Your Pluto is in the 10th, which makes you extremely focused and driven to achieve your goals. You are determined to overcome the close-minded views of the people around you. Your career is extremely important to you, always wanting to improve and advance within that area of your life. You are very good at devising goals and at planning your course of action. You assess and manage risks incredibly well and are confident in everything that you do. You research and search for knowledge that can improve your life in any way possible. You are quite the perfectionist, which is good because it pushes you to achieve your full potential, but can mean that you overwork yourself too often.

You have your Chiron in the 11th House, which means that the friends you normally attract want to help build you up as a person and want to see you do well in life. This means that you can absolutely rely on your friends to support you no matter what. They also provide you with close friendships that can run very deep. They may be a little insecure so make sure that you hype them up just like they would with you. Your friendships are mutually beneficial in that you help each other to become the best versions of yourselves that you can be.

Your Leo Lilith makes you extremely confident in yourself, almost to the point where you become self-centred and egotistical. It's important that you learn to dial this down without diminishing your self-worth. You might view yourself as someone who is generally better than most people, and regardless of whether or not this is true, you shouldn't let it influence your behaviour. Everyone deserves the same respect as you. It can be hard to talk sense into you sometimes as you tend to become very disillusioned at times. You constantly seek attention from others which can lead you to do some rather stupid things in order to be seen.

Your Lilith in the 6th means that you are somewhat of a workaholic, never knowing when to stop and just take a break. You are very composed so you're good at censoring yourself and stopping yourself from saying or doing something you know you'll regret. However this skill can also manifest as preventing yourself from expressing your true self, which can become very problematic. You love to record things that you've done, whether that's by keeping a diary or by filming everything at any opportunity. You may have the tendency to change your job the second you become bored, which can be good as it keeps you stimulated, but can be an issue as the boredom you experience might just be momentary.

Your Saturn is in the 6th, which makes you hardworking, disciplined, and mature enough to want to grow from your past mistakes. You're not someone to cover up or ignore your past failures as you recognise that they are always a good learning opportunity for you to improve yourself. You may tend to have issues related to your health, but of course I don't want to scare you or anything. Just remember to try and lead a healthy lifestyle where you can and you should be okay. You might face a few issues at work, whether that's something to do with your colleagues, environment or something else entirely. You do tend to have a bit of an attitude so just watch that and know when to dial it down.

Words Of Advice:

Don’t take everything for granted.

You need to learn how to put yourself in other people’s shoes every now and then.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Life is there to be enjoyed, so enjoy it!

Sometimes showing your emotions proves to others how genuine you are.

Identify where you need to change as a person in order to succeed.

Be more responsible when making promises.

Your value is not solely based on what others think of you.

Don't be afraid to try new things.

Do things that bring you satisfaction in a spiritual sense.

Learn to take more risks in order to creative more positive changes.

Make loving yourself a higher priority in your life.

Be careful when making financial investments and decisions.

You can express your opinions without offending people.

Don't force yourself to get on with every single person you meet.

Stick with your commitments.

Use your great taste to help others more often.

Prove to others that they can depend on you.

Try to differentiate your internal criticism from what other people actually think about you.

You can express your opinions without hurting others' feelings.

Keep close to those who you consider to be your family.

Learn how to communicate effectively with people who are different to you.

You can be self-confident without having a massive ego.

Think through why you're bored of something before doing something about it.

Remember to take breaks more often.

Thanks for the question darling and I hope this helped! Sending good vibes your way and have a wonderful rest of your day!

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tanenigiri · 2 years

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Review #7: Restart After Coming Back Home

Japanese title: リスタートはただいまのあとで (Restart wa Tadaima no Ato De)

Story and art: Cocomi

English publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment

Number of volumes: 2 (complete)

Two outsiders find solace in each other.

(This review contains story spoilers.)

One recurring character trope I’ve seen across quite a number of the manga I’m covering for this project is that of the “outsider.” While it’s commonly because of a character's sexual identity, it’s also been applied to those with disabilities and even those who are just seen to be flat out weird. I came to expect the outsider trope to be common going into a genre that deals with relationships “outside of the norm” as well, but it’s interesting how some stories work with that outsider trope and turn it into something a lot more layered.

The best example of that, in my opinion, is in Restart After Coming Back Home, which sees both of its main characters be treated as outsiders for very different reasons. Mitsuomi finds himself back in his rural hometown after getting fired from his job in Tokyo where he meets Yamato, which the neighbor of Mitsuomi’s family had adopted 10 years before the events of the story (with Mitsuomi already being in Tokyo by then). That already makes for a very interesting dynamic between the two characters, but it also sets up a great theme in the story about how these characters fit into the town.

Speaking of which, this is one of only two series I’m covering for this project that’s primarily set outside of a city, and it makes good use of this rural setting as a focal point for each of its main characters’ developments. I love it when a story treats the setting as its own character, and I definitely got that sense here, as a significant chunk of both Mitsuomi’s and Yamato’s development comes from their respective dynamics with the setting - and how it places both of them as outsiders.

For Mitsuomi, a lot of this is seen in his efforts to persuade his father to bring him into the family business. I was looking forward to digging into these kinds of plots when I read this story’s blurb as it’s a rarity among the manga I’ve read so far, and I found the execution pretty well-done. Mitsuomi’s father gives him a harsh reality check, but it also makes him rethink his approach and let his father hear what he wants. I also like how his father eventually agreeing to have him work in the business isn’t the end of it, as he’s still seen to be a harsh figure in Mitsuomi's life.

