#like a movie protagonist but it's the sad part of the movie

[call-me-strega]

Once again feeling the urge to dramatically belt songs that are really sad or dramatic angstily

[cutiekaijumuseum]

A little trivia for those that just got introduced to Ultraman thanks to Ultraman Rising

You know that part where baby kaiju Emi is shown a kids cartoon with an earworm of a song?

That cartoon is real!! It's called Kaiju Step Wandabada and it stars cute kid versions of different monsters from different Ultraman series (mostly the original from 1966 wich Rising is also based on). The opening shown in the movie is in stop-motion while the cartoon itself is in 2D.

The Ultraman heroes don't appear in person, but bizarrely enough they seem to exist as fictional superheroes in-universe, with the kaiju kids having toys and dolls of them. It's no surprise Emi liked it so much! She would be right at home in this show!

The episodes are 5 minutes long, there are two seasons of 26 episodes each for a total of 52. The official Tsurubaya channel has the first episodes of both seasons uploaded...

...but the rest were sadly only up for a limited time cuz gotta sell the dvds. What is officially available online right now is a series of educational shorts.

Some years ago Marvel Comics got the rights to make Ultraman comics and made a mini-series called "The Rise of Ultraman" (no relation), and these Kaiju Step designs got to appear as part of in-universe instructional videos about dealing with monsters and aliens:

So let's have a quick rundow on the little monsters and where each comes from:

Pigmon or Pig-chan is the main protagonist and new kid in town (forest). This coral-looking guy is one of the most iconic and recurring ultra monsters and the go-to kid-friendly one, as he stood out among the original set of kaiju for being friendly and heroic (as well as human-sized). He has the bad habit of dying in many of his apperences but fortunately that's not the case here.

Kanegon or Kane-chan is the second member of the protagonist trio, and the most energic and simple-minded. A coin purse monster that eats money, and usually a human kid under a curse. He actually pre-dates Ultraman, appearing in the black-and-white anthology series Ultra Q wich had monsters but not superheroes. Fortunately this one doesn't need to eat money and was born a kaiju.

Alien Dada or Dada-chan is the reliable but temperamental inventor of the trio, he dreams of building a rocket ship. One of the most iconic villains from the original 1966 Ultraman (and that's saying a lot), it's a weird alien with weird powers looking for human subjects for his weird experiments, like testing his shrinking ray. He really earns the name of a weird art movement.

Gomora or Gomo-chan is probably the most iconic ultra kaiju of all. Remember how in Ultraman Rising there is this whole sequence where the dad omniously talks about fighting him? There is a good reason for that. Gomora had the only two-parter in the original 1966 series, and was able to actually defeat Ultraman in their first figh. He's essentially Godzilla if he lived underground rather than underwater (He's even been a good guy and had a robot counterpart). Here, however, Gomora is a chill guy who's passionate about agriculture. (btw, you can also spot Gomora in Rising on a screen around an hour and eight minutes into the movie).

Red King or just Red is another iconic ultra dino, that looks like corn. In the show he's brute but well-meaning, and has a friendly sport rivalry with Kemur-chan. But in the Ultraman series he's a sadistic and murderous bully who beats up weaker monsters but gets his butt kicked rather easily by Ultraman (although more recent incarnations have have been more positive, both in his fighting ability and sometimes even becoming a loving father). (and yes, you are right, he's not red).

Jamira or Jami-chan is a passionate archeologist and fossil collector in the show, whereas in the original Ultraman he was a human astronaut that got infected by a virus. He hasn't appeared much beyond his debut... but doesn't need to, as his episode was very memorable in how sad and tragic it was. I can't imagine the target audience's whiplash seeing this cute creature one moment collecting fossils and the next having a horrible sad death. I guess one could say the same for most of the characters, but this one takes the cake.

Miclas or Mic-chan is the youngest character, a baby, and loves bugs. He was one of the "capsule monsters" from the second ultra series, Ultra Seven. Sometimes the titular ultra wouldn't be able to fight himself so he would summon up to three very loyal monsters from little capsules to do the fighting instead (or at least buy some time, they weren't very strong). One was a triceratops, another was a robot bird, but the most iconic had to be Miclas because really, what even is he? Some kind of bull toad hybrid? (By the way, fun fact, the capsule monsters were one of the inspirations for Pokemon).

King Joe (yes, that's his name) or Joe-chan is a robot controlled by alien invaders and is to Ultra Seven what Gomora is to the original Ultraman: he's the subject of a two-parter and was able to beat the hero to a pulp at first, made harder to fight by his ability to divide into three flying parts. Fortunately this Joe is very shy and very friendly.

Eleking or Ele-chan from Ultra Seven is another of the "mascot" ultra kaiju. If two ultra kaiju have to appear in anything, chances are they will be Gomora and Eleking. In fact, in Ultraman Rising you can see Eleking in a monitor right next to Gomora (around an hour and eight minutes in). It's a dinosaur-like eel monster with (of course) electric powers, and the enforcer of an all-female bug-like alien species set to conquer the earth, that are nonetheless very affectionate towards their pet-weapon dino-eel. The fact that Eleking's masters are always women may explain why the Kaiju Step one is a very femenine and elegant girl despite having King in the name, though no less dangerously electric.

Alien Guts or Guts-chan here is a very little alien bird child who can multiply into three separate individuals to cause all the destruction in their sincere attempts to help out. The original duo from Ultra Seven meanwhile are ruthless alien invaders that are infamous for freaking crucifying the aforementioned hero, leading to decades of japanese media having christian imagery for the sake of looking cool, most notably Neon Genesis Evangelion, because these birds did it first and it looked so cool.

Alien Kemur or Kemu-chan is a very agile alien that comes from the distant future of 2020 to consume humans and extend his lifespan. Here he's a friendly but competitive ninja from the present, and has a rivalry with Red King being the speed to his strenght. Like Kanegon, he pre-dates Ultraman, being from Ultra Q.

Motokureron or Kureron-chan originates from the whimsical, fairy-tale like Ultraman Taro. A kid found him as a baby and fed him until he grew to giant size, but when the kid couldn't feed him anymore he turned destructive; fortunately he was easy to pacify with food, including the kind that made him shrink. He retains his glutonny and clumsiness in Kaiju Step, often doing the bad thing (tm) so the others can teach the kids in the audience why you shouldn't do the bad thing (tm).

Nova or No-chan originates from the surprisingly dark Ultraman Leo. This creepy and bizarre ghost-like alien created a red mist that made people go crazy, and manipulated a kid with illusions of his deceased family, and under his cloth there are lots of tentacles and a scythe. So of course, in Kaiju Step she's a happy and energic little girl that loves to sing.

Mugera or Muge-chan is by far the most obscure kaiju of the cast. She's from the 2001 series Ultraman Cosmos, the one where the titular hero protects monsters instead of fighting them. Mugera is an ET-like cryptid that lives in an amusement park that only kids can see, with the ability to fix toys and heal wounds with her magic. After the amusement park closes down she phones home and the protagonists have to protect her from the goverment wich is a little too eager to shoot down the UFO that came to pick her up. In Kaiju Step she likes reading and plants.

And that was your daily dose of kaiju sugar, that may be overdose because you probably already met Emi. Cheers!

[thenightling]

Dead boy Detectives review

I've watched all eight episodes of Dead Boy Detectives and it was a decent show. It's not something I may obsess over like The Sandman, or The Witcher, but it was decent.

Dead Boy Detectives is the story of Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland. Edwin was killed during a Satanic ritual in 1916. Charles died from hypothermia and internal bleeding after some bullies drove him into an ice-cold lake while throwing rocks at him.

(Note: That was not how Charles actually died in the source material. In the comics, Lucifer had quit and shut down Hell (the basis for the TV show Lucifer) so many evil souls returned to Earth, including the boys that sacrificed poor Edwin. They badly burnt Charles' back on a hot stove and Charles died from his injuries.)

The two ghosts decided to dedicate their afterlife solving mysteries to help other ghosts find peace. They are aided by psychic, Crystal Palace, who is haunted by her abusive ex-boyfriend who happens to be a demon.

Both Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland originated in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Season of Mists, The Sandman: Volume 4. Issue 25 of The Sandman comics, and within Act 2 of The Sandman audio drama.

The Dead Boy Detectives made their TV first appearance in Doom Patrol for HBO Max (now Max). During a shakeup at Max the show was moved over to Netflix as to better connect it with The Sandman since that is where they originated.

The show features different actors from the ones that played Charles and Edwin on Doom Patrol.

The Dead Boy Detectives is a decent show but ...it feels a bit like a CW teen drama. I had been told that some of the show's writers were originally writers for the CW... and it shows.

There are some deliberately surreal elements of the show that I think are a callback to their appearance in Doom Patrol.

I love the variety of supernatural entities in the show, including the appearance of two of Morpheus's siblings. Death and Despair. The things I don't like about the show can be considered CW tropes or cliches. The angsty romances and unrequited love. The ham-fisted abusive ex metaphor between Crystal and David The Demon.

And of course the most tedious of CW tropes, the end of the episode pining and angst while a sad pop song plays in the background.

If you look past the CW-ness of it, the show is enjoyable.

The only other things I can complain about is the "connecting thread" subplot of The Afterlife: Lost and Found feels like unnecessary filler. And I wish they would openly establish that Edwin, being an innocent, would NOT return to Hell if collected by Death now. I don't think that should be left hanging over his head. Especially since we're supposed to see Death as a kind entity. Also I think Charles says "Aces" a little too much. It's very distracting and makes me feel like the writers didn't know much late 80s English slang. It would be like if he was an American and they had him say "Radical" all the time. I get that it's kind of his catchphrase but it also got a bit annoying.

The parts I don't like are CW tropes and what I'd consider to be late 90s Vertigo edginess.

The thing I liked were plentiful though. The protagonists were and are likable. The ending is satisfying enough so that if there is only one season this was still good. I liked that it appears that one can ascend out of Hell after some self-reflection as is indicated by the boy Edwin confronted in Hell. The blue light was established to mean ascension, a good afterlife.

I also LOVE the opening credits theme music and animated sequence. It reminds me of the intro to Showtime's Creature Feature movies. (See the trailer for 2001's She Creature, not the 50s version. Watch the trailer at thirteen seconds in, on Youtube, and you'll see what I mean).

That's two Gothic themed shows from Netflix in the last two years with great opening credits sequences. The first being Wednesday. That one won Danny Elfman an Emmy.

It's funny, Wednesday and Dead Boy Detectives (which is a spin-off of The Sandman) have great opening credit intro sequences but The Sandman does not. Apparently Neil Gaiman was told people don't watch the opening credits anymore so The Sandman doesn't have them.

I feel we were cheated out of what could have been a great opening sequence for The Sandman.

Episodes 7 and 8 of Dead Boy Detectives were probably the best of the series. I liked it well enough that if Dead Boy Detectives gets renewed I'll happily watch season 2.

[dokries]

“why are you crying?”

pairing: boo seungkwan x gender neutral reader

genre: fluff, married au

word count: 400

warnings: seungkwan teases reader because they’re crying, talking in movie theatres

author note: a fic exchange with my lovely ocean, @shuoast ! i hope you like it <3 here is her part :D (it’s a reblog as the original post was deleted)

masterlist

seungkwan adjusts in his slightly uncomfortable seat beside you—he should know by now that there really isn’t a comfortable position he can sit in when it comes to these theatre seats. however, he thinks that maybe it was a good decision to look in your direction when he finds you with your eyes wide, covering your mouth with your hands.

wait…that’s the face you make when you cry—he would know, he’s been married to you for long enough to notice even the smallest changes in your expression.

he looks up at the screen, seeing the main characters wander around happily after the heart-breaking scene that made him shed a tear or two (seungkwan held your hand the entire time you sniffled during the protagonist’s mother’s sincere monologue about how she had sacrificed her precious home just so the protagonist could go to the school of their dreams without being asked to).

“you…” your husband pauses, his mouth dropping open a bit at the tears sliding down your face when he can see you clearly thanks to a particularly bright scene during the happiest song he’s ever heard. “honey, are you crying?”

you turn to him, uncovering your mouth so he can see the pout on your face. “seungkwan…”

he snickers before looking around to make sure no one’s mad at the two of you for talking—thankfully no one’s paying attention since the song blasting from the speakers is too loud.

“i can’t believe you’re crying right now,” your husband giggles quietly, looking back up at the screen, where there’s a frolicking scene, then back at you. “this is literally the normal happiness level it’s been for the entire movie!”

“shut up,” you whisper, leaning your head on his shoulder and punching his arm half heartedly.

seungkwan hums and reaches to grab your cheek with his hand, pinching it lightly. “my poor little baby, crying because the characters aren’t sad anymore.”

you roll your eyes and your husband chuckles, taking your hand in his before sighing contently, finally turning his attention back to the—what the hell, where’d the dragon come from? he swears he’s watching a slice of life movie…or at least was, until he stopped paying attention.

seungkwan looks down at your content expression before smiling. well, maybe he didn’t really have to know the whole story; he knows you’ll give him a recap later on your way home anyway.

[wonderwyrm]

Terry Pratchett knows how to fill a moment with emotion.

Earnest, fervent, sincere emotion. Joy, humor, horror, sadness, all of them at once. Terrible, terrible things happen to the characters in his books, and yet they’re funny to the point that I think they’re mostly branded as comedy.

At the same time, I can easily see most of his books being recreated as horror stories. God, I would love to look more at the ways he creates terrifying situations.

And even during those horrifying moments, he still manages to work in a joke, and you want to laugh as you frantically turn the next page to see if the protagonist makes it out alive. I have no doubt that he might kill off a main character moments after poking fun at their name, and both moments would come across as entirely sincere.

Specifically I want to bring up an example I just came across. I’ve been going through his books in chronological order and I just got to Going Postal (spoilers ahead) and I can see why so many people have this book as their favorite.

Our main character, Moist, has been unwillingly appointed Postmaster, and the old Post Office is filled with decades of undelivered mail. It’s revealed to him, over the course of a few chapters, that the undelivered mail speaks to people, and the collective spirits of those hundreds of thousands of undelivered letters are restless and angry and trapped.

I’d like to make a note that I think this is the first time Pratchett has used magic in this particular way. Discworld has the Magic-Themed books, and the Not Magic books, and while there are occasional overlaps, for the most part Magic is used as a foil and satire for classic magical stories, or as a way for Wizards and Witches to tell their stories. Theclosest I can remember Magic happening to this is in Moving Pictures, where the Holly Wood spirit escapes into Discworld and infects the people there to start making movies, and this mostly subtle and seems a way for Pratchett to make a note of how insane it is for us to treat movies and actors and the whole business of making them in the way we do.