I also think it’s important to note that Mitsuomi is entering the story from a place of failure - he has not only been recently laid off, but he had already gone through multiple jobs by then. He feels ashamed for coming back home after failing at his previous job, and it’s not helped by how his family and the people around him talk about the situation. In a sense, he became an “outsider” to the city, which pushed him to come back to his hometown, only to receive the same treatment. His grumpy mood and pessimistic outlook is often played for laughs in this story, but it all comes from some genuine hurt he’s experiencing - Mitsuomi feels lost, and being an outsider means that he has almost no hopes of finding himself in his hometown.

It’s a slightly more complicated situation for Yamato, as there are a lot of layers behind his outsider quality. Even if he’s been in the town for 10 years, some of the residents still don’t fully trust him since he didn’t grow up with them, which Yamato has learned to accept but rightfully pisses Mitsuomi off. However, some of Yamato’s outsider views also come from himself due to his unfortunate past, and it’s seen to affect how he deals with other people. He flat out diverts Mitsuomi’s attempts to talk to him when it involves his past, and once Mitsuomi reveals his feelings, Yamato tells him that he’s not sure if he’s capable of returning them since he’s used to closing himself off from other people. He’s explicitly described as someone who puts a wall around himself that even his friends can’t break through.

Of course, Mitsuomi is the one who’s able to break through that wall, and it’s because of his genuine sympathy that Yamato is able to find the courage to open up about his past, and even get the resolve to answer some long-standing questions about his biological parents. He might not have gotten the resolution he wanted for those questions, but Yamato recognizes that he’s taken a big step in being more open about his feelings. And I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s right after this incident where he feels confident enough to tell Mitsuomi that he can reciprocate his feelings after all.

It’s one of the big things I appreciated about how this story handled its conflicts - they developed in parallel with the main characters’ relationship, and in a way, finding the resolution for their outsider issues gives them the right tools to properly talk about their feelings for one another. In the same way that Mitsuomi had a hard time properly communicating to his father about his actual motivations for the family business, Mitsuomi had to go through some awkward hoops and even dead-ends when trying to talk to Yamato about his feelings. That he’s only able to properly communicate both issues after internalizing them for quite some time - and after he admits to his recklessness in both instances - is definitely not a coincidence.

It’s a really sweet journey for both of them, and I think it’s why I find Restart After Coming Back Home such an enjoyable read. It’s a warm hug of a story, but there’s some genuine emotional growth underpinning it that makes that hug more meaningful. And it’s able to deliver all of that in a very tight and well-thought-out narrative.

Random thoughts I couldn’t fit elsewhere:

Harada, Yamato’s high school friend and a regular of the town, fits into my favorite type of minor character in the genre - the one who you’re led to believe is gonna be trouble for the leads, but is actually incredibly supportive of them. Sure, he acts with a bit of hostility against Mitsuomi, but I’d like to believe it comes from a place of worry for Yamato, both in terms of looking out for his high school friend but also because Harada himself doesn’t know much about Yamato, and he feels that he’s finally found someone who’d help his friend break out of his shell. How he’s portrayed in the end as one of the few people in town who’s openly accepting of Mitsuomi and Yamato’s relationship is really sweet, and I’ll definitely talk about him more in my review for the sequel.

I also noticed how the two times Mitsuomi and Yamato openly admit their feelings to the other both happen when they aren’t in the town. I want to say that this is supposed to connect with how, in the second bonus chapter, it’s mentioned that the town has started spreading rumors about both of them since they’re both single men in their late 20s who spend all their time together. I don’t think I’ve fully unpacked what’s going on here, but I’d like to believe it goes back to what I say above about the story’s setting being its own character.

It’s a minor point, but I find it funny how Kumai-Jiichan - Yamato’s adoptive father and Mitsuomi's neighbor - reads both Yamato and Mitsuomi like an open book. I’m 100% sure that he’s the first one to figure out what’s going on between them - maybe second after Harada - and I kinda wish we got a snippet of what he thought about it in the bonus chapter. In any case, he really takes on the “wise old man” role here, and he manages to find the right thing to say for the main leads - but not to give them the answer, but to put them in the right path to discover the answer themselves.

Thanks for reading! Restart After Coming Back Home was one of the first manga I read, so rereading it for this project was a treat, as I really do enjoy its vibe. I have a review lined up for its sequel later in the month, and I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into that volume again.

#Restart After Coming Back Home #Restart wa Tadaima no Ato De #Cocomi #Kozuka Mitsuomi #Kumai Yamato #BL manga #manga review #manga

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real-fanta-sea · 3 years

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Prompt for the kiss no. 71

Prompt: "Not to be cringe or anything, but I really like the idea of the kiss 71 (height difference kisses where one person has to bend down, and the other is on their tippy-toes)...where Trevor is his true height. i.e. Ogg's height and Michael has to stand on his tiptoes to snog him."

I'm sorry, anon, but I saved the post as a draft and it just vanished into thin connection. So, I have to answer this way.

This work is more of a spur of the moment thing, but I kinda like the way it turned out, being it just my emotions spilt onto paper. If you'd like, you can read it on AO3 here, or under read more. I hope you'll like it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :)

tw: kissing, child abuse memories

It's been three weeks already.

An unhealthy greenish glow of flickering light tubes and the icy breath of an industrial refrigerator made him shiver as Michael, gliding on the orbit touching stars in his mind, put yet another box of ready-made microwave hamburgers into his shopping cart. If he were not a regular in this particular shop, he would have got lost. It resembled an anthill with seemingly infinite shelves and aisles, bursting with the merchandise, even though the depressed lights covered everything in the same shade of decay green. The same life outlook was shared with most of the shadows roaming around whose name tags qualified them as proud employees of Flormart.