I’m actually rather pleased that he chose The Mail to be something that is just… magic. Unexplained, powerful, something that makes sense and yet doesn’t. Maybe that will change as I get further in the book.

To the moment I’m thinking of. Moist has just been declared Postmaster, and now he’s confronted, in the dark, by the spirits of the mail. They ask him if he will do his job, if he will move the mail again. He says that he isn’t worthy, and the mail says that they just need someone, anyone who will help them.

So Moist says he will. He will do it.

Then the mail, all the hundreds of thousands of unsent letters, say

Deliver Us

And this is what I’m talking about. This is a climatic moment, a moment where Moist is making big changes in his life, in what he is deciding to do. You can feel the desperation of the mail to be sent to their destinations, to be freed from this stagnant hell.

Deliver Us

It’s a pun, you see. Because you deliver mail. It gets delivered. A joke, in the middle of this important moment. It’s a pun and an order, to do his job, to let them fulfill their purpose.

And at the same time, it’s a plea. A desperate, angry plea to be set free and given life again, a plea that someone, even someone like Moist, will be their savior and deliver them from their endless purgatory.

Deliver Us

This is what I love about Terry Pratchett.

[grenade-maid]

Part of why I dragged my feet on ever checking out JJK was the reputation I heard was that it's a BRUTAL grimdark story where ANYONE can DIE in a snap and the author says FUCK you. And after finally catching up with the anime that just... Isn't the tone at all?? Like, Game of Thrones, Gantz, Attack on Titan, etc other cornerstone grimdark reference points, I think one of their defining hallmarks is not just that characters die suddenly and violently, but that human life is nasty, brutish, and meaningless, and it's your own fault for being stupid enough to get attached.

Jujutsu Kaisen on the other hand, I don't know how you can look at one of the most recent casualties circa S2Ep20 of the anime where that character gets a full entire episode reminiscing about their childhood, and the moments and people that meant most to them, and come away thinking the author's intent was to treat life as meaningless. The amount of screen time devoted to the following character who gets badly maimed, the audience gets enthusiastically shoved neck deep into their insane kaleidoscopic passion that is never once undercut or subverted. Both of these characters, far from being callously snuffed out and dumped in the trash, were shown immense love. What we got was not a statement of their life being disposable, but a celebration of life, a reminder of who they are, what they cared about, what made them special, who they loved and who loved them and will remember them in turn.

This is a story about curses born of misery, hatred, and malice. It is also a story deeply concerned with dualism, especially when it comes to attachment and desire. Misery stems from worldly attachments, but it is not weak or foolish to become attached to things in this world. To love something is to set yourself up for the pain or anger of losing it, or sadness of having it denied. But that love is what makes life worth living anyway, and what makes it worth it to keep fighting. We as the audience are sad because we are attached to these characters who have met terrible fates. We see enough of them to be able to clearly picture the whole rich life they could have lived surrounded by friends and feel the sting of that path cut short. It is a story about how it was worthwhile knowing them well enough to be attached anyway, even if it meant unavoidable heartbreak.

This is true of both the human protagonists as well as the curses! Volcano Man and Mahito are ruthless killers who cruelly take lives without a thought. They also have hopes and dreams that they earnestly try to protect and follow through on, and face heartbreaking despair upon defeat. They feel pain just like we do, but must nevertheless be killed. Humans face pain through the very act of living, but nevertheless must live.

In true grimdark fiction there is rarely anything good in life for characters to return to once the battle is over. In Jujutsu Kaisen, on the contrary, there is enough good in life that we see it even amidst the battle. I can see that no other way than an expression of genuine affection. Truly bleak fiction leaves me wondering why everyone involved doesn't just put a gun in their mouth and be done with it. JJK provides an answer--because you'll get to laugh about ruining an expensive shirt, because you'll meet an acquaintance's hot mom, because the next human earthworm movie is coming out, because your favorite idol is doing a meet and greet this weekend, because maybe someday you'll finally go to Malaysia. There are many answers, and none of them are stupid.

[parkerflix]

— when he sees me

jeremiah fisher x gn!reader

genre: angst (lol)

synopsis: loving jeremiah fisher was hard. especially when he’s in love with someone else.

wc: 1.05k

part of the 1k celebration!

loving jeremiah fisher was always hard. you had only eyes for him, and you knew he only had eyes for belly. you tried desperately to distance yourself from those feelings, knowing you were putting more weight on your interactions with him.

every glance, every moment spent with him you ended up analyzing, trying to figure out if he felt even a fraction of what you felt. more often than not, you had to convince yourself that you were correct.

it felt like a bucket of ice had landed on top of your head when conrad and you came from his fina. seeing belly and jeremiah kiss knowing both you and conrad could come out at any moment made you stomach drop. it was the harsh wake up call that you needed.

conrad had interrupted them, and it all blurred in the background, your thoughts getting louder and overpowering. conrad took you away from them, taking you instead to help pack up his room.

you felt jealous, sadness and anger. belly wasn’t supposed to be with you guys. it was a last minute addition, and you felt jealous of her. she had the attention and affection of both fisher boys, while you pined over the younger fisher. it felt like a movie where she was the protagonist, and you just ended up being a unimportant side character.

the car ride with everyone was uncomfortable, and you tried blocking it out by putting in headphones. the cat’s movements made you drowsy, and it wasn’t until conrad slightly shook you awake that you noticed that you guys had stopped at a motel.

the atmosphere between the 4 of you seemed tense, and you felt out of place with their love triangle. they all bickered about the bed situation, and you felt as if the room was closing in on you.

running out of the room, you gasped for a breath and took a seat next to the vending machines. a tear rolled on your cheek and you hastily wiped it off, not wanting to let your guard down.

your name was called, and you looked up to see jeremiah standing there.

“are you okay?”

you nodded and took in a deep breath.

“yeah. i’m okay.”

he eyed you as if he didn’t fully believe you.

“are you sure? you ran out of there pretty quickly. i’m sorry if you feel like you’re in the middle of this whole thing—”

you squeezed your eyes shut and waved him off.

“it’s fine.”

“i know it’s an unfair position to be in, being stuck with all of us especially when belly and i-”

you stood up and balled your fists, letting your nails dig into the palms of your hands.

“jeremiah. i said it’s fine. can you drop it?”

you never were short with him, and it caught him off guard.

“what’s with you? are you upset at me too?”

you exhaled and your eyes darted everywhere but his face.

“it’s nothing. i don’t want to talk about it.”

“cmon, you’re my best friend. are you mad because we didn’t tell conrad?”

of course. he thought you were mad for conrad’s sake.

“no, jere but seriously drop it.”

“i wanna know what i did though! i cant stand you being mad at me.”

you felt like you were going to throw up, the words escaping you before you could react.

“i’m upset because of the kiss.”

your eyes widened and jeremiah stood there with a confused look.

“the kiss? it wasn’t intentional that conrad would see, he sort of just—”

“god! it’s not about conrad! why do you assume my feelings are about conrad? it’s because you kissed her.”

“it’s because i kissed her? what does that even mean?”

you sighed and slumped your shoulders. you knew you couldn’t run and hide from it like you always did, and you weren’t even sure if you wanted to.

loving jeremiah fisher was hard, and you were tired of it being one sided. you wanted to be free of your feelings for the curly-haired fisher, wanting to just be his friend without analyzing his every move.

“i love you jeremiah. i have for a long time. so yeah i’m upset because you kissed her.”

“i-”

“do you know how hard it is to be your friend but be in love with you? do you realize seeing you look at her the same way i look at you kills me? no. you don’t. because everything is about conrad and how he feels and how belly feels and how you feel. i cant keep doing this to myself. it’s not fair.”

“doing what?” his words came out like a whisper, so faint that if you weren’t standing face to face you wouldn’t have heard him.

“this” you gestured between the two of you “this friendship. i cant do this anymore. at least not right now. it hurts too much.”

he was silent, mouth shut and his eyes holding a swirl of emotions.

“listen. i’m going to go back into the room, and i’ll take the bed with conrad. he’s aware of how i feel, and it’s just gonna be easier. we’ll talk in the morning.”

you pushed past him, and walked back to the room. pulling conrad to the side you kept him up to speed, ignoring the obvious longing and jealous look belly was giving you. it felt ironic that she was jealous of you when you were nothing but jealous of her.

the rest of the night went with you ignoring both belly and jeremiah. curling into conrad’s side, you finally let the tears fall silently and soak his shirt. he wrapped his arms around you, the two of you understanding how the other felt.

come morning, you quickly got ready and dressed before everyone else was up. getting out of the room you quickly found cell service and ordered an uber.

the car came for you quickly and you climbed in, making sure you had all your bags. you sent a text to conrad letting him know you left early for home and to not tell the others and turned your messages on mute.

putting your headphones in, you finally let yourself really cry, leaning your head against the window.

loving jeremiah fisher was hard, but you knew getting over him would be harder.

[stxrr-strxckk]

Something I noticed about I Saw the TV Glow that I haven't seen anybody mention yet

I saw this movie in theaters back in early may when it was released (Twice!), and it's been lingering in my head ever since then. Something I noticed on my second watch through: When Owen (and the audience) first see the Pink Opaque, we see Tara and Isabel in this sort of 90s nostalgia light, and I always thought they looked quite similar to Maddy and Owen. For example: Here is Owen and Isabel next to each other for reference.

While it's not entirely the same (Owen has softer features and is warmer toned, Isabel is more sharp and cool toned), they do look like they'd at least be related, cousins at least?

Same with Maddy and Tara, though not as much. (They looked more similar after Maddy's haircut, but I'm too lazy to change the photo)

But then, at the end when Owen is rewatching Pink Opaque? It's completely different. That nostalgic effect is gone and all of a sudden Tara is nowhere to be seen (Since Maddy left the world they were trapped in), and Isabel is completely different. Instead of being the confident, strong, WOC we see her as originally, she's just the same boring white protagonist of every little girl's show we grew up on.

And of course Owen is panicking, realizing that he lost his chance: He buried Isabel; she's dead underground, without her heart and instead of being who he truly is where he truly belongs, he's just... Owen. Stuck in suburbia, living the hell of being a queer kid growing up in the suburbs. Except now, he's an adult living a lie, knowing what he could have had is gone and he's stuck.

And another thing: I think the choice of the fun zone being where Owen works is deliberate. Sure, they could have kept him at the theater, but the theater shutting down is not only accurate (sad but true- please support your local movie theaters!) but shows how everyone is moving on from that experience of going to see a movie in person- choosing streaming instead.

And we also notice this change in the Pink Opaque when Owen is watching it streaming. This is a reflection of how media felt more special growing up when it was in a physical form. Cds, vinyl, Dvds, casettes, film reels, even game cartridges, we've always had some physical object that bonds us to the worlds of creativity in which artists express themselves. And whether you've noticed or not, it's a special sort of feeling that just... Dies with streaming. Its like you own a piece of the media. Like saying: "This is mine, it's my personal piece of media that belongs to me and only me." and that's always made it feel special. Sure, there may be multiple copies, but this one belongs just to you. Not to mention the ritual of actually putting in cds, dvds, casettes into a player, or playing vinyl on a record player. There's this action you have to take to consume this media that's familiar and sort of gets you to anticipate what you're about to watch (much like Owen and Maddy's ritual of Maddy taping the show then leaving them around school for Owen to find) whereas now, you're just on a streaming service that lots of people own, and you're just mindlessly scrolling through hundreds of options.

Another thing: What do we see when Owen cuts his chest open in the final few minutes? TV static. Like when a tape finishes and you don't take it out of the player. Now with streaming, you don't get that static. His connection with the Pink Opaque stems from his friendship with Maddy, the nostalgia of his favorite childhood show, and of course: his own queerness.

It's no secret this movie is about growing up queer and feeling like something is wrong. Like some part of you missing, the part that makes you normal. I've seen many reviews on IMDB that clearly missed the point, so I really want to spell it out here: THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT QUEER PEOPLE FOR QUEER PEOPLE. And I've never seen a movie so perfectly encapsulate that feeling more than this one.

From my experience as a queer POC growing up with little to no representation I know this feeling all too well of seeing someone and realizing: "Wow, that's me." And projecting who I wanted to be onto that person. Then, later revisiting that media to realize that a: you've become them, your true self, or b, in Owen's case: that you've buried that person alive and barely recognize yourself.

It's really such a unique experience that I've never been able to put into words before. These scenes gave me such a visceral feeling and I almost cried in the theater. The scene of Owen in Isabel's dress is just the cherry on top. I myself am lucky enough to not need to transition and growing up I didn't feel as much dysphoria as my other trans friends, but this reminds me of a good friend of mine who used to dress in heels, makeup, skirts, and dresses to try and lessen the dysphoria she felt growing up in the wrong body.

I also love how the movie shows being queer in school.

Like how Maddy asks Owen if he likes girls or boys, and he replies with: "I think I like TV shows."

Avoiding the question because you either don't know the answer, or are so afraid you're gonna get bullied even more for being who you are.

Growing up, there weren't many queer kids in my school. So when we found each other, we stuck together. But for most of school, we were alone. No groups, not many friends, no space at the lunch table for us.

And seeing Owen, I just felt this connection to him almost immediately. Alone, not part of any group, until he finally finds Maddy. They don't have anything in common except the show, which is really the only reason they're friends, but it keeps them together, They're bonded.

For me, I see this as finding another queer kid in a mostly straight school. You may not have much in common, but that identity means you two will stick together, no matter what.

TLDR: I love isttvg, it makes me cry, everyone in gay and fuck imdb.

[ratsypatsy]

Hello Tumblr! This is me posting on why is Mikaela a better option of protagonist than Sam.

I know the reason why Sam is the way it is, it's because they wanted people to feel identified by a character that's an average and simple person, I guess that's an interesting idea, however, Sam wasn't a very good example of this, they want to show a guy who is nice and find himself being brave at some point. But when I see the movie, I just see a horny teenager who did what he did just because he was involved in it, and to impress a gal, cause there wasn't an option, you can put make up on it by adding those scenes of him saying badass stuff... But that's not enough for me, the character itself seems as a lazy example of what they wanted to show, there's no flavor in it.

And then they made Mikaela as his romantic interest and it's crazy how she's better constructed than he is.

Her past is very interesting, let's start with that. She was considered a criminal at some point, but she had her reason. Then all the school looked as her just as a "sexy and privileged girl who is the gf of the popular guy", they saw her just as their "hot classmate", and not by what she actually is, and this is probably because she didn't wanted them to know the truth, because it's dangerous for her future.

Now, they could've used this to make the kind of character that did something wrong, but then risks it all to save the world, find her place and gain the forgiveness from her crimes.

She is a mechanic, what made her really interesting as a TF human protagonist, similar as Charlie, this ability of her is very useful for her alien comrades.

She is also brave, mature, and responsible.

She had her doubts at the beginning when she first saw Bumblebee, Sam convinced her in that part, but as he did it so easily, I think, without Sam there, a little chat with Bee would've been enough to make her change her mind. Even after that, she didn't questioned to keep helping the Autobots every time she could during the movie, not because she just had to be there, but because she actually wanted to help, she saw Bumblebee more as an individual than as an object, feeling bad for him when he got hurt (Sam kept calling him "my car" as if he was some pet or something that he own, he kept this behavior the next movies)

The reason why we couldn't see more of her interacting with the bots is because she wasn't the protagonist, even in the next movie, her role was mostly secondary, and all her relevance there was to add some drama to the relationship... The rest is just Sam doing his stuff (zzzz) they just throw most of the character to the trash, her only purpose was to be the badie of the movie, what's a shame, since it could've been more interesting.

Her character in the first movie felt more real than her boyfriend, more organic, she had problems, she wasn't perfect, and she had more feelings than being horny and trying to make the other character fell in love with her.

She was witty when she had to take actions.

I mean, is sad how they just putted her in the hot girl place, while giving her an interesting personality and background, jut to throw that, because they were more interested in taking shoots of the actress being sexy, and all of what surrounds her is just the fetish of someone who wanted a "bad girl", that's also smart and brave to fell in love with him, it's unfair. Meanwhile they gave us sam who is less interesting and irritating... Like, do you have a brain that works? The movie is very interesting, I think, it could've worked better for me with a better human protagonist.

[yulin-pop]

⤷ ✧ 𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭

Order 81 | Gender Neutral | Headcanons | First years

❀ NOTE: I wrote this at like 4 am when I was having a sleepover but couldn’t sleep after I watched a scary movie.

Watching a scary movie with Ace, Deuce, Epel, Jack, Sebek, and Grim is completely madness.

There’s a lot of types of horror movies but they’re all generally the same. Opening, first scary part, everything else in between, then ending.

Ace will be the one trying to scare everyone else. It’ll be one of those silent parts and then he randomly puts his hand on your shoulder and screams. It’s probably more annoying than scary.

Deuce is definitely the one that covers his eyes and if it’s somehow sad, he tears up a bit. Don’t question if you hear him randomly sniffling. Jack is gonna be the only one to comfort him.

Speaking of Jack, he is either extremely focused on the movie or not paying attention. He misses the most important parts and he has to ask what happened just now.

Okay Epel is the one laughing at the jumpscares. Something flies at the screen, everyone screams but he’s just like “Nah why did it look like that though?” He doesn’t really take most of the movie seriously, but later will be lowkey scared when he’s alone in the dark trying to sleep.

Sebek yells at the screen if the characters are acting stupid like. “NO DON’T GO INTO THE DARK ROOM ALONE YOU’RE GONNA DIE!” He doesn’t like horror movies very much because the main characters are always so dumb he gets upset.

Grim is a jumper. He will fly out of his seat when he’s startled. His fight or flight senses kick in and he almost burns the TV. He is also clinging to the nearest person whether they like it or not because he is a scaredy cat sometimes.

That interesting group in the same room, watching the same movie is just delightful.

Before the movie even begins, there’s already something happening. Deuce and Ace are fighting over who can sit next to you. Deuce sat down next to you first but then Ace insisted he move so he can sit next to you. Why doesn’t Ace just go on your other side? Grim is there. They wrestle for a little bit before you tell both of them to just sit on the floor (couch privileges lost). Jack ends up sitting next to you.

Unless it was decided beforehand, it’s gonna take a long while to pick out which movie. Epel wants a movie with jumpscares, Deuce doesn’t want anything too graphic, Ace already saw a majority of the suggested movies, then everyone else doesn’t care much.

The movie starts fine but then Grim doesn’t want to share any popcorn. It’s just Ace that wants some but Grim refuses to pass the bowl. You’re able to snatch the bowl from him and everyone else has popcorn.

Deuce and Sebek get surprisingly into it. If everyone else is confused then they’re the ones to explain what’s going on or what happened. They have their own theories of what’s happening.

Ace also makes predictions on the ending and he has a 75% chance of being correct because he watched a lot of scary movies so he sees a pattern in all of them.

When Deuce and Ace are anywhere near you, they’re grabbing onto you out of fear. They try not to grab onto anyone else besides you or… each other.

Half of the time Ace doesn’t get startled from the movie itself, it’s everyone else’s screams that makes him scream.

If the protagonist (or any character) acts stupid the atmosphere is completely different. They’re all talking to each other like.

“Oh my seven, what is she doing?”

“This is why I don’t like horror movies, they’re so stupid!”

“That’s something Grim would do.”

Afterwards there’s gonna be at least one person that says they don’t get it.

Sebek won’t be scared afterwards unless it was based after a true story, then he’s super cautious in dark rooms and doesn’t mess around with ghosts.

Ace and Epel won’t admit it but they’re just a bit frightened depending on what type of horror it was. Ghosts don’t scare them so much but demonic possession will. They may be a bit afraid while they try to sleep at night.

Deuce and Grim are the most openly scared ones. Both will be hiding under their covers and shaking until they fall asleep. They will both have the worst nightmares over it for a week if the movie was that bad.

Jack is… fairly normal. Of course he’s left a bit spooked but he’s not at all bothered by it. He’s creeped out but doesn’t start worrying about his own safety but everyone else’s. He starts telling people not to go out when it’s dark out and offers to walk with them.

[sepublic]

Now that I’m older, it’s occurred to me that Jack Sparrow really does play the role of the mentor figure in Curse of the Black Pearl. He’s definitely a very cleverly subversive take on the trope, but he is a take on it nonetheless; The older figure who teaches our young, hotshot hero how to act and passes on wisdom. “I knew your father.” An experienced member of a forbidden group that our protagonist learns to accept he is a part of. Acts as a call to action, and isn’t introduced until past the first few scenes of the film.

By contrast, Elizabeth and Will are established in the movie’s first scene, which further strengthens the actually hot take that they’re the main protagonists of the film and the trilogy as a whole, not Jack. Jack is just less recognizable as a mentor because he breaks a lot of the rules (more guidelines really) of the trope, and is treated as more than just a tool for our main character’s growth; He’s someone with his own life and wants and stake in this, too.

Jack Sparrow is ultimately the Gandalf, the Obi-Wan of Pirates of the Caribbean. And that leads me to my argument that PotC is the Star Wars of its generation, with its own Empire Strikes Back and everything. It’s got a lot of the same tropes and structure, but it’s mixed around and dressed up in such a unique way that most people fail to realize this at first glance. 

Take for example, the dynamic of Davy Jones and Cutler Beckett... This is just Vader and Tarkin in A New Hope; A more iconic, supernatural threat, physically imposing, who is nevertheless subservient to Just Some Guy who is British and represents the Machine that strips the world of its magic and wonder. Vader and Jones are more romantic, they’ve got sad backstories and are humanized to the audience; But Tarkin and Beckett are banal and simple, just ruthless men who don’t care, like in real life.

But while Tarkin dies in the first film to make way for Vader taking the spotlight, as well as his similarly theatrical Emperor, the creators of PotC clearly wanted to explore the dynamic of a supernatural force straining against his imperial collar, and the tension of knowing he is contributing to the decline of his own kind. They took Vader and Tarkin’s relationship and made it front and center, happening at the end of the trilogy and not at its beginning. And it is Beckett and the imperial machine that is emphasized as the true evil, whereas in Star Wars, the Empire takes orders from Palpatine and his Dark Side shenanigans, who are framed as the foundation for the conflict.

The crew reinvented Star Wars for a new audience, rather than just... pulling off of the brand and imagery of Star Wars, or copying it word-for-word. They understood the core foundation of the story and the earnest creativity that comes into making something both familiar yet inarguably new, which subverts the stories that came before it in a meaningful manner.

[donutwatches]

MHA Movie 1- Two Heroes (Two Gay Dads) - part 3/3

Time for the movie finale!

Every time I see guns pop out in MHA it shocks the hell out of me. The story is so wholesome and the characters are so sweet it feels like watching someone pull a gun on Winnie the Pooh or something.

Ok, generic villains whose name I don't know and I will forget the existence of the minute the movie is over, I have to hand him one bonus point. He looks cool af here.

Bakugo always has time to sass. It's funny that a character in the movie is calling out how flimsy the villain is.

Like the people who wrote the movie all calling themselves out in their own movie, lol.

Why does this picture look like 'when you have to fight a gun-slinging criminal during a high school dance'?

Todoroki has such main character energy. It really feels like he could have been a protagonist of his own show.

Darth Vader??? Is All Might's arch-nemesis the Sith? I remember he has a potato head under that helmet, but I have only seen little glimpses of this guy. He seems petty, I love petty. I want more!

SQUARE UP! We are about to see the Jedi master and Padawan apprentice pair up of the century,

FWOOOOSH! SWOOOSH! BAAAAAAAAM! HELL YEEAAAH! My inner super hero nerd was screaming throughout this whole scene. I almost choked.

Poor Dave, he just missed his college roommate (lover), and wanted to help. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and all that.

...need I say more? Kidding around aside, their friendship is genuinely lovely, and is one of the better parts of the movie.

These two Dad's are so proud of their children!

Love the Melissa - Deku parallels. They had a good dynamic too. With Melissa looking up to her Dad, and wanting to be like him. Only to be confronted with his flaws and human fallibility.

This parallels Deku meeting his icon All Might and being confronted with the fact that All Might is human too. But instead of that being a disappointment, it makes their bonds stronger.

Look at these cuties!

Both Dave and Melissa are good characters, and I am sad that I probably won't see them again after the movie.

See you all for season 3!

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[jarofstyles]

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Second to last part… who’s scared?

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WC: 4.9k

—-

Y/N wanted to cry.

It had been 4 days since she had seen Harry.

The next day she had texted him to come over but he had replied that he had to go see his cousin who lived an hour away. That was fine, sure, but the lack of invite had stung a little. She had no right to be upset about it considering she wasn’t owed it, Harry had a right to hang out with him alone… but they usually went together. He had a cabin out near a lake and they’d spent a few weekends there with him. Y/N quite liked his cousin.

Usually he would text her an option to go, at the very least. She sometimes couldn’t because of work or classes but there wasn't even the option to deny it this time. He had simply left. He was answering her texts, not ignoring her at all, but it was obvious something was off. The energy, the vibe, whatever you wanted to call it was very wrong and it made her feel sick to her tummy. She was curled on her couch with a mug of tea, having finished her last exam today. Harry had finished his all in two days, choosing to cram them instead of spread them out like she had because it worked better for his brain to let things go in a short amount of time instead of holding off. Getting it over with was the best option.

She exhaled into the steam, taking a sip of the chamomile. It wasn’t as good as Harry made it, but it did the job.

Y/N was praying in her head that she hadn’t fucked everything up. The more days he was gone, the more she realized she had become so used to him as a daily fixture, looked forward to her daily dose of his silliness. Being without him made her feel the echoing emptiness in her chest. Cold and sad and generally miserable. It had caught her off guard. She prided herself on her independence, on her ability to take care of herself. It wasn’t that she still couldn’t do that. It was the fact that she felt like something big was gone every day, wriggling under her skin to let her know something was wrong. He had become routine even with his spontaneity.

4 days was starting to feel like forever. She just wanted him back.

-

The sounds of nature didn’t soothe him the way he had originally sought out. Sitting on the dock of the cabin, he felt it bob with the water as he held his knees to his chest. It was a bit nippy out, still early in the morning. The cool air helped wake him up, his tea in a travel mug next to him as the sweater did it’s best to keep him as warm as it could. The rising sun was peeking through the trees, the momentary warm when the leaves fluttered and exposed it a breath of relief.

The weekend here had been good for him in a lot of ways, but it hasn't fixed everything. His heart still ached. It ached in a way he had thought people were dramatizing in the movies and the songs. His hand rubbed at the spot his heart rested under but no amount of soothing did much to keep it from aching. Throbbing and not in a good way. It was this weekend that opened his eyes up to seeing that it was just as bad as people said. Being in love was so multidimensional that it sort of freaked him out.

He had always been a fan of love stories. The gooey and mushy, the cotton candy softness of two people’s eyes meeting and the rest being history. He was a crier during romance movies, enjoying the final reconciliation at the end with the kiss and the promise of forever. He had never been fond of sad endings, of the protagonist losing the girl and walking out into the night alone. In his mind, everyone deserved love and deserved to feel adored.

With Y/N, he had felt that sort of adoration. That’s part of why he felt so confused. So conflicted with the situation. There was no way he had been reading her adoration wrong. Y/N wasn’t an overly affectionate person with people. That much was obvious to anyone who knew her. She was down to give a hug but she didn’t lay on the flattery thick. She didn't seek out touch. His Y/N was someone who kept her body and her vulnerable thoughts to herself. This arrangement, it had brought out a side of her that he had seen glimpses of but brought it fully to the front. Pouts for cuddles and sweet little kisses on the lips, giggles in bed. Her slipping her hands under his shirt to seek his warmth out, kisses smeared to his neck and cheeks and her smaller hands gripping his jaw so she could simply stare at him. She told him how beautiful she thought he was. Expressed how much she adored him, how much he made her laugh and how lucky she felt to be able to have him in her life.

So what the hell had gone wrong? What had pushed her away from him?

Harry had spent a lot of time wracking his brain to try and figure out what he could have done. Went through their days step by step, word by word to try and pinpoint what could have brought it on. There was nothing on his end, no change or risky behavior besides trying to express to her that night how much he had actually missed her. But even then, she had caved and came to see him. There had been no shift in their relationship until they were at the cafe.

He didn’t want to entertain the thought of her being into that bellend that had come up to the table, but that was the only thing he could think of. He wasn’t Y/N’s type at all. Obnoxious and obviously trying to get into her pants. He wouldn’t have much to communicate with her about. He wasn’t being judgemental- He had Niall look into the guy for him. Creepy? Maybe. But it had bothered him and Niall knew everyone and anyone. It took only a day for him to tell Harry just what he had suspected. The guy was a dickhead and he was definitely trying to get into Y/N’s pants.

That gross sick feeling had been lingering in his stomach ever since. He knew Y/N wasn’t hooking up with him simply because he had been getting pretty consistent texts from her about exams and he did trust her above all else. Y/N may be callous and a bit oblivious to people but she wasn’t a liar. She would be honest with him if she was into him. He had that faith in her. He still loved her, he didn’t think poorly of her even if the feelings weren’t returned.