It's been three weeks, and he still stuck around, hanging on his every word.

Michael pushed his cart further from frozen goods, and the pictures swirling and smearing all around transitioned from photoshopped vegetables to flashy fireworks of chips and other guilty pleasures he planned on indulging in later on. Some people would find the height of the shelves menacing, but to Michael, it was just a memory that pulled him from the orbit back to earth and placed him in the middle of a football pitch. The smell of sweat building up underneath his helmet. The crunch of the crisp lawn under his feet. The spotlight following him whenever he scored. Cheering faceless crowds in time with busty faceless girls' pompoms. But most of all, he felt happy again - needed, cherished, innocent, and with a bright future awaiting his embrace. But then, just as he crossed from the snacks aisle to the alcohol quarter, the football stadium lights flickered and turned bright red. All the faceless girls turned around, their mouths gaping as if someone dislocated their jaws, and the cheering turned into a hellish cry of pain. Where their eyes were supposed to be, he saw a flair, screwing itself deeper into their skull, and a stream of scarlet goo drip down on their immaculate white dresses.

It's been three weeks, and somehow, his puppy-like behaviour didn't irk him yet. Quite the opposite if he were honest with himself - he felt strangely peaceful in his company.

Michael gulped in a desperate attempt to wash down the horror that invited itself under cover of a happy memory. Shaking his head only did so much and dispersed the spectators and cheerleaders alike, in the same way shaking a snowy paperweight would. Michael's chest constricted as he felt unable to breathe in properly, people splatting and exploding upon impact all around him in his mind. Suddenly, he felt a pull under both of his shoulders and found himself flying towards the pitch-black sky, where instead of one moon, two shone down on him. As he flew closer, they shrunk into two amber irises - and Michael immediately knew who pulled him out of the memory. As he crashed into a mass of pink candy cotton clouds, his vision blurred just to clear up when he felt a solid surface under his feet and someones hot hands in his. Somehow, he found himself looking at the tips of abused old pair of sneakers he was wearing, the same pair Michael knew he wore that faithful day at the airstrip. A moment later, a couple of dark blue, equally run-down ones stepped into his field of vision. He slowly let his sight slide up on crumpled jeans, the hem of a military jacket, a pair of dog tags hanging around a slender neck, a sharp jaw, a pair of full dark lips and finally, to the pair of amber eyes, eyes that radiated worry, care and, at the same time, something he could only read as love and utmost devotion.

It's been three weeks since the incident, and anytime he woke up from a nightmare that played in his mind over and over again, he was there to soothe him; he was there waiting for Michael's tears to dampen his naked shoulder. He didn't bitch about it and didn't tell a soul in the morning.

Michael let out a shaky breath. Stopping his feet from casually continuing in their stroll proved harder than he thought, and he leaned on the shopping cart handle, running fingers through his hair. He couldn't decide what mortified him more - the creativity his brain proved to possess when playing out the horrible things he has witnessed in just a few years of his fresh adulthood, or the way it put his acquaintance on some fucking pedestal and presented him as the alpha and omega of his thoughts and desires.

"Hey Michael, are you ok?"

Speaking of the devil... "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I just.." Michael breathed in again and turned towards the source of the voice, trying to display a small smile by twitching his tired lips "I need a smoke, that's all."

It's been three weeks, and he got that tingling feeling in his guts already. He could barely tolerate touch or prolonged eye contact without getting goosebumps and that ticklish feeling solidifying and slicing right into his groin. Michael wanted to believe it was just his weird head showing gratitude for saving his ass, but anytime he found himself in the company of that amber-eyed twink, the longing grew worse.

"Hey, how about a bottle of something to wash the cig down?" said the guy and his oversized jeans jacket hanging from his shoulders cringed into weird shapes as he took one of his hands out of his pocket and pointed his thumb towards the shelves. He looked so adorably dishevelled in all jeans, and with his silky hair framing his hopeful face, Michael couldn't have said no to anything he would suggest. Instead of mustering the strength to say no, Michael threw another smile towards his companion and turned his back to him to choose the dream crusher he wanted to numb them with before they went to bed.

To someone who grew up in a functional family, all the labels and bottle shapes would seem the same. To Michael, however, to choose the right brand and size meant the same as selecting the bananas or avocados of the proper ripeness would for them. It was a work of art; he learned so much in the ten years of living with his stepfather. While scrutinizing the shelves, index finger and thumb scrubbing on the sides of his chin absent-mindedly, he remembered how they would come to the similar shop together, he and his mother's second husband, and how he slipped behind the shelves. At the same time, Frank chatted with the clerk, and he stuffed his lunch box with a large flat bottle of Chief's Heritage Fire Water whiskey. He had to carefully close it to avoid disturbing the aluminium foil that served as a guard from the primitive electronic protection device they had to pass through on their way out. Michael would then tuck his stepfather's sleeve, babble some cute nonsense to get candy from the unsuspicious clerk, and after they paid for the two packs of cigarettes and a beer, they would leave. Frank would let him chug on whiskey then, and if he were in an exceptionally good mood, he would let him sleep through the night without beating the shit out of him.

Finally, spotting the whiskey he knew so well on one of the top shelves, Michael attempted to grasp it but only managed to graze his fingertips against the bottom of one of the bottles that rocked gently upon touch but otherwise didn't move an inch. "Fuck", he uttered under his breath, cracked his neck and stretched onto the tips of his toes, steadying himself by holding onto one of the lower shelves. But, again, he could only touch the bottle but not get a good hold of it. He even contemplated climbing the shelves to get it, as if the shame of his disappointing height haven't already painted his cheeks bright red and didn't make him want to leave the shop right away. Just as he braced himself for the climb, eyes fixed on that damn bottle, a gentle touch of someone's hand squeezing his shoulder made him turn around. It was Trevor's hand, and even though Michael still had to look up to meet his eyes, the small sympathetic smile put him in ease in a blink of an eye.