“Still hiding from her?” His cousin appeared at the shoreline, fishing pole in hand. Harry stiffened slightly, wiping under his eye as a tear he hadn’t realized fell went down his cheek. God damn it. Sometimes he hated how sensitive he was.

“Shut up.” he grumbled, pulling his tea back to his lips as Jack laughed under his breath. His cousin wasn’t one to sugar coat things, let alone baby Harry. “M’not hiding. I’m trying to figure out how the hell to tell her that m’in love with her and we have to stop fucking around because if we don’t I’m going to lose my mind knowing she doesn’t feel the same.” Harry’s voice was hoarse from lack of use, this being the first time he spoke in quite a few hours. It was embarrassing to him, how devastated he felt right now, but he needed someone to talk to. Jack was the obvious choice. He was also the only other person he felt comfortable talking to about his emotions when they ran this deep. Usually it was Y/N… but obviously that wasn’t an option right now.

“Yes, you are. She’s been texting you every day. Obviously she isn’t upset with you or disgusted at the sight of you. I think you need to grow a pair and actually speak to her. She isn’t going to be patient with you running away for a long time.” That was a fact, unfortunately. Y/N wasn’t known for her patience. “H, you don’t know she doesn’t feel the same. Maybe she just put her foot in her mouth because you were acting like a caveman. I have always thought you two would end up together.” Jack sighed, loading up the pole with bait before casting, letting the quiet of the forest settle for a few moments so his words could sink in. “If you want my honest opinion, which you’re getting regardless of the answer, I think she is just as into you as you are into her. She loves you back. You got scared, felt rejected, and ran. I can’t say I wouldn’t lick my wounds for a day but you can’t hide out and not tell her. It’s gone past the way you can just brush it off.”

Harry knew he was right but he desperately didn’t want to admit that to him. His pride felt wounded enough as it was.

“I know. I’m just fucking terrifeid of fucking all of this up, J. She’s… she’s my best friend. I dunno what I’ll do without her.”

“Who says you’re going to have to go without her, Harry? Who says she isn’t going to be relieved you tell her first. Who says she isn’t going to say she loves you too and you two don’t ride off into the sunset to have dozens of stupidly cute babies and a bunch of dogs?” Jack sighed, a bit exasperated from having such an unusually pessimistic Harry to soothe for a few days in a row.

“Y/N is a cat person.” he muttered, wincing as he felt something hit the back of his head a few moments after. “Oi, what the fuck?”

“I threw a strawberry at that thick head to knock you out of your wallowing. Just go. Get the fuck out of my house and go home to her. She’s done with exams. It won’t distract her anymore. You can come back if she rejects you. But she won’t.”

—

Y/N: when are you gonna be homeeee.

H: actually, I just got home.

H: you cool to come over in a bit? An hour? I’d like to talk if that’s alright.

Y/N: sure, sure. I’ll be over.

She was going to throw up. Y/N was sure of it.

He wanted to talk. To Talk. That was never good.

Y/N pulled her sweatshirt closer to her body as she walked down the hallway to his door, hands shaking slightly. She’d never been this nervous meeting up with Harry and it was a very weird feeling, one she wasn’t sure she liked. With him, she felt pretty certain that she would be warmly welcomed, even before they’d had sex. He scooped her into a hug and she would grumble but sink deeper into the embrace when he failed to let go past the usual allotted hug time one would consider normal. Now, however, she felt uneasy.

His abnormal behavior had been the main cause of her stress now that classes had paused for a little bit. She wrung her hands together under the sleeves of her sweatshirt, trying to relax before the door opened. There wasn’t the usual music playing her typically had blasting to a questionable level when she arrived. It was oddly quiet.

Her heart jumped as she heard the click of the lock, speeding up as the door opened to reveal Harry. Her Harry, with his tousled hair and soft green jumper covering his body with his jeans with a hole in the knee, with a bit of stubble above his lip and littering his chin. With darker circles under her eyes that had her brow furrowing with concern. He looked so pretty, but so exhausted.

“Why didn’t y’use your key?” His voice was soft, not cold like she had halfway expected.

“I…” she looked down at her shoes, kicking slightly at the worn carpet as she tried to not sound pathetic in her response. “I wasn’t sure if I should. It’s been a little weird lately and I just didn’t want to barge in.” Her attempt had failed, the reply sounding even more weak than she had tried to avoid.

“Y/N…” He sighed, opening his arms and pulling her into them. “M’not angry at you. I never was. You don’t have to be afraid to come here.”

This was the shit he had been trying to avoid. He didn’t want to make her feel any less safe or comfortable with him and she had felt like she was out of line if she had used a key he had given her far before. His efforts to try and keep himself normal had failed and she had picked up on his upset. She had looked so unsure and uneasy, the sweatshirt hiding her hands and averting her eyes. Internally he cursed, needing to explain this soon before he burst.

Regardless of the pressing matter, he allowed himself to indulge in the hug. Squeezing her to his body and letting his nose rest against her hair, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and the faint notes of her perfume. He had missed her so fucking much. 4 days. He was the pathetic one, really. It took a moment to pry himself away from her, exhaling as he did so.

“Let’s sit down.”

Settling on the couch, he felt like perhaps he was the one who would get sick. Or his heart would beat out of his chest. Either one that happened first.

“I’m sorry.” Y/N peeped, looking at him with sad eyes. “I know I was harsh with you at the cafe. I didn’t mean to be. I was really mean, Harry. I know I jokingly bully you sometimes but I know I hurt your feelings and it felt so awful to see you get sad like that. I know you said you weren’t angry, but I still hurt you. We haven’t spent full days apart.. Probably since we met, and as much as I know you’re going to deny it, I drove you away. You didn’t even want me to come with you to the cabin.” Y/N cursed herself for feeling a slight burning settling behind her eyes. It wasn’t about her right now. She knows she hurt his feelings, she needed to apologize for that thoroughly. “I should have included you in the study group and not made you feel bad for wanting me around.”

Harry stayed quiet, listening to her as she spoke. It made him feel weird, hearing her be so earnest and apologizing so openly to him. Y/N was a stubborn girl, though she did admit her wrongs, she normally wasn’t wrong. That’s just how it was. His arm rested on the couch, picking at the strings on his throw blanket as she spoke about the study group, an exhale being released through his nose.

“That’s not why I was upset, Y/N.” He said softly as she spoke. “You.. You’re allowed to do things without me. I know I’m clingy, probably a little clingier than you’d prefer, but I was upset because…” his throat felt like it was clamped for a moment, knowing this was going to change the way she looked at him. “It was because you were so quick t’remind me we weren’t actually dating. That I basically didn’t have a claim to you or a right to get jealous. And then i realized you were right. The realization hurt a lot fucking more than I thought. You said it so easily and I think…” He paused again, looking away from her face. Like a coward. “I think it hurt me a lot because, to me, I was reading the way we were as a lot different than you probably were.”

The words stayed floating in between them as Y/N blinked a few times, confusion painting her face. That’s what he had been upset about? Her chest felt tight as she looked at his face, trying to meet his eyes to get more of an explanation of that. What direction had he thought it was going?

“I’m sorry, H.” She whispered. “What… Can you explain to me what you mean, though? What direction?” This was a time she didn’t want to jump to conclusions because she obviously hadn’t been the brightest bulb when it came to figuring out what had actually upset him.

He stayed silent for a moment, breathing out shakily. “I thought… I kind of thought we were on our way to dating. Or we were there, jus’ without the label. I was obviously reading a bit too far deep into it when you weren’t, but it was just easy to fall, I guess.” His voice felt strained, still a bit afraid to look at her face on the chance she was looking at him in pity. “I thought that we were falling into a relationship, that it meant more romantically. You were a lot more affectionate with me than you ever have been and I know we’ve always been really close but it felt so right to me. I was a bit naive and assumed that it was the both of us with real feelings developing but I know it was wrong of me to assume you felt the same without actually talking to you.” It felt like there were knives in his stomach, the nausea being traded with full on pain as he shifted uncomfortably, explaining himself.

“It was so easy to fall for you. You’re just really fucking amazing, Y/N. I’ve always thought that, always thought you were the coolest. It’s why I tried so hard to keep you around. You aren’t someone who lets people into your world the way I felt like you were letting me in. Being touchy with me and not being annoyed with me hanging on you and even initiating cuddling and kisses without sex. It felt like a whole lot more than friends with benefits and I was happy to let it keep going because I thought somehow it was meaning more to you too. But we never defined what it was that friends with benefits actually meant. So I just… made an arse of myself and assumed that it meant you wanted to be with me.” His hand ran through his hair, something he did when he felt a bit exasperated. “I let myself get caught up in it without thinking maybe it meant more to me and somehow, I fell in love with you.”

The whole world stilled for a moment. Y/N froze, eyes widening as she looked at Harry as he finally met her gaze. He couldn’t say it without looking her in the face, he wouldn’t allow himself to do that. She deserved the courtesy of seeing him when he said it. She sucked in a breath, ready to reply but Harry beat her to it.

“I just.. I know its a lot, Y/N. I know you didn’t sign up for that and I tried not to fall in love with you but fucks sake, just spend a day in my shoes. You’re perfect. It was impossible not to fall for you. I swear, I tried because I didn’t want to be in this position. I don’t want to lose you, Y/N. I want to keep you in my life forever.” His eyes glazed over with tears and she swore her heart tore into two. Fuck. Fuck. He had just bared his entire heart to her and was almost crying because he didn't want to lose her. She felt like her brain and heart had melted, the sparkle of hope glimmering bright now that she knew he felt the same.

“I understand you don’t feel the same. I see it now. I just… I can’t keep doing physical stuff with you. I’ll never get over the feelings if I keep going. I know it’s annoying and I’m sorry, Y/N. I still want to be your best friend-”

“Who says I want you to stop?”

Finally, her voice began to work again. Her own eyes glazed up, looking at him with so much warmth that Harry paused his entire speech and blinked a few times. He wanted to think he heard correctly but he felt himself reboot, buffering even as he looked at her confused.

“What?”

“What if I don’t want you to stop loving me?” her shaky voice echoed in the silent room, bouncing off the ears. “What if you’re a silly man and I’m a mean, cowardly woman and I don’t want to stop being intimate? What if I want the exact same thing and have felt the exact same way, but you’re much braver than I am with admitting your feelings?” Her eyes bore into his.

Harry felt like his world had tilted on its axis. He was silent for a moment, trying to make sure he hadn’t just hallucinated hearing those words from her as she shifted closer to him. He hadn’t accounted for this reaction. So sure, so positive that he had been one sided pining since the incident that he had lost almost all hope- only for her to bring that assumption crashing down and breaking like porcelain plates.

“You….” He swallowed, throat bobbing as he looked at her with confusion. “You do?” His voice trembled a bit in disbelief, so hesitant to let the sparks of hope ignite the flames that had previously been smoldered in his chest. This had been the one outcome he hadn’t allowed himself to think about. If he had allowed the hopeful part of him to flourish, he worried that he would have an even hard time accepting what he had thought the truth would be. He wasn’t usually pessimistic but Y/N had seemed to be far too good to be true when he had been knocked out of his smoky bubble he had engulfed himself in.

Y/N’s heart splintered at his disbelief. She had made him feel like she hadn’t loved him back and it was her fault for being so scared, so cowardly. His slightly hesitant gaze made her get up from her spot, climbing on top of his lap.

“Yeah.” She peeped, placing her arms around him for a hug. Clutching him to her, exhaling weakly as she buried her face in his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, H.” Her whimper of an apology had him closing his arms around her, the shock wearing off as she collapsed and rested her weight on top of him. It was only a few moments later that he felt hot tears on his neck, his stomach twisting at the idea of her crying as he cooed softly under his breath.

“No… hey, no. No crying. It’s okay.” He whispered, moving to kiss the side of her head as his hands drew up and down her back in the comforting motions he usually did. She sniffled against him, his body and kind a torn mess of wanting to comfort and console and wanting to celebrate. It almost felt too good to be true.

“It’s not. I hurt your feelings because I was scare n’frustrated and I was a big baby who didn’t want to admit I loved you first and I-“ she was interrupted with Harry gently pulling her back, her breathing catching as she looked at him. His face significantly brighter than it had been when he had opened the door, she blinked and went to reply but was cut off by his mouth.

His plush, pink lips pressing against her slightly chapped ones, holding the back of her neck as she let out a little noise against them. Her brain went fuzzy, melting into the familiar warmth of his kiss, her body lighting up with the hazy glaze that covered it, the heat tingling her belly and the fizziness in her heart that she decided to lean into rather than push away. Lips pulled back only for her to surge forward this time, desperately kissing him and pushing him back against the couch as she had decided she wasn’t done kissing him yet.

“Y’mean it?” He managed to breathe out, a pause in their kissing and heavy breathing giving him an opportunity. “Y’love me?” She nodded, but that wasn’t good enough for him. The grip on the back of her neck tightened. “Tell me. Say it.” He wanted to hear those words he had been positive he wouldn’t fall from the lips he couldn’t get enough of.

“I love you.” She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. “Love you.” Another kiss to his jaw. “Love you, love you, I love you, Harry.” The kisses were pressed with the words, his chest squeezing and the candy cane fluff filling his stomach. It was hard to breathe in the best way, like pink smoke laced in love was clogging his throat and the only words he could get out were the ones professing it.

“Love you. I love you, Y/N.” He smiled, nose brushing against hers. “I have for a long fucking time and I… I shouldn’t have disappeared but I was so confident you didn’t feel the same-“

“I did. I was just being stupid and scared and wanted to remind myself. I got too excited when you were acting possessive and I was reminding myself that we weren’t dating and… I thought you were being hot. I loved that you got jealous because it meant you cared about what we had but I was so certain I was making it up and I’d be ruining our friendship… I was terrified. You just said we should fool around and I went and fell in love with you, it wasn’t what you asked for…” she babbled, wanting to make sure he knew that he hadn’t done a single thing wrong.

The explanation actually made sense if she felt anything like he did. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, trying not to overthink things. The relief and happiness was nearly leaking from his pores as he peppered her lips with his own kisses. It would have felt like a dream if he didn't feel his heart pounding out of his own chest even still. This time, though, for a much different reason. The flames had caught the kindling, erupting back into that blaze. Almost to a forest fire level, his giddiness had been contagious.

“Y’love me? For real?” He whispered, cupping her warm cheek as if it could ground him to the moment. Her face leaned into him, nuzzling into the slightly calloused hand like a kitten overly eager for affection as she nodded.

“I love you. For real, for real.” Her smile was watery, sniffling while his thumb brushed her slightly damp skin yet again. “Want to keep doing what we were but I want t’go on dates and hold your hand around and kiss you whenever we want, want to bring you to meet my mom as my boyfriend and I want- I want everything. I’m sorry I’ve been so nervous and silly and I almost ruined it but I was scared. I don’t have to be scared now.” Harry’s gaze itself made her wonder how the fuck she missed it. How she could have possibly thought it was one sided. His eyes were full of love. Of fondness. The man adored her and he didn’t even have to say it out loud. She felt it just being like this.

“This means I’m your boyfriend now, yeah?” he asked after another little kiss, trying to calm his overly excited nerves. This felt lovely. So, so lovely. His whole body was on fire, the bubbles in his guts raising to his chest. “I want to do all of that with you. We should have just talked before getting to this point but I… I’m so happy right now.” He felt his eyes stinging with a different type of tears. They’d been so silly, but it led to this. It had led to their connection and Harry really couldn’t regret that.

His glossy eyes made her coo quietly, her own babying of him commencing as she pressed her lips back to his and feeling the sparks come back into her own belly. “So, so happy. Love you, H. You’re my boyfriend.” She laughed, shaking her head as their noses nudged against each other, relishing in the closeness she was finally granted. “I’m your girlfriend. And we are both very, very stupid.”

[findmeinthefallair]

Hunter's Experiences After Belos's Death

Oops, this got long. Aw well, it was really fun to write.

Special thanks to @ashanimus!

This is speculative at the end of the day, but since:

1. This is my fave animated show of all time

2. I grew up with Complex PTSD (CPTSD) like Hunter

3. I work as a therapist,

I thought to list down some things I can visualize happening in the duration of the finale's timeskip, before that beautiful epilogue we saw. And I want to dive in using whatever clues, leads and parallels I can find in canon: to analyze and see how he went from the Bad But Sad Boy to that peaceful-looking palisman carver in the epilogue.

A small reference I had for this meta is Cinema Therapy's episode on the Hunger Games movies (link), since the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, from the book and also movie trilogy would have the same diagnosis as Hunter. Those books and movies explored how Katniss coped with the frightening and dramatically different landscape that was the calmness of her world post-victory.

Part 1: His Possible Experiences Leading Up to Seeking a Therapist

His disposition could possibly become like Luz's from early Season 3: a state of emotionally shutting down and numbing out. He appeared to nearly head in this direction right after he was revived by Flapjack, as he began to cry. There was that small window where he could have expressed more tears than he did, and have his body shut down under the weight of bereavement.

But the immediate physical threat, Belos, was still on the run. He got up, sprang into action and didn't catch a break from the time he followed Belos through the portal until he stood in The Collector's palace after Belos died (had he even received the news of his 'Uncle' dying yet??!).

Now that Belos isn't around anymore, the Isles will have a completely different feel and rebuilding the land would've taken grueling work after the dismantling of a damaging Coven System.

I was looking at Luz's behavior and gestures in Thanks to Them, which were indicative of her sinking into depression after 1. the horrible revelation in Hollow Mind that she unintentionally helped Philip. 2. witnessing Flapjack's death. I'm putting screenshots of her below in parallel with Hunter's own emotions in For the Future:

They have different mental health conditions if you talk symptoms, e.g. Luz doesn't show signs of CPTSD hypervigilance, while Hunter doesn't have that slowing down in his physical and mental activity which points to depression. But both have suffered from moral injury thanks to Belos's violence and manipulation.

However, a major comparison is that Hunter has had much more repressed emotion over a long period compared to Luz. The column with Hunter screencaps above, is what he may feel with a much higher intensity in the weeks and months after he first hears that his abuser has passed on.

Shown below, the few seconds of Hunter's big smile drooping when it was all over, was a big hint for me:

A hint that there is a deep undercurrent of emotions he'd much rather not feel, that he'd probably rather hide from himself. Even while smiling, we know how his heart-wrenching story has played out and the light in his eyes here doesn't match the brightness we see in his expressions in the epilogue, post-timeskip.

That is the face of a kid who has not cried out massive amounts of tears yet. He doesn't look like he's carrying a light load yet, compared to what we see in his future self. And it's certainly a heavier smile than the jollier one he makes here right after King's Tide when Flapjack was still around:

I can't imagine the amount of grief that his body has yet to dredge up and release, once he finally doesn't have to worry about his 'uncle' threatening his life anymore. Too many times to count, I've been in the situation where I cry intensely after being retraumatized and think "Huh? More tears? Where did it come from?? I thought I had cried it all out from my whole being the last time!". It kind of convinced me that anyone with CPTSD has so much grief stored up in their body that the number of times needed to have a good cry feels like a really endless expanse.

However: because I had 7 years of being in and out of therapy, what matters is that the durations between these episodes of mine, the durations of the episodes themselves, plus their intensity have reduced a lot. It was around a 4-year timeskip in the finale, so for Hunter to get as far as he did to heal, his own therapy sessions would've probably been rigorous and very consistent.

Anyway, he might now cycle through his own version of what Luz cycled through when she gradually shuts down from failing to build a new portal door in Thanks to Them, continually believes she's as bad as Belos, and when she alludes to her suicidal ideation in the classroom:

whereby there is a likely parallel between Luz wrestling with guilt from her own moral injury, and Hunter's own guilt from what he wished he could've done to prevent being possessed, to prevent Flapjack from dying. Both their situations are that of moral injuries.

The adrenaline rush would be over for everyone on the Isles.

I'm quite sure the therapists on the Isles will operate pretty soon after the news about Belos's death was out. They would conduct whatever version of mental health triage they have, that involves risk assessments and crisis counselling. Both of these based on what I've learnt are shorter in duration (30 minutes) and are one-off sessions, compared to regular talk therapy which is an hour minimum.

The therapists would be redirecting people to necessary resources e.g. where to find food or loved ones, and managing distress only related to people's immediate needs instead of forming a longer term plan for several weekly sessions.

I believe things are simpler when you are running away from an external threat, like the two Hunter scenarios below. In Hollow Mind there is no emotion on his face because in peak C-PTSD mode he has shut down his emotions to pour that energy into escaping Belos. In Thanks to Them, he appears quite obviously scared with widened eyes because he got comfortable with safety for months and Belos's return was a surprise attack (thanks ashanimus for pointing out to me how his expressions are animated!):

But what is there to run from now? Not an external threat for sure. The war zone is now the one in his mind, heart and soul and it would become front and center. I believe both these screenshots are two notches on a dial, and the missing third image - which would show him finding it difficult to stuff down the grief any longer, might look like a more exasperated version of when he told Willow "Please don't call yourself [a Half-a-Witch] ever again" in For the Future, and eventually a more depressed version of his vanishing smile in The Collector's Palace.

When can he really run from himself? Only while asleep, if he's spared nightmares on any given night, or while distracting himself with the main mission of rebuilding the Isles or continuing to bond with his friends and other people.

His anger in For the Future was a telling sign for me that he made sure his focus was still on an external threat: he still had the opportunity to do so back then, because Belos was still alive. But when we see him in The Collector's palace sending Willow off to her dads, there has realistically been a shift in what will threaten the more fragile shreds of inner peace he's still clinging on to. There are those scary trauma-related emotions to worry about, which wouldn't have just evaporated into thin air. They would be looking for a new outlet, and they'll find their way into flashbacks, nightmares, tension still stored in the body, an exaggerated startle response, etc.

We have seen a range of reactions he has to danger, triggers and emotional pain: some involve moving his body more, and fewer involve a short of shutting down:

Flinching during Belos's tantrums, being able to fight Kikimora calmly, freezing up in the throne room (Hunting Palismen)

Suicidal ideation and even a sort of suicide plan (Eclipse Lake)

Freezing up and expecting punishment from Darius (Any Sport in a Storm)

Being able to stay almost entirely calm as he learnt more and more of the truth about Belos, though his hand was shaking briefly, then a panic attack later on (Hollow Mind)

Lots of avoidance symptoms like numbing, combined with hypervigilance e.g. shivering and another panic attack (Labyrinth Runners)

Feeling fear with underlying shame and subconsciously expecting punishment, when he failed to save Luz (Clouds on the Horizon)

Freezing and recoiling, though he fought against this by asserting a boundary with Belos (King's Tide)

Panic attack when looking into the mirror and having an emotional flashback, hypervigilance e.g. stamping his foot and shivering (Thanks to Them)

Anger and rage to cope with bereavement, later being tearful (For the Future)

Most likely a sense of bereavement, deep exhaustion and possibly loneliness, during that briefly shown moment in The Collector's Palace (Watching and Dreaming)

The serious work he has to put in to heal from his trauma would begin once his whole body gives in to the exhaustion, catching up with the bereavement-related emotions that have also begun to settle in. It could be a massive emotional and physical collapse that he can't fight off, where his physical energy levels become tanked seemingly out of nowhere. And I think it would look like a worse version of him lying in his makeshift grave, where he is barely able to move around the house or anywhere for some time.

This happened to Katniss in the Hunger Games trilogy, and while the portrayal was done differently in the books and movies, both were good explorations of what it's like to shift from the default high alert (and long-term) mode of CPTSD to coping with the scary unknown world of newfound safety. Katniss spent her childhood in poverty and being constantly on edge that she might be chosen for the Hunger Games, being parentified, to provide for her family.

While participating in the games, she had to utilize battle skills and kill others to survive and sustained many injuries, still constantly on high alert whereby any respite would last for incredibly short durations. Towards the end of the story, after she loses the one she loved most (her sister Prim, who I think can be a parallel of Flapjack in this meta), Katniss shifts from peak physical activity into mostly sleeping and being actively suicidal for months, hardly moving and not leaving the house, until the shock of traumatic grief began to wear off. She absolutely crashed and went from one extreme to the other. In the movie Mockingjay Part 2, they added a non-book scene where her grief comes out in an outburst when she sees their pet cat hanging around on the kitchen counter. She flings an object in the cat's direction, then screams "[Prim] is gone!!" repeatedly before collapsing into heavy sobs, picking up the cat and holding it to her chest to soothe herself.

This kind of major collapse might happen very soon to Hunter after he leaves The Collector's Palace or only after some weeks. The timing of this, I can't predict. The reason why he didn't appear to have this issue in the early months being in the human realm is because there was still something external to concentrate on: help his friends get back to the Human Realm, help Luz reunite with Eda and King, while him and Flapjack hoped to go home too.

You could argue that even now, he still has something external to focus on i.e. helping the others rebuild the Isles. However I keep imagining that the people who love him are going to be quite adamant in getting him, Luz and the other kids to please rest. Since we saw Steve recommend his therapist to Lilith in O Titan Where Art Thou, I can picture the adults in particular monitoring how Hunter is doing without Flapjack.

But if this collapse I'm speculating about doesn't happen so soon, he would be pouring himself into helping others, referencing his character-centric line all the way back in Hunting Palismen about wanting to offer help, which he utters twice in that episode. There is an overlap between this expectation he has of himself and the old habit he's at risk of falling back into periodically: overworking.

Once his desire to help others is clearly comes across as an avoidance tactic on the outside - a maladaptive coping mechanism to run from the very difficult emotions that he should be processing - people around him are definitely going to set boundaries and say "No" to any attempts he makes to assist them. Someone is probably going to tell him that whatever desperation he is showing in wanting to help other people, needs to be redirected at himself. Making time and space for himself, taking time off to rest.

Him suffering from a major emotional and physical collapse is pretty likely because things are more complicated (though, physically much much safer) for him now than at the beginning of Thanks to Them when he had just fled from Belos to the human realm, and had Flapjack as his closest company. Fast forward to the victory won in Watching and Dreaming: both Flapjack and Belos are gone now.

It's telling that different thoughts are occupying Hunter's mind now, from how his expressions are drawn during his first days in the human realm vs. when peace is restored in the Isles.

1. See the sense of calmer urgency in his expression, putting the mission of building the portal door first, while experiencing a strong sense of togetherness with his friends, and learning to trust Camila who is treating him well:

compared to

2. the sheer exhaustion and feeling of "What now...?" (see his upper eyelids below?) that set in, once he helped Willow find her parents and there was no more task at hand that didn't involve himself. His bright smile from a split-second ago has drooped and disappeared:

I know that right after the above frame, Darius and Eberwolf reunited with him, but his emotions are going to cycle up and down in the hours, weeks and months ahead. The elation from seeing Darius and Eber - people who were there to greet him when he expected nobody to turn up - is not going to last, though it will certainly come and go, because high-running positive emotions like that don't last as long, especially in the context of the life he's had as a child soldier. It's totally possible that on the same night, hours after this reunion with their loved ones, their emotions will shift drastically.

The tired look in his eyes above and the sad face he then makes, is in between two moments of him having something external to focus on (Willow and then Darius). I'm inclined to think that the above depressed look reflects a lot of the complexity that is going on underneath the surface. What is his state of mind when alone with his thoughts, when he has zero tasks to perform? How is he handling those thoughts?

There will be a deep, sometimes mind-numbing sense of bereavement over two significant figures in his life. First Flapjack, now this:

He used to love Belos. But I'm really not sure he can just uproot that love from deep within and discard it. Hunter carries memories like the following ones around which will be confusing to navigate on tougher days, despite being able to tell Luz "That's what Belos does, he tricks people". Because these were his formative years:

and something tells me that Philip was cunning enough to strike a delicate balance between being 'nice' to Hunter like above, versus unleashing his violent temper to terrify and harm him. Making sure that balance was so close to 50/50 that it would leave a child very confused. So confused he would rather believe he's never good enough rather than the more frightening prospect that his so-called family does not actually love him at all.

Hunter will have a moment now and then of still missing the 'niceness' that his 'uncle' showed towards him (felt in his heart and subconscious), while still knowing (in his head, rationally) that Philip was not genuine when treating him that way.

To note though, he did not witness Belos's death which reduces the severity of intrusive images that the poor kid would see in his mind.

What I'm worried about is how he'll handle the news about the grimwalker graveyard, since I'm sure that location is going to be scoured and Darius would want to give his mentor a proper sending off. They'd want to give all the Golden Guards and Caleb a sending off and pay their respects. This might add to what I suspect will be the messed up depression he'll fall into.

It will be very confusing and emotionally disorienting, literally not needing to worry about anyone killing him anymore. He has had no point of reference for this in his life at all. It might possibly the furthest he ever goes from that primal survival instinct he had while living in the Castle for so long, which took up the majority of his life so far:

There will also be the added layer of how he feels about those first emotions. This is literally a concept called Feelings About Feelings and it's a key part of my work since I use the Satir Model in my style of counselling. We don't just feel emotions, we also tack on our own judgments and evaluations about them. E.g. shame about feeling anger, guilt about feeling sad because of burdening others, or even a combination like fear about feeling joy which can show up in healing from bereavement.