"Chief's, huh? Good choice, Mike!" the praise in his voice made Michael shiver, and he desperately tried to ignore the warmth he was receiving through the palm still steady on his shoulder and which upset his heart into beating twice as fast as ever before. "My old man used to drink this. It tastes like cat piss but knocks you out good for the buck." Trevor's grin felt like a warm touch sunrise after countless years of freezing darkness. Michael couldn't help but soak in the warmth, allowing himself to lose himself in the feeling completely. "Let me get it for you, eh?" he heard Trevor say from somewhere near, and before he could object, most of the light was obstructed by a jeans-clad chest.

It was then when Michael closed his eyes and tried to get hold of the situation. Trevor, the guy he only knew for three weeks, pushing Michael's back onto the shelves as he leaned for the bottle but also pushing his chest almost to Michael's. If it weren't for a couple of inches of hot air and fabric between them, their bodies would brush against each other. Michael could only gulp when he opened his eyes again, and his mind provided him with the maddening picture of Trevor's naked lean chest, peppered with dark brown hair as if puberty marked its way down towards his groin with it. Michael's head was spinning when he looked up to see Trevor still busy fetching the bottle. Michael's racing imagination saw him grabbing the guy's head, crashing lips with his and dissolving into what he thought would be the best kiss he would ever receive. Michael gulped again. He had to have him.

He was anxious about the way it was too easy to raise both his hands and grab fists full of other man's jacket as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Michael didn't fight it when he felt his muscles pull on the fabric and only turned his gaze up to where he expected Trevor's eyes to look once he would feel the movement of his clothes. Michael didn't have to wait for it at all, actually; the puzzled expression was already waiting for him to drink it up. However, he couldn't maintain the contact for too long as his eyes focused on something completely different; the dark lips, deliciously parted in the unspoken question. The distance between his own and them unnerved him, and in the sparking silence, Michael again propped himself onto the tips of his toes, pressed harder on the fabric to steady himself and, closing eyes, pressed his lips to Trevor's.

For a delicious moment, the world fell apart as if some invisible force made the dimensions crash down. The trembling soft firmness against his lips sent shivers down his spine with each cautious move. Whenever Michael recalled the moment years later, he could always sense the faint smell of cigarettes, petrol and sun mixing between their bodies and the way the ground shook and cried under his feet when he felt Trevor's palms slide down his sides and pull him closer, effectively sweeping him off his feet.

Trevor seemed to be relishing at the moment as much as Michael was, but when he felt solid ground under his feet again, and the pair of arms letting go of him, Michael reluctantly broke the kiss with a coquettish wet pop and tried to catch his lost breath. Then, leaning against the shelves again, he only dared to peek up when his cheeks stopped burning from what felt like a mixture of acid and a marathon run. Trevor's face might as well have been a mirror, for he looked down on Michael with eyes wide, face red and lips wet and trembling as if he didn't get a grasp of reality yet. Michael couldn't help but let the anxiety scream right to his face in the voice of his stepfather - and there were thousands of things he might have ruined then and there, just because he didn't fight his stupid queer side, because he let himself kiss another man, because by the twisted chain of mistakes he fell from what could have been a good life to longing after a rabid smuggler in the middle of a liquor aisle.

Just as he was about to duck under Trevor's arm and run away from the voice and feelings of shame it brought about, he was stopped by a gentle, almost shy touch of a hot palm on his cheek. The slender fingers brushed against his face in such a delicate way Michael's heart skipped a beat, and closing his eyes, he leaned into the touch, seeking the soothing silence it brought with the warmth. The hand fit his cheek like a glove, Michael mused as he relaxed into slow movements of fingertips on his temples. Right there, at that moment, everything felt so right, so natural. Why has he deprived himself of the delicious heat for three weeks when somewhere deep inside, where the beating of his heart always gave away the truth, he knew he needed it from the start - well, Michael didn't know. Instead, he slid his arms around Trevor's waist and buried his face into his chest.

"Michael?"

The vibrating echo of his name, spoken in such a husky yet caring way, made Michael squeeze his arms around Trevor even tighter. He sought the last bits and pieces of it before he dared to speak up himself, afraid of spoiling the delicious contentment of the moment.

"Let's get out of here."

A gentle kiss on top of his head and long arms lacing his shoulders later, Michael found himself too far from Trevor for comfort. But even with the newly gained distance between them, a quick glance sideways has provided him with a sight of a beaming smile and a fire deep inside Trevor's eyes that made his own lips twitch into a happy upwards bow. As they rolled into the checkout, Michael has noticed the world has changed as well. The depressing shade of green has somehow transitioned into a welcoming warm white; the shadows that they passed by on their way in suddenly bloomed into happy faces. The various packings of goods exploded in all the colours of the rainbow. As Michael and Trevor emerged into the darkness of the parking lot, ready to relive their revelation in thousands of ways, Michael has felt at peace with himself for the first time in forever. The days of the inner night were over.

#michael de santa #trevor philips #trikey #kissing prompts #gta v fic #real_fanta_sea.txt

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japes-the-clown · 3 years

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THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE: AN INVERSION ON “COMING OF AGE” FILMS AND A CRITICISM OF ADULTHOOD

Hi hello hey it’s me Jericho Jay “Japes” Marshall out here with a pretentious love letter to the filmmaking on display in nickelodeons The Spongebob Movie. Yes, I know it’s a kids movie. Yes, I know it’s not that deep. But I’m majoring in english, and deeply depressed, so I need to get this OUT and onto a PAGE.