Depending on how we feel about whichever emotions got there first, it makes a difference because we could be adding or subtracting unnecessary suffering from the first emotion, especially if the first emotion is an already unpleasant one.

I have a feeling that we'd see Hunter look very very tired, till he makes breakthroughs in therapy. A tiredness that sleep, a healthy diet and exercise alone simply cannot fix. Because there's an entire upbringing in the Emperor's Coven to sort through in his head, this time not combined with the avoidance of having fled to the human realm and living under one roof with his friends.

The Hexsquad are not living under the same roof anymore, they are reunited with their own families with much to emotionally talk out, and the group no longer has a very urgent single collective mission. Sure, Hunter has an active role to play in rebuilding the Isles, but what about rebuilding his very self? He has the steepest climb, because we have seen the symptoms he exhibits.

Most of all, referencing a section of my Retraumatization and Self-Soothing (Part 1) meta (link), a memory as horrible as this:

will likely be the most intrusive image is going to be replaying again and again over the months to come, and it may flood his thoughts during moments of being triggered or even out of nowhere during quiet moments for no apparent reason. It will be just like a broken record, where the same small excerpt of a song loops endlessly until the needle of the gramophone is repositioned.

It was remarkably poignant that his final words to Belos were "And most of all, I'm going to make sure you never hurt anyone again", and I'm happy with the story keeping it this way and understand why the writers likely made this decision - not just because the season was shortened. Hunter did not need to directly see or hear more from Belos in close quarters, not after his abuser minimized his needs for years, gaslit him, possessed him and got him to murder his best friend with his own hands.

It's more straightforward to make sure someone else isn't hurting anyone. It's easier to think of what plans to implement, when it comes to him protecting others: which he has had plenty of practice with. Because those are practical methods that we can see in action on the outside.

But here's the kicker: what about applying that last grand statement from his TTT speech to himself, emotionally: making sure he isn't psychologically hurting himself with harmful unhelpful thoughts and beliefs, after Belos's death? "I'll make sure I don't hurt myself (and by extension, my loved ones) again".

This will be very new to him, and it is a theme that I handle in pretty much every client case in my therapy work. The client's self-dialogue, the self-compassion or lack thereof. Which, in real life, is often not a concept that our own families and schools introduce to us to be familiar with.

For Hunter, this may translate into him making the decision to get help and truly accepting the gift of life that Flapjack gave him.

Basically this on a much bigger scale:

whereby in Flapjack's absence, he can truly believe in this new and positive fundamental belief about himself. The evidence that he managed to make it to that heartbreaking but incredibly beautiful place is pretty strong:

But before his happy ending, the pressure on himself to be useful to others via helping and working is likely going to come back and be used as his way of coping, and there's a chance it will cross the line into becoming a form of self-harm that he's relying on to avoid the frightening, deeper emotional pain. People around him know him well enough that they'll be able to spot his behavioral changes and then sense he is not going in a helpful direction. They'll see that it's hurting him even though it's the most familiar territory for his mind to be in, and someone is going to tell him to change that.

He's going to be seeing his friends with their palismen. How will it be like being among them, even if they are pretty good at supporting him? How would he attempt to make sense of the void that is the absence of the incredible love he experienced from that first friend, the absence of that mental link between witch and palisman?

What emotions could be lurking beneath the surface? Believe it or not, there are some signs from Luz's nightmare even though yes, Hunter was being controlled by The Collector. I wouldn't quickly dismiss this dark Flapjack-related scene as 100% being about The Collector's goal to scare Luz in the nightmare.

I think there was a smaller subplot going on as well.

The Collector needed material to work with in the first place, to perform the puppet acts: the material was whatever fears and whatever pain was already there in their targets.

The Collector didn't create Hunter's emotions from scratch for the puppet act; instead he manipulated and redirected what existed at the base level. All this wouldn't work as analogies of mental illness vs. mental health if The Collector could just engineer emotions on their own and simply replace whatever his puppet targets were already feeling. Emotions never vanish and always take up space somewhere, they are redirected, transformed or channeled into outlets even if it means they become repressed or locked away. But they never stop existing.

I have a feeling that despite the nightmare being Luz's, despite Hunter being used as an instrument for The Collector to achieve their goals...the pre-existing emotions that Hunter himself felt in his body, not puppet!Hunter's verbal responses towards Luz, were true. He is a haunted boi.

This face he makes above might be a hint at the worst of his pain. It might be the furthest he has felt from when he said "I like who I am right now" to Flapjack. In the place of that confidence from before, there might now be his own version of Luz's "I'm as bad as Belos". I cannot be entirely certain, but the negative belief that may have taken root in him could be "I am not deserving of the life Flapjack gave me".

Interestingly, if this is the case, it could easily parallel his line from all the way back in Any Sport in A Storm: "I'm unfit to wear the sigil of the Golden Guard." It's definitely a possibility, since Hunter is now faced with having a lot of time and space now, and less urgency than he's ever had in his life, to think back on all those times he helped to further Belos's cause. Especially when it came to sending many palismen to their deaths.

With his own palisman now dead, the engraving we would eventually see on Flapjack's grave: "Thank you for finding me", would be the destination. But the journey needed to reach that destination of amazing gratitude in the first place...must have been a harrowing one. In the early months of the acute grief, it would've been more like "Why did you have to find me?! You shouldn't have. Then none of this would've happened". Not forgetting the number of times Hunter has replayed in his head what he could've done differently, trying so desperately to rewind the clock and make that better alternate timeline a reality.

If you remove The Collector and even Luz from the equation in the Luz nightmare scene, Hunter may well be having such responses - the ones that puppet!Hunter directed at Luz to blame Luz - as a dialogue with himself. He might direct those negative emotions towards himself since he's so careful about hurting others and has taken on unfair punishment for so much of his life.

Even when he was temporarily himself, smiling, expressing a positive emotion to encourage Luz with "What's the first thing you do when you wake up from a bad dream?", that was him conversing with another person, someone external. Not his own self. I am willing to bet he wasn't at a point in his arc where he would smile at himself like that and easily encourage himself in the same way.

While we can be certain he had already reached his breakthroughs by the time we saw him post-timeskip, he has not experienced them yet in the frame above. He has not felt (yet) what Luz felt onscreen when she had breakthroughs in relation to her moral injury:

Taking a leap of faith to accept the Titan's gift, to trust that he chose her because she has a good heart and will never be Belos.

Then later, being able to stand firm, believing she truly is good ("I am the Good Witch Luz!"), and not uttering a word to Belos as he died - which was post-traumatic growth beyond how she broke down under his threats and manipulation towards the end of Hollow Mind and later in King's Tide.

Recap time. In the (quite likely) long period that passes by before we meet his new palismen, he's likely going to want to jump into action and attend meetings with Darius, Eberwolf and co, help to physically rebuild things and organize people with his own Coven Head experience. Leaning back on the ingrained and familiar lifestyle of pouring himself into work and gearing towards burnout is certainly a risk to watch out for.

The Hexsquad, CATTs and the Clawthorne sisters are going to notice his behavior and likely urge him to get appropriate rest and seek help.

However, there is the other extreme: Belos isn't around anymore to torment him, and Hunter would know this in the rational sense (head knowledge). Which leads to the possibility that he may swing towards shutting down as opposed to overworking tendencies. He would feel allowed to do whatever he wants, in this new Boiling Isles, and he had months of opportunities to do that in the early part of Thanks to Them before Belos's return.

What I'm getting at is, if he didn't sleep enough before, he might swing towards sleeping too much after finally collapsing from the familiarity of survival mode into unknown but genuinely safe territory. If he cared too much about helping others before, he might swing towards a depressive state of apathy (the closest canon reference point would be him digging his grave: he was very disarmed in that scene to even think much about helping anyone including Belos). This is why the screenshot I used of his smile drooping in The Collector's Palace, feels like a big clue to me. This would be where Darius, Camila and other adults have to seriously keep watch over him.

In the Cinema Therapy episode I had as a small reference for this post, the licensed therapist who hosts the series mentions that "It takes a lot longer to put oneself back together than it took to fall apart." In Hunter's case, the "falling apart" period here refers to that collapsing I mentioned. It would be the time between:

1. the grief hitting him in full force: when he subconsciously understands and acknowledges that Flapjack isn't coming back (which...will involve hell of a lot of wailing and sobbing. Him having a full version cry of those first few tears he shed at the end of TTT),

and

2. the time when the painful shock from feeling the full force of the grief has decreased enough that it plateaus.

This falling apart stage may need to pass before he seeks therapy. If he tries going for sessions while still going through that shock and pain, it might be too much for him.

As terrible and sad as it sounds, a deep dark spiral like this might be necessary. It would be his body and mind wanting to compensate for several years' worth of unnatural hypervigilance which wasn't serving him in a advantageous way (i.e. surviving) any longer. His body and mind begging for rest at last, to try and make sense of everything that happened. This big collapse into depression would empty out the old and free up much room in him for new stories, beliefs and perspectives to take root. Depression is, after all, the body's attempt to (maladaptively) try and protect us by numbing us, or else we would be overwhelmed.

As someone whom we know keeps himself very busy, this could be the period where he is the furthest he has ever been from that old simpler life. Because his CPTSD-ridden body would be demanding more than ever that he compensates for a childhood and teen years' lack of general rest, he may not even have the strength to cope the way he did before. The only way he might possibly cope in this period is to go with the flow of that raging current and do exactly what his body is asking of him: getting real rest.

Like what happened with Katniss in the Hunger Games trilogy, this early grieving stage would emotionally be difficult and terrifying, like walking along a tightrope, finding balance between left and right to angle yourself as straightly as possible and walk forward. (the tightrope metaphor is what I use with some of my clients to explain swinging between extremes of coping mechanisms).

The missing pieces of the puzzle in his arc, in the 4-year duration before the timeskip, might be his own version of these points in Luz's arc:

where she sank lower before she realized her deepest wish and emotionally experienced her worst fear in her Watching and Dreaming nightmare.

For Hunter, these could look like the following:

Like Luz saying it'd be better for everyone that she permanently stays in the human realm, Hunter might say he wants to remove himself from his loved ones in some way, for good. Whether a literal suicide attempt (like Katniss from The Hunger Games) or not, I can't say for sure.

A parental figure trying to reach out to him, saying he is deserving of Flapjack's gift. But he still struggles to believe that. What matters though is this parental figure is present and he's not pushing them away.

Him hearing some confirmation of his deepest negative belief about himself, in his own nightmares. Like Luz hearing the most terrifying things she could ever hear - Amity's "You've been the real villain this whole time" and "But for the sake of everyone you hurt, I challenge you to a witch's [duel]".

Him being able to reach an emotional space where he can begin to question that unhelpful belief: "Am I really deserving of Flapjack's gift?", or something similar.

The big moment when he finally tells someone how he really feels about the possession, Belos's death, Flapjack's absence in this new supposed peace and quiet....this would be the important invitation for the other person to connect and meet his emotional needs, and is a lot like how support groups for addiction work: a client needs to acknowledge that they are struggling with a problem, not avoiding it with distractions any longer, and then seek help and express their need for said help.

I suppose the question is how soon Hunter might decide to accept professional help and give it a go: or whether he'd have the genuine need for space first and say "I need some time". Because one's rational mind can be ready to go for therapy, but their subconscious and body would find it too unpleasant if it's too soon. Every part of him would have to be ready to begin putting himself back together after the falling apart stage occurs.

The messed up experience of CPTSD is that you stay shockingly calm during real danger, but on the flip side have big, disproportionate freakouts during actually safe times. Compare how calm Hunter was when he smiled at Luz in her nightmare while he was tied up with puppet strings vs. his fear and shame when he couldn't save Luz in Clouds on the Horizon. 

In a CPTSD memoir I read, the author describes that it was horribly frightening to hear her partner be in a bad mood and wash the dishes more loudly than usual, while during the pandemic, she felt completely calm seeing empty shelves in a supermarket when she struggled to get supplies.

From my own experience, I have experienced being pretty damn calm when bleeding out and needing hospitalization. But in a different year before that, I recall one afternoon alone in my house right before a vacation where a strong gust of wind very loudly slammed an open door shut next to where I happened to be standing, and I broke down sobbing from a retraumatization via an emotional flashback. Because it felt extremely real as if my abusive parent was lashing out to physically hurt me. 

After a 5-year period of mostly being in talk therapy, and then a 2-year period of regularly scheduled EMDR therapy, my response if I have a door loudly slam shut near me now would maybe be a smaller-scale flinch and a flash of anger that would last about maybe a minute. Which is miles better than sobbing for half an hour and being dissociated and frozen in a memory for hours before I thaw out of that flashback.

Since the show's writing is just that good, I could look at Luz's depressive symptoms manifesting in Thanks to Them and see a likely parallel in Hunter's story moving forward, since we know how much this show also digs neat and tidy parallels. These are characters written for TV after all, so they'd have to fit a formula to an extent, to have compelling arcs and reach high and low points along said arcs.

Part 2: Therapy Itself

Part 1 was the setup to give a good amount of context: now for the technicalities of the therapy sessions themselves:

Like Adrian Graye said in Labyrinth Runners, Illusion Magic can sort through memories. We have seen from Gus's own powerful Illusion abilities that he could do so with Belos. It makes sense that a therapist does this in sessions to have a magnified version of how in our world, therapists exercise empathy by imagining what it is like to be their clients:

I would monitor whether his mood (what he is feeling within) and affect (how the emotions appear on the outside e.g. tone of voice, face expressions) are congruent. Congruence usually means a client is in less distress. Incongruence might mean they are in so much pain that they can't connect directly with the main emotion: the perfect example of this being Hunter laughing when digging his grave.

We therapists take note of aspects such as affect, mood, the client's motor activity, any indicators of psychosis, even down to things like how untidy their hair looks in case we get clues about the severity of their issues (this is called a Mental Status Exam, and we write what we see in our case notes per session).

Because CPTSD is so relationship-centric, I'd discuss how he's getting along with new parental figures (the Belos replacements who will heal him so much and change his life forever!) and friends.

If the Boiling Isles therapists use their own equivalent of EMDR therapy, which is theorized to be like a waking version of how REM sleep and REM-related dreams help our brains to sort through memories, it sounds like a great fit for his case. This intervention involves subconscious work and could help him reshape how he experiences memories of Flapjack and Belos. EMDR clients are expected to see vivid images popping up without control in their mind during the sessions, and they are quite symbolic e.g. seeing a grey sky often indicates grief, seeing lighter colors indicates more calm. This technique helps a client's subconscious rewrite their story the way they'd like it to be, and install new positive beliefs and emotions over time.