I have watched this film many times over my lifetime, a few when i was just a kid, then in my early teens, even when i turned eighteen, and now, a month before i turn 20. Every time, I grow a new appreciation for the nuances that this movie brings to the table, and on my most recent watch my own deliverance from childhood makes me relate to the core themes the hardest I ever have. The Spongebob Movie isn’t just a movie about childhood, but a movie about adulthood.

Today, I’m going to make clear exactly how The Spongebob Squarepants Movie criticizes our understanding of adulthood and how society treats the neurodivergent, while effectively turning the “Coming of Age” genre on its head, within its 87 minute runtime.

START: CONSISTENT CHARACTERIZATION

One thing a lot of films (ESPECIALLY kids films) fail to nail is consistently showing aspects of a character throughout the runtime, enough that changes to a character feel impactful and justified instead of rushed and stifled. The best examples of movies that fail to do this are often the marvel movies that people tend to not remember- the first two thor movies, the avengers age of ultron, etc. In these movies, characters certainly have traits, but their personalities and motives can be very weak and make dramatic changes feel A LOT less dramatic. This can be seen in age of ultron, when quicksilver gave his own life to save someone else, which felt like nothing because he wasn't well developed. He wasn't particularly endearing, nor did him sacrificing his life contradict a part of his character. It felt very much like the writers trying to say "Look, this character which was once opposing the avengers, is now dying for one. Please cry." No hate to the writers of Age of Ultron, but it proves itself often to be an unmemorable part of the catalogue.

In the Spongebob Movie, the characterization is ON. POINT. After the introduction, with the pirates rushing in to watch spongebob, we get so much information regarding spongebob as a character.

Pictured: Spongebob holding a piece of cheese like an operator

The first scene of the plot is a dream sequence a large crowded scene at the Krusty Krab, with a customer not receiving cheese on his patty, and it being positioned in the same way as a bomb being located. In the dream, everyone is panicked, and Mr. Krabs is visibly distressed, almost like a damsel. Spongebob comes in, announcing his position as manager, much to the relief of Krabs. He goes in, and puts cheese on the burger (again, very akin to a bomb defusal scene), bringing the perturbed customer out safe and sound. Everyone lifts spongebob up as a hero, which is interrupted by his boat alarm.

This scene is JAM PACKED with stuff that both introduces the character to new watchers and introduces the crux of his arc to everyone else. Spongebob of course is very fond of the Krusty Krab, and wants to be the manager- he wants people to see him as cool, and as a responsible adult. He wants to be the sort of person that can be trusted with big responsibilities. And we also see, most importantly, that he is extremely childish through his faximile of what it meant to be adult. Everything is scaled up; it's a very silly situation, which well suits both the joke and his character as an inexperienced kid. This is one of the most direct ways to convey someone's character, because a dream can be interpreted as a direct port into a character's desires. This being the first introduction to the character in the movie sets the tone for EVERY following situation.

In the next few scenes you see Spongebob's real life, which involves his lengthy morning routine; his life is sort of whimsical, and so too is his routine. He showers by shoving a hose into himself till he bursts with water, he uses toothpaste to clean his eyes but not his teeth, and he puts on pants which he must fold to make. Again, all pretty solid jokes, but also very telling about his outlook. He is funny, weird, and childish, which is juxtaposed by the scene where he's- he's uh- showering with squidward. Squidward is an example of the "adult" that spongebob isn't. This has always been the case, but here his normal routine makes it very clear that other people in this world aren't like spongebob. They shower normally, they brush their teeth, they put their clothes on like normal. Spongebob's world is one of wonder and without responsibility, which makes it questionable as to whether he could handle one.

Pictured: Spongebob's room, adorned with childhood imagery

Pictured: Spongebob celebrating his position as a manager, despite Krabs saying that it was squidward who got it

Even his room in this scene screams "kid". He has toys strewn about, glow in the dark stars, and pictures of superheroes on the wall. He even says "Sorry about this calendar" as he rips a page, personifying inanimate objects as a kid would. The movie is telling you, "THIS CHARACTER IS A KID", but in a way that's masked because it's also just a set up for jokes. It's done so well, in my opinion, that it would go over your head because from your perspective you would be laughing along as spongebob did his wacky antics.

On top of that, his excitement for his assured managerial position at the Krusty Krab 2 continues to be bolstered. He marked it off with a cute drawing on his calendar, for those familiar he changes his normal "I'm ready" chant to "I'm ready- promotion-", and he's even already set up a party to celebrate at his favorite chain, Goofy Goobers, a child's entertainment restaurant similar to chucky cheese, albeit replacing pizza for ice cream. He hasn't just gotten excited, but has this childish anticipation for something which isn't even assured.

Spongebob arrives at the opening of the Krusty Krab 2, where he is so excited he can't contain his glee. He breaks the silence and makes members of the crowd uncomfortable, reinforcing again that spongebob is a standout in a world of adults, and a kid who doesn't understand certain social norms, which society looks down upon. When Krabs reveals that Squidward got the managerial position, Spongebob hyped himself so much that he starts celebrating, not even noticing that he wasn't picked. He gets on stage, and begins to give a speech, to which Krabs interrupts.

The next part I think best illustrates Spongebob's clear ignorance to society: Krabs attempts to subtly tell spongebob that he isn't getting the job, but spongebob repeats everything he says into the microphone. Again, fantastic joke, grade A, but the amount this shows how invested spongebob was. He already saw himself as an adult, someone who everyone would look up to as a manager- he could take the responsibility, and isn't aware of everyone likely cringing in the audience. This is the natural step for him in his mind, especially because of his exemplary work which had been previously celebrated through employee of the month awards. This was not an option for him. There wasn't a world in his mind where he would be outclassed by squidward.

Krabs has to break to him that he lacks responsibility, and that his childishness makes it difficult for Krabs to give him such a job. This might seem harsh, but I think the intro again shows how Spongebob saw the job; he didn't understand what it would be like, fantasizing another level in the menial work structure to be an amazing adventure of a job. People in the crowd reaffirm that in the eyes of society, spongebob is just a kid, a goofball. In my eyes, this is a story not just of childhood, but of neurodivergence. Spongebob isn't normal, and is blocked by society for his ignorance of social norms and sunny disposition. He finds things fun that other people can not, and he places values in completely different things. So he is blocked from the meaningful recognition he desired, despite the obvious evidence of his commitment.

I think this is a mighty interesting dichotomy!!! Simultaneously, spongebob's understanding of the world truly is warped, often resulting in a lack of consideration for others as well as harm for himself when things don't go his way, AND he is a good worker which puts in MANY hours of work without so much of a complaint. This is COMPLEX. You have to ask yourself, as a viewer, "would I give spongebob the job?" The answer can be different and can be REASONED.

And that's JUST spongebob! There are other characters with characterization that mixes into the themes of the movie very well, but I'm going to bring up any related points in future sections.

Okay, Okay. So now you're saying "WOW OKAY GREAT so why does any of this matter?" I'm so glad you asked. VERY glad.

2: THE BREAKING OF A YOUNG MAN'S SPIRIT

THIS is the point of the movie. The obstacle in this movie truly isn't adulthood, but instead self doubt. Spongebob's whole world is turned upside down by Krab's rejection of his basic personality. Spongebob asks himself: is it REALLY okay to be who I am? Am I an adult? Is the world fair? One of the most shocking scenes in the movie is blended so well in tone with the rest that you don't really notice; spongebob eating ice cream to cope with his disappointment, akin to that of adults drinking alcohol, and appearing to be visually "drunk" and washed up. This is BRILLIANT, and a recurring theme, where the true line between adult and childhood becomes blurry and impossible to see. Spongebob, the representation of a kid, gets hungover, spiteful, and angry about the injustice of his situation. This is often how adults act in the fact of adversity, but what's funny is that this too is how a kid would act; getting angry and overindulging, feeling entitled and acting socially immature when he didn't get what he wanted. He walks in to the Krusty Krab literally just to shit talk Krabs. And it doesn't stop there.

Pictured: Plankton finding "Plan Z" and looking at it like a centerfold in a playboy magazine

Almost every character in this movie juxtaposes another, again smearing the line of what it means to be an adult. For example, Spongebob and Plankton are polar opposites; plankton is cold and vengeful, angry at the world around him, and spongebob is a happy person who tends not to take things personally, a friend to all. In planktons first appearances in the movie, he is portrayed with clear adult themes, mocking spongebob, making pinup jokes about plan z, and living in a fairly dark and grey space. But, as the story moves along, we see many similarities; both spongebob and plankton are fairly one track minded, and when spongebob's perception is broken he himself gets a little vengeful. When eugene is put in danger over this, though, we do see that he places the lives of others over his own wants. And, even at the end of the movie, we see their similarities. Plankton reuses the "Sorry Calendar" joke that spongebob used at the start of the movie, drawing another line of what it means to be an adult. Is it childish of plankton to say that? Is the inherent irony he has impactful here? His want for something that isn't his, and his disregard for others in pursuing it feels just like how a younger child may steal the toy of another, without understanding what it means to share.

Pictured: Neptune flipping his shit at his lost crown

Then, there's the character of Neptune. Neptune is a big man baby. He rules the entire land, commands the most respect, and is considered the most powerful person under the sea, and yet, we see that he gets overprotective of his property, prepared to execute anyone who even annoys him. Throughout the film, he's obsessed with chasing an image of youth, as he is bald, and ignores the suffering of the people on bikini bottom to make sure no one sees his bald head. He throws what's equivalent to a tantrum when he finds his crown is missing, and believes a very crude note written by plankton saying that it was eugene who stole it. His character is an "acceptable" child because he's in a position of power, where spongebob is an "unacceptable" child as he is just a working class member of society. And the funniest part is, that he mocks spongebob for wanting to go for the crown, when even he, the strongest person in bikini bottom, refuses to go out of fear.

We see that these "bastions" of adulthood, plankton and neptune, are the ones who are responsible for missteps of society; we're ALL children in the long run, but the strict enforcement of a perceived true adulthood creates a space where they can act immaturely yet those under them/around them cannot. Dennis makes this case even more, as the only thing he does in this movie is hurt others. There's only one thing that seems to truly denote adulthood, and it's cruelty.

Even squidward, the adult that is supposed to be more responsible that spongebob, refuses to go on the quest to retrieve the crown, as he acts mostly in self interest, even later claiming to only care that plankton was stealing the secret formula as it was hurting his own paycheck.

Spongebob is the only one willing to go, willing to defend the man who wronged him, willing to value life over his own interests. He is both child and adult, just as the adults are too children.

As he moves through the plot of this film, he becomes less confident in his disposition, with his naivete causing moments like him and patrick crossing the state line and immediately getting carjacked, or them being put into an uncomfortable situation by all the bubbles they blew when they tried to get their car back. His bright personality is questioned constantly: Only five days to shell city? BY CAR. This is man's country. But weren't we the double bubble blowing babies?