My own example of EMDR experiences from the second half of 2019 as a client, is it majorly changed how I related to my own abuser, got me to finally feel allowed to emotionally break away from her, even though she is still alive and even lives in the same building.

In the early sessions, I saw an image of my 5-year-old self being forced to wear an ugly grey apron that my abuser used for baking. The apron is a real object, not fictional, and the emotions I felt showing up were matching with the image: feeling very uncomfortable seeing a visual representation of my abuser's hold over me.

But in a later session after a few months, guided by my therapist, I saw a vivid image of my abuser receiving a sea burial. She was lying peacefully on the water surface and sank down until she was gone. That was me subconsciously burying any expectation that she could ever provide what I needed. This was so powerful that I could go home after that session and permanently (so far) be significantly calmer around my abuser.

Therefore if Hunter goes through something like this, he'd potentially be able to put Belos to rest and have it feel very real and true: and have significantly reduced distress about Belos-related memories. There is the potential for powerful breakthroughs for him here, especially also related to Flapjack's death and how challenging it might be to carve palismen in the beginning. Especially since in the worst case scenario, even touching palistrom wood might be enough to badly trigger him. I cover this particular point a bit more in my other meta, Retraumatization and Self-Soothing (Part 1).

We would also be discussing what he's implementing into his routine and what may benefit him. I would be seeing if he is able to laugh about things, be motivated enough to be outdoors and among people, experience pleasure when creating new things, and form closer bonds with parental figures (what I just listed is to do with neurotransmitters in the brain that increase mental health: serotonin, endorphins, dopamine and oxytocin).

If I were his therapist I might suggest that whatever volunteering tasks he does, he carries those out with his friends, and time should be allocated to managing and taking care of a specific demographic: children. Because I think it'd be a safe, low stakes form of unfamiliarity for him to have enough emotional distance from his traumatic memories. Early months of acute grief usually require such emotional distance.

Having a good dose of an environment like that alongside the other tasks where he's working alongside Darius etc, could help him because kids' emotions are less complex, and their infectious laughter and fun-loving nature may play a role in helping him be more open with his own inner child. His therapist would be seeking to draw out that inner child in their sessions, and that little child would need to feel safe enough to emerge.

Importantly, his future palisman: it would've been interesting if he did what Luz did with Stringbean and allowed the palisman to be whoever they wanted to be...that would've been a nicely organic process. But even if he had a good idea to incorporate a Flapjack-like design but change details like the color, I'm sure he thought it through very well. I'm certain that this was a major topic of discussion at some stage of his therapy. Discussing the guilt he'd feel about replacing Flapjack vs. still taking Flapjack with him in a new way.

Coming from a strengths-based angle: paying attention to which of his individual strengths he is shows and recounts in the session. If he needs reminding, I could give him a simple worksheet listing various positive qualities and ask him to circle/colour in which ones he feels he has, which then prompts further discussion and questions. Lastly, a powerful tool called reframing e.g. if he says he's worried about being a nuisance to his friends, I'll point out how much he cares about their comfort and affirm that place of kindness.

Work on inviting self-compassion into how he sees himself. Is he able to view himself the way he views his friends? If he remembers the encouragement he gave to Luz about "turning on the light", I would ask him what that would look like in his own life, symbolically.

Hunter's own life has been a really really bad dream for a very long time. He himself has to reach for that light switch and choose to heal by embracing Flapjack's ultimate gift to him.

And we can rest assured that Hunter did that.

Because this post-traumatic growth right here?

This looks like multiple breakthroughs have taken place while he's been receiving consistent care from an excellent community. And there's no way it was an easily won victory. It has been very much hard-won, after how dark the story became in Hollow Mind and Thanks to Them, and it looks like whatever breakthroughs he had left him pleasantly surprised.

It doesn't seem like his heart and soul can contain this much joy and hope, without a very painful dismantling to have taken place first, to make room for the most unexpected treasures to fill his life back up.

The joy becomes even greater if you never would've expected it in your wildest dreams.

[physalian]

Color in Fiction! (Once You See it, You Cannot Unsee it)

White versus black, red versus blue, Gatsby’s green light, Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, Belle’s blue dress.

Color is perhaps the most ubiquitous motif used across both fiction and reality to thread people or objects through a common theme, or to pit two ideologies against each other beyond their verbal spats. Color is also perhaps the simplest motif, but that doesn’t make it any lesser in its potency.

In fiction, color is an easy way for the audience to learn as fast as possible who’s on whose side, and who their opponents are, and today, we’re going to look at a few.

But first: Crash course into color theory:

Warmer colors evoke passion or uncertainty, movement and excitement, happiness and warmth, but also rage, aggression, love, and lust. The cooler colors evoke sadness and serenity, but also youth and spring and winter and death.

Most of the time when a creator wants to juxtapose color in a narrative or other work, they’re going to use inverses, just google one of the hundreds of teal and orange movie posters. Inverses are whatever colors lie at opposite sides of the wheel. Blue and Orange, Red and Green, Purple and Yellow. These pairs show up either in opposition, or as an ensemble of one character or a group or team.

Part 1: Black and White

Yes it has grounds in racism, but black and white are also accepted to mean chaos and order, good and evil, death and life.

In a show like Lost, themes of black and white are constant. The black and white backgammon pieces, the colors of the Dharma station logos, the show’s main title card, God stand-in Jacob (Lucifer from Supernatural), and his unnamed brother, the Man in Black.

Black and white show up *everywhere,* in some places subtler than others. In fiction with a male and female lead, if they are coded in black and white, the man is almost always the one in black. Black means strength and mystery and this deep, almost corrupted darkness. White is purity, femininity, youth, and nurturing, when a woman wears it, unless she's the villain.

Villains in white are very often surprise villains:

The White Witch (Chronicles of Narnia)

Saruman (Lord of the Rings)

President Coin (Hunger Games)

Hans (Frozen), Mayor Bellweather (Zootopia), Auto (Wall-E)

Elizabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean is an interesting case. She begins the first movie wearing light colors and being trapped in the pure and lawful life of the governor’s daughter. She ends her arc in the third movie in solid black (through several costumes) a badass Pirate King and wife of the new Captain of the Flying Dutchman.

Men in black are chivalrous, dark knights, or morally grey vigilantes, silent badasses, or edgy badboys. Black is also of course reserved for villains a la Darth Vader, or Severus Snape and Voldemort and a million others. The "Black Knight" is his own trope, whether he's in a fantasy setting or not.

Women in black are temptresses, or seductive badasses. Black is the color of corruption, sin, and angst in western media 9 times out of 10 unless a narrative wants to subvert it.

I could do an entire essay on black and white in Lord of the Rings alone but here's a few other contrasts: The white Tower of Ecthelion, Minas Tirith, the "White City", the White Tree, Gandalf the White. The Black Riders, Black Speech, Black Land of Mordor, Orthanc (Saruman's Tower).

But you don’t have to make your character’s entire costumes black and white, no, you can just make their hair light and dark.

Part 2: Hair

**Possibly also because racism but we don’t have time to unpack all that right now**

When you have your male protagonist and his male foil, love interest, competition, companion, lancer, or villain, most of the time (in western media where blonds are in abundance) the more noble or “good” character of the two will be blond, the other brunet, especially in a love triangle. If two male characters have opposing ideologies on any level, they will often have opposing hair. A male and female lead duo will also tend to have opposing hair, but it’s most obvious what they’re doing when it’s two dudes and not just coincidence.

Here’s a nonexhaustive list, with the brunet first (ignoring if the adaptation was faithful):

Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamnee (LoTR)

Aragorn and Boromir (LoTR)

Aragorn and Theoden (LoTR)

Denethor and Faramir (LoTR)

Thorin and Bilbo (Hobbit)

Jack Shephard and James “Sawyer” Ford (Lost)

Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar (Brokeback Mountain) *Also have opposing hats*

Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent (The Dark Knight)

Tony Stark and Steve Rogers (Marvel)

Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers (Marvel)

Loki and Thor (Marvel)

Nico di Angelo and Will Solace (Percy Jackson)

Percy Jackson and Jason Grace (Percy Jackson)

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (the Cumberbatch one)

Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester (Supernatural)

Edmund Pevensie and Peter Pevensie (Chronicles of Narnia)

Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark (Hunger Games)

Damon Salvatore and Stefan Salvatore (Vampire Diaries)

Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby (2013 Gatsby)

Caledon Hockley and Jack Dawson (Titanic)

Notable nonexhaustive exceptions:

Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter)

Percy Jackson and Luke Castellan (Percy Jackson)

Jacob Black and Edward Cullen (Twilight)

Batman and Superman (DC Comics)

Luke Skywalker and Han Solo (Star Wars)

Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars) *wardrobe makes up for it*

*Feel free to tag the ones I missed

Not every brunet on the list is a “bad” guy, nor is every blond the “good” guy, but compared to each other, the brunet tends to be the more morally grey, the more corrupted, the one who’s ideologies end up getting them hurt or killed or proving them wrong. Or, the brunet faces more demons, has a darker personality, or tends to have a “shoot first ask questions later” philosophy.

This of course goes out the window if the media is set in a region or with a cast of characters who are meant to share similar features, like how there’s no blondes at all in Last Airbender (otherwise Aang would absolutely fit the pattern).

Whether that’s Frodo getting corrupted by the Ring and Sam being his rock, Jack Twist getting murdered while Ennis lives on, or the beloved Dark Knight and his bat-black demons while Harvey’s White legacy saves Gotham, next time you write a brunet and his blond competition, ask yourself just why you’re doing it.

*Side note, I’m pretty sure Harvey Dent, when he’s animated, is usually a brunet, but he’s also usually Two-Face by then and no longer a hero*

I don’t even have time for black and white in anime or the trope of the white-haired anime boy and since natural hair colors are kind of moot, I don’t think the same rules apply. But outside of the westernized “black knight vs white knight” I do want to dig deeper into color motifs in anime at some point.

Here's some notable dark and light dichotomies nonetheless in wardrobe and/or hair:

Kirito and Asuna (Sword Art Online)

Lelouch and Suzaku (Code Geass)

Midoriya and Bakugo (My Hero Academia)

L and Light (Death Note)

Medusa and Stein (Soul Eater)

Sasuke and Naruto (Naruto)

Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Eiji and Ash (Banana Fish)

Kyoya and Tamaki (OHSHC)

Yuri and Viktor (Yuri!!! On Ice)

Dracula and Alucard (Castlevania)

Part 3: Red v. Blue and everything in between

The megalith that is the color motif extends past the white/black dichotomy.

It’s also red and blue.

If red is pitted against blue in any story, red is always the team the audience is supposed to root against, unless this is sports. Red is the color of the Sith, the Fire Nation, red eyes are seen as evil, red is blood and rage and wrath and fire. Red is the color of evil empires. Blue is the color of heroes. It’s water and healing and camaraderie, serenity. Blue is the color of rebels and underdogs.

Red versus blue is in everything from the color of lightsabers in Star Wars to the color of cybertronian eyes in Transformers, to the color of the Water Tribes and Fire Nations (with some exceptions a la Azula’s blue fire) to the colors of the pills in the Matrix. Red is the ‘dangerous’ choice, blue is the ‘safe’ choice. Unless your character is patriotically sporting the red, white and blue of the UK, USA, or France.

Villains usually only wear blue if they're ice-coded, or belong to a faction wearing navy blue uniforms.

Red versus blue also shows up between leaders and their lancers. The first one I can think up off the top of my head is Robin and Raven from Teen Titans.

Purple is also usually lumped in with the bad guys and green with the good guys, but purple and green also show up a ton as contrasting colors of the same character like the Hulk or the Joker. But both can swing either way. The Decepticons in the early cartoons for Transformers had purple everywhere and reclaimed it in Transformers: Prime. Megatron, Soundwave, Shockwave, the Vehicons, Airachnid, and the Dark Star Saber, and some G1s]. Prime also has three sets of red-blue dichotomies within their factions: [Arcee/Cliffjumper, Optimus/Ratchet, and Knockout/Breakdown].

Green is the color of more Jedi, and the Green Lanterns, but green also represents sickness or disease or generic evil energy a la Loki, Dr. Facilier (Princess and the Frog) or the Hyenas and Scar in the Lion King.

Pink is really up in the air, as is orange and yellow, especially when it comes to female characters, especially female anime characters.

But enough about color dichotomy.

Part 4: Color Singularity

Color singularly is either meant to evoke a specific emotion, like using blue everywhere to represent sadness, or it’s meant to be a bold statement in an otherwise grayscale world.

I mentioned a few at the top of the post and I’ll elaborate on them here:

In Great Gatsby, green and yellow are very important colors. The “green light” is this real object at the end of the titular character’s love interest’s dock. This light and this color are motifs that represent Gatsby’s longing for Daisy and to return to a glorious past he can never have again (it’s also the color of American money). Yellow is also everywhere in this book. It’s the color of his chekov’s car and several dresses at his extravagant party. Yellow is the color of his current life of glitz and glam and riches (and is also the color of gold). If you listen to one of the accompanying songs to the 2013 film, Florence and the Machine’s “Over the Love” recognizes the importance of yellow in the narrative.

Dorothy’s red slippers in the Wizard of Oz are hyperbolically bold, especially since the movie starts out in black and white. Color is a huge piece of this film- the Emerald City, the Yellow Brick Road, the horse of many colors. Red scientifically is the color humans tend to notice first, those shoes were made to be remembered. Color in Wizard of Oz is the symbol of the fantastical, which was really helped by the time the film was made and simply seeing so much color on screen dazzled audiences.

Red catches your eye faster than any other color, and red in a world of black and white sticks in your mind, just look at Schindler’s List.

Belle from Beauty and the Beast, along with a lot of fictional women wear blue. Blue is biblically Mary’s color, and at one time was the color marketed to women before the shift to “blue for boys”. In the original Beauty and the Beast, Belle was the only character who wore blue, because she was an outsider, and outlier, a free-thinker. Or at least, Belle is the only one who wears blue until she dances with the Beast. The live-action remake didn’t maintain this extra level of the narrative and that’s a shame.

I didn't mention eye color much above (also maybe because racism) but blue eyes, especially animated blue and green eyes, go to characters who are more hopeful, heroic, nurturing, morally just, honest, or brave than their brown-eyed counterparts, unless he's a blue-eyed Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Blue-eyed people tend to be blond, so the traits go hand in hand for the "good" character.