Pictured: Spongebob caught trying to take back the key to the patty wagon when patrick fails to distract everyone

This is made more obvious to him as patrick remains oblivious throughout; patrick is a mirror for him, that acts as a childhood constant, that makes it clearer for him every day the draws of his childishness. There's the moment in the club where patrick's distraction was poorly thought out, and only because he said he wanted to do it adamantly, there's the moment where patrick challenged neptune on how many days they would have to do it, which served no purpose but for his own fun, there's the moment patrick points out the free ice cream trap- he is the unemployed uncritical lens that spongebob is afraid he is.

So everything's fucked, and anyone who is childish is bad i guess!!!

But that isn't so,

3: The illusion of manhood

So we've talked about spongebob's characterization as a naive child, how this is impactful in his transformation into someone who is anxious about that aspect of his personality, and how the society around him is hypocritical in it's own immaturity. But where does this all come together?

Pictured: Planktons dystopian world, which Mindy shows Spongebob and Patrick

It's at spongebob and patricks "conversion to manhood". At his lowest point, spongebob becomes a squidward- he becomes critical of his AND patricks interests, and regards them as childish, deciding that this means that they can't make it to shell city, as it requires them to be adults. When mindy shows them the dire situation back home, she hopes that spongebob's sunny personality and care for others would shine through, but instead he turns to what society has been telling him; it's impossible. He can't do it, he's just a little kid, and there is no point to any of this as he'll fail regardless.

Thinking about it like this, it truly is one of the darkest points in the entire series; spongebob just openly admitted that there was nothing he could do, that all of his friends were goners because he was effectively useless.

Mindy comes up with an idea; she'll trick spongebob and patrick into believing they're men; she convinces them of mermaid magic (their innocence allowing them to believe) and uses kelp to make them think they've matured into adults. Notice that physical modifiers being the only key to this "fake adulthood". With this, they jump off a cliff because they believe that with adulthood, they are invincible.

This is really telling about how the society they're in thinks of being an adult, and relays that to children. There's another level, a distinct separation between spongebob and adulthood, which seemed like the difference between a squire and a knight- being an adult means that you aren't weak anymore (as though he was weak in the first place), and thus you can do things you never thought before. Is it truly healthy that this is how a society tells kids that adulthood is like, for them to enter the world and feel a truly awful financial and literal hellscape waiting for them? uh, you can, you can decide that for yourself i think.

Nonetheless, they survive the fall, and conclude that they really are invincible, able to power through a ravine with their happy go lucky attitude, eventually befriending the monsters which were once trying to kill them. They weren't acting like adults, but the labels themselves made it possible for them to soldier on with the childlike disposition they had. I find that to be powerful. If we were able to be more hopeful as adults, and power through the worst things brightly, could we do great things? Idk but these depression meds sure do taste good nom nom

After crossing the ravine, spongebob and patrick meet dennis, and have their worldview crushed as it's revealed that they are actually still kids. Dennis being the "alpha male" that he is, is characterized by violence and a lack of morality. The pair are saved by a giant boot, which is the first of two humans in this movie. Spongebob and patrick are both taken by the man in the diver suit, as we fade to black, marking the end of their illusion of adulthood.

4: Back from the Edge (of death)

Spongebob and Patrick awaken in an antique shop, realizing that they were surrounded by fish that had been killed specifically for sale as tacky antiques. They are lifted out of their fishbowl, and put under a heatlamp, as their fate is sealed to become a member among those dead fish. In spongebob's final moments, he mourns his inability to be an adult, as well as to reach shell city; but before they both die, patrick points out that they truly did reach shell city, as the crown was within their reach.

This. This is a phenomenal scene. Why? Because of what it means for spongebob's arc.

Pictured: Spongebob and Patrick on their deathbeds, finding happiness

He sees the crown, and realizes that, unequivocally, that even if he didn't bring the crown back, he made it to shell city. Every person he met told him that he couldn't even do that. and he did it. He is a kid, yes, but he's a kid who went where not even NEPTUNE dared go. Everything people said about him, about how him being a kid stopped him from success, was suddenly shattered. He has been asking himself if it's okay that he is a kid, and he saw, unambiguously, that it is. He is allowed to be happy. He can enjoy things that other people don't. He can be naive. He can be himself, no matter what anyone says. And so can you. Great things can be done by people who are "childish", who are "naive", who are kind without expecting a return, all of it. YOU are okay. Your stims are okay, your comfort series are okay, your interest in tropes are okay, YOU'RE OKAY!!!!

with that, spongebob and patrick are dehydrated on the table, and ostensibly die, the kids that they are, shedding one final tear each, forming a heart beneath them.

...

Miraculously, the tear electrocutes that lamp at it's socket, causing smoke to rise and set off the sprinklers, rehydrating the pair, and bringing them back to life. The "Man in the Suit" attempts to capture them, seeing them about to lift Neptune's crown, but the rest of the dehydrated fish come back to life- squirting him with his own glue and beating him to the ground, as spongebob and patrick run out with the crown. David Hasselhoff offers them a ride back to Bikini Bottom, and the pair begin their ride back.

5: The confrontation of Adulthood and Childhood

Pictured: Dennis looking all lame and shit

As spongebob and patrick are being swam back to bikini bottom, the boot under which dennis was crushed rockets to Hasselhoff, spitting him back out to finish the job. The appearance of Dennis, IN MY OPINION, makes him look rather goofy, with his broken glasses making him look more like a office worker than a badass assassin as he attempts to kill spongebob and patrick. Spongebob, in trying to reason with him, is able to ruin his eyes with bubbles, and then survives as dennis gets hit by a raised platform which spongebob and patrick are too low to be hit by.