Weirdly enough, this also applies to blue-eyed animal characters -- your animated anthropomorphised villain is rarely going to be drawn with eyes that aren't brown, black, green, red, orange, or yellow.

Because color is also a subliminal or overt way of foreshadowing in both written and visual media as much as any other motif and recurring symbol. You can foreshadow death, or impending doom, or an eventual identity reveal, whatever you want.

You can also subvert the usual associations with specific colors. Black doesn’t have to mean evil in your world. Black can be life, too. White doesn’t have to be pure, white can be clinical and sterile and lifeless (but please no more lady villains in white pantsuits, that's its own cliche at this point). Shake it up a bit every once in a while.

So whether it’s dueling ideologies or the very forces of good and evil, a harbinger of doom or a secret tell, or community and camaraderie, or an enduring hope, you can represent it all with a careful dose of color.

[livingdreams97]

Tara Carpenter -- "The lies I keep" (Part 1)

Tara Carpenter x Male reader/oc

Summary: Having a normal life is difficult after the one she considered her best friend tries to kill her and causes distrust in everyone she meets. But something or rather someone manages to enter her heart and hiding that person is the best thing that occurs to her.

Words: 3.333

NEXT

Masterlist

(If you haven't seen Scream VI yet, don't read this because it contains spoilers or read it, but at your own risk.)

POV You

New York has always been my home, my safe place. The hustle and bustle of the streets during the day and the background noise 24/7 relax me in a strange way. Born and raised on the Upper East Side, in Manhattan, and I know the city like the back of my hand.

My life felt like the one in the movies, when the protagonists explore and live every part of New York. Sometimes I even feel like I live inside the Gossip Girl series and that everything is perfect.

But let's face it, nothing is perfect and happiness is not eternal.

Yes, I live in a 300 square meter duplex and also, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in all of New York. But what is the use of having such a big house, when your parents are never home and you are an only child.

Because one thing is clear and that is that to live where I do, you have to have money and a lot of it. But for my parents that has never been a problem.

Both my mother and father come from wealthy families, but other than that; my father is one of the best surgeons in the entire state and my mother has her own law firm. So the two generate a good sum of money.

But that also means one thing: travel. My parents have spent their lives traveling from one part of the state to another, either because the clients are very important or because of some kind of congress or some of those things.

But in their defense I have to say that they always call me to find out how I am, they are interested and concerned about me. In addition to the fact that when they are at home, they usually try to spend as much time as possible with me and try to be there for me.

And now that I'm in college, I'm officially living alone. My parents thought that I would like to have my own apartment and decided to buy me a flat for my birthday. Of course, it is a ten minute walk from where they lived and thus be close in case I need anything.

Although first they would have to be at home to help me, but I don't object since they let me choose the floor and the decoration.

XX: Hey .- I hear someone greet me, taking me out of my thoughts and returning me to reality.

I turn my head to the right, meeting the person who greeted me and I can't help but smile at his presence.

Y/n: Hello.- I greet with a huge smile full of emotion, causing the other person to laugh and sit next to me in class.

XX: What makes you so happy? - she asks me funny leaving her bag on the table.

Y/n: My girlfriend.- I answer shrugging my shoulders.

XX: Oh yes? - she asks me with too much interest and I nod. -And do I know her?- she asks resting her elbow on the table and her chin in the palm of her hand watching me.

Y/n: I don't know, maybe.- I answer with a grimace imitating her posture. -She has almost black dark brown hair, she has brown eyes, she is super intelligent, she has the most beautiful smile in the world and she is 1.55 cm tall. Do you know her? - I ask her funny.

XX: I'm not sure.- she says with a thoughtful face. -The description seems familiar to me, but I don't fall for it.- she denies with false disappointment.

Y/n: What a pity, because I was thinking of inviting her to eat and to see a movie, but I haven't seen her so nothing.- I comment letting out a fake sad sigh.

XX: Well, invite me then.- she suggests with an amused smile.

Y/n: I'm sorry Carpenter, but I'm a faithful man.- I shake my head, holding back my laughter and looking away.

Tara: Idiot.- she slaps me gently on the shoulder, letting out a laugh and causing me to do it too.

Y/n: But you like me that way.- I assure her with a smile, placing a lock of hair behind her ear and caressing her cheek affectionately.

Tara: Unfortunately.- she whispers frustrated rolling her eyes.

Y/n: Hey! - I exclaim offended, sitting upright in my chair and looking at her with crossed arms.

Tara: Just kidding.- she laughs hugging my neck and getting me closer to her. -I like you very, very, very much.- she assures me a few centimeters from my face.

Y/n: I don't know, I´m not sure.- I say with narrowed eyes. -You don't convince me.- I deny holding the smile that struggles to come to light.

Tara: And what can I do to convince you? - she asks a few centimeters from my lips and with an intense look.

Y/n: Food and a movie? - I ask appreciating her face in detail, or how little I can see with her closeness. -They have premiered a quite passable comedy.- I warn her with a slight smile, knowing that because of her past, the scary ones are a resounding NO and I understand it perfectly.

Tara: I can't.- she denies with a slight grimace and my smile disappears. - Mindy wants to try a new restaurant and if I disappear for a whole afternoon Sam would go crazy.- she explains and I nod.

Y/n: Maybe another day .- I sigh a little sadly, since we don't usually have many opportunities to spend time together and the truth is that I wanted to spend some time with her.

Tara: I promise you that this week we'll go eat together, okay? - she tells me and I nod again. -Thank you for understanding.- she whispers affectionately, before joining our lips and moving them slowly.

The kiss doesn't last long, as the teacher enters the class and everyone sits in their places. As the teacher explains today's material, I can't help but tune out what he says and think about my relationship.

I met Tara on the first day of class six months ago, when I was late because of traffic and the only free seat was next to her.

In the beginning, she always kept quiet and never spoke to me unless it was strictly necessary. But in the third week, they asked us to do a job in pairs and because we were sitting next to each other we had to do the work together.

In addition to the fact that she did not have many other options, since if she spoke to me only what was necessary, she had not even told her name to the rest of the class. So really I was her only option to do the job with.

During the first days when we did the work, Tara always kept a certain distance and limited herself to only talking about the work. At no time did she show interest in me as a person and in getting to know me.

So to avoid making her uncomfortable, I never asked her anything personal or anything that wasn't about work. And clearly, i didn´t tell her anything about myself either.

But at some point during the job, she began to feel more comfortable and became a little closer. She even came to ask me about my life and has told me some things about hers.

Two weeks later, though, Tara would admit to me that she had lied to me about a few things, like that she wasn't really from Michigan but from Woodsboro and that the scar on her hand didn't come from a kitchen accident, but that someone had attacked her disguised as Ghostface half a year ago or so.

At first I was surprised by her story and she apologized for lying to me, but she didn't feel safe to tell me the truth until that moment. I understood, since it doesn't have to be pleasant to live that experience and have someone as close as your best friend try to kill you.

That makes anyone distrust all the people they know and those they will meet at some point in their life.

So I didn't give it any importance and I didn't ask her any questions on the subject. Mostly because I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable or stop talking to me forever.

From the first moment I thought that Tara was a very pretty girl, but with time and getting to know her a bit more, I cannot deny that certain feelings began to surface.

So I didn't want her to freak out over some stupid question i did and decided I wasn't to be trusted or something like that and then stop talking to me.

Although the unthinkable happened two weeks later, when we said goodbye after class I went to kiss her on the cheek and she accidentally moved, causing me to kiss her on the lips.

We were both shocked and embarrassed at the moment, but she just asked me if I would be interested in a coffee one day and a week later we were a couple.

Couple now of four and a half months more or less. And even though I couldn't be happier and feel like the luckiest man in my life, to have the most wonderful woman in the world as my girlfriend. Not everything is so perfect and happy.

It took a while for Tara to be completely alone and vulnerable with me. Which I understood perfectly and always let her decide the place of our dates.

On the other hand, it is also the fact that nobody knows that we are together or even that we are friends. I'm lying. No one of her friends and sister know that we are a couple or that we even know each other.

At first, the privacy of our relationship was understandable, since as I said before, because of her past it was difficult for her to trust people and something similar happened to her friends. But her sister was somewhat more possessive or at least that's what my girlfriend always tells me.

When I've asked her why we still keep our relationship or even friendship a secret, the answer is always the same: Sam. 

She says that she is very overprotective and that she is always trying to control her. Besides, she doesn't trust new people, let alone love interests, since her ex-boyfriend was one of the murderers last year.

So her sister Sam's reason was quite understandable from my point of view, since at the end of the day all she wants is to protect her sister and make sure she's safe .

But that means that the time I spend with Tara, my girlfriend, is very limited and seems to always be timed.

I'm never going to complain about it, but it's hard for me to see couples making plans and spending time together, when I can't spend more than half an hour with my own girlfriend without someone texting her to find out where she is or if she is safe.

Every time I propose a plan, whether it's to eat something after classes, go for a walk or go to a cafeteria for a coffee, most of the time the answer is negative.

I don't even know how many times she has canceled me and promised to do the plan another day. At first I kept count unconsciously and tried to take her word for it. But over time I have stopped doing it.

It's sad and painful to tell the truth, especially when my friends; who do know that I have a girlfriend, ask me about her and about  when they will meet her and stuff like that.

But I really like Tara and although this situation hurts me at times, she is worth it.

And who knows, maybe at some point she will get encouraged and introduce me to her friends as her boyfriend, or like a friend at least.

POV Tara

I leave my last class of the day, kissing my boyfriend goodbye and walking to where I know my friends are waiting for me.

I can't help but feel bad for rejecting Y/n's plan, because it's not the first time I've done it and I'm sure it won't be the last. I feel guilty for not giving him the time he deserves and even more so seeing how thoughtful he's been during class.

Y/n is the perfect guy and I don't understand how lucky I've been to meet him. He is attentive, calm, a bit of an idiot; but in a good way, he is affectionate, funny, he gives me my space and always respects my limits.

He didn't even get angry when I admitted that I had lied to him about most of the things I told him about myself, and he didn't stop treating me differently when he found out the truth.

He continued to treat me in the same respectful and kind way he had done since the day we met. And I think that was one of the things that made me fall in love with him.

But lately I'm being the worst girlfriend in the world. Between working on other subjects, my friends who have been too present in my plans lately, and my sister who doesn't let me breathe, I don't have a free moment to be with him.

Because let's face it, there would be nothing I would want more than to go eat something with him and then cuddle against him watching a movie. Because he doesn't remind me of Woodsboro, doesn't overprotect me or control me like I'm going to get jumped at any moment. He treats me like a normal person without a traumatic past and i love that.

With him I feel calm, I feel happy and normal. With him I'm just Tara Carpenter the girl he likes, not Tara Carpenter the survivor of Ghostface, the Tara who was betrayed by her own best friend and tried to kill her three times. And that's another reason why I adore him.

Mindy: There 's my girl!- she exclaims when she sees me nearby.

Anika: Hey! - she claims, slapping her on the arm. -I'm your girl.- she reminds her with an amused smile.

Mindy: Don't worry babe, there's Mindy for everyone.- she assures her with a smile, putting her arm around her shoulders and bringing her closer to her body.

Chad: Besides, Tara's my girl.- he says jokingly, putting his arm around my shoulders and winking at me.

Ethan: Are you guys together?- He asks pointing at Chad and me with confusion and something else that I can't make out in his eyes.

Mindy: He wish.- she laughs at the question and the rest except Ethan and Chad laugh.

Quinn: Tara is a too much of a woman for Chad.- My roommate supports my best friend and they high five.

Chad: Hey! - He exclaims offended and I come out from under his shoulder.

Tara: And if it's not clear, no Ethan, we're not together.- I reply to the shy boy laughing with my friends.

Ethan: Oh, like .. you , you know.- he says nervously, pointing to where his roommate is and where I had been a few moments ago.

Tara: Well no.- I answer with a friendly smile. -And … Are we leaving or not?- I ask wanting to change the subject.

Mindy : Yessss .- she answers with her arms in the air. -I've heard that it's one of the best Mexicans in all of New York and that its tacos are to die for.- she tells us excitedly, starting to walk and heading towards the restaurant she's been talking about for days.

Chad: Changing the subject completely - he starts while we're walking as a group. -Tomorrow is Friday and Halloween .- he hums happily.

Tara: I doubt that Sam will let me out no matter how much it's Halloween or Christmas. - I deny crossing my arms, angry with my sister and her way of controlling everything I do.

Chad: Oh come on Carpenter, are you not going to your first college Halloween party because your sister forbids you? - he asks me with a false pout.

Anika: Chad, leave her alone.- she tells her girlfriend's brother in my defense.

Chad: It's our time to enjoy.- he assures us with a huge smile. -Fuck Sam and let's enjoy that we're still alive! - he exclaims trying to convince us.

Mindy: I keep wondering how come your brain hasn't had a short circuit with all the nonsense you say.- she tells her brother with a frown and a little amusement .

Chad: Because I'm right and you know it.- He points at her with a contagious smile.

As the brothers start poking each other, I'm left thinking and Chad has a point. I've been in New York for six months and I haven't been to any college party or event other than classes because of Sam.

That is to say, I can't even arrive home more than an hour late after class, because if I arrive a little later, my cell phone is already burning and organizing a search team.

My boyfriend hasn't even been to my apartment, because my sister would go crazy that I have a close friend and even more if she finds out he's my boyfriend. I mean, there's a reason I haven't told Sam that I have a boyfriend.

Tara: As much as it pains me to say it, Chad is right.- I interrupt the twins, causing everyone's attention to be on me and some to look at me in surprise.

Chad: What did you say? - he asks me with an amused smile, placing his hand next to his ear and bringing him closer to me .

Tara: You're right.- I growled amused. -Sam has her psychologist on Fridays, so she won't be home to know if I'm going out or not.- I commented with a look full of security.

Chad: Yes ! - he exclaims happily punching the air. -Party? - he asks me with a smile full of emotion.

Tara: Party.- i agree with a smile.

Mindy : Sounds good to me.- she nods, shrugging her shoulders and starts to talk about costumes.

As we all start talking about costume ideas and tomorrow's plan. Quinn tells us that she can't go, since she has a date with a guy from tinder and knowing her, I know well not to be home tomorrow.

While Chad tells us about the parties that there will be and the different fraternities that give them, I secretly take out my cell phone and look for a contact in my messages.

I find the contact immediately, entering the chat and letting Y/n know about my plans for tomorrow.

The answer is not long in coming and the smile on my face increases in size unconsciously. He tells me that his friends are also going to the same party and that he had no intention of going out. But now that he knows I'm going out, he