Having defeated one representation of adulthood, spongebob and patrick are shot down by HasselHoffs MASSIVE MAN TITS with the crown in order to prevent Krab's fate, blocking Neptune's lazer just in time as they crash in.

All seems to be well, but plankton uses one of his mind control helmets (which we'll be getting into later) to enslave even Neptune, putting mindy, spongebob, patrick, and Krabs against the wall.

In another stark moment of characterization, Spongebob tells patrick that "Plankton Cheated", which prompts plankton to tell spongebob that the situation wasn't a kiddy game, and that it was the real world. This sort of distinctions in their ethos tell you how spongebob interacts with justice; he believes in "playing fair", while plankton is bitter and believes in getting what he wants.

Finally, the apex to our plot, is a musical number. Spongebob begins to make a long-winded speech, where he takes ownership of every label he was called as he stood on the stage at the beginning, the similarity between the two events being clear (holding a microphone at an inappropriate time, making a speech as he blocks out input from an adult trying to talk him down). Spongebob then busts out into the film's rendition of Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock", "I'm a Goofy Goober". This results in spongebob reversing plankton's whole plot with "the power of rock and roll". Plankton is made powerless, and thrown into a little padded cell.

The final scene in the movie has Mr. Krabs freed from his imprisonment in ice, and spongebob is offered squidwards position as manager of the second Krusty Krab. He seems hesitant, and squidward offers an insightful analysis of what spongebob might be feeling (the typical analysis of a coming of age movie, where the protagonist finds out that what they wanted all along is not what they wanted, but it was what was inside all along). Spongebob refutes that squidwards fly was just down, and GLADLY accepts the job.

AND THAT'S THE MOVIE

6: AN INVERSION ON THE COMING OF AGE GENRE

A coming of age story tends to be one which is focus on the growth of a character from childhood to adulthood, asking questions about what it means to be an adult. A character reaches for their perceived adulthood, and realizes what it means to ACTUALLY be an adult, typically juxtaposing what people think (drugs, parties, sex) versus what the movie postures as the correct adulthood (responsibility). In this, I think that the spongebob movie directly criticizes the position of what "an adult" is, in the sense of how someone acts.

Like we discussed in part 2, every adult character in this movie tends to be very childish in themselves, unable to see through simple ruses, and often very possessive of personal property. I don't think we actually see a child in this movie as a speaker at any point, only really as background characters (in goofy goobers to solidify spongebob as childish, and I believe in the chum bucket as they're lead to an unsafe place by their parents, who are supposed to be responsible). Thus, what is mostly examined is how adulthood and childhood is a very thin line. Squidward, for example, going directly to plankton to accuse him of stealing the formula, instead of taking it to the top immediately, which would have ended this whole thing fairly quickly; that was rather silly, and was the fruit of his need to assert himself as an adult.

Spongebob goes through this movie FIRST not caring much about whether or not he was an adult, and it is only after the social pressure from adults does he start to chase it. He then chases his perceived image of an adult, going on an adventure, and is crushed by the fact that he isn't an adult. Instead of finding what an adult is, he instead becomes comfortable with his existence as a child, finding himself at the end of the movie able to comfortably chase after an ideal again, where in a normal movie he would humbly reject the job he was offered.

This is, truly, what we should all take from this film. Spongebob realizes that people who aren't necessarily socially adjusted or acceptable can do great things, regardless of what the people around them say, especially because the people around them are liable to throw tantrums and be actively harmful to society. He is allowed to find comfort in childish things, and to be naive, because the world needs more people willing to help others. It's a scathing criticism on the imposed adulthood that exists in a lot of coming of age films, which begs us to drop fun in the interest of doing the right thing, as though those two ideas are contradictory.

BONUS: EXTRA STUFF THAT I LIKED

The goofy goober song became really good storytelling, at first marking childishness, then marking a level of discomfort and judgement in the club, then marking spongebob recognizing that his happiness came from what he liked and not some vague idea of adulthood, and finally marking his full acceptance of his childishness, taking the form of rock, the music of rebellion. It's not as subtle as leitmotifs, but it works really well in how the same song can give very different feelings throughout, and inform how we interact with a story.

There are a lot more examples of adults being pressured into childishness, with the connected twins who liked goofy goober at the club, who were beaten senseless for absolutely no reason, which highlights the way that the society hurts people that, by all means, are just as much adults as anyone else. There's of course Plankton's helmets which created a society of people who simply slaved away with nothing to say, taking life as it came and listening to authority.

On top of that, this movie is PRETTY ANTICAPITALIST AND ANTIMONARCHY, despite those things being allowed to continue to exist at the end- monarchy is seen misusing power constantly and often for unfounded reasons, and Spongebob's diligence at work is rejected by a penny pinching Krabs, who cares only about money. Like, THE KRUSTY KRABS ARE RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER? THAT IS SOME MONTY PYTHON ASS SHIT. This year is the first year i laughed at that joke, because it's really some "capitalists are fucking dumb as shit" humor that slipped over my head when i was a kid. The villain literally being defeated by Rock and Roll, which was sung with a message against the oppression of differences in people? Yeah, I think the spongebob movie hated rich mother fuckers.

END: UH YEAH THAT'S WHAT IT IS

So yeah. The movie is good I think. There's a lot more i could go into, but I've been writing this post for hours and at this point i haven't even read it so...

I recommend going back and giving this film a rewatch!!! Pay attention to all the moments where adults act like children/kids act like adults, because it'll make ur brain pop like a zit. Anyways that's me, I'm Jericho Jay "Japes" Marshall, and I HATE facism.

#spongebob #spongebon squarepants #analysis #film #good movie #marvel #avengers age of ultron #funny

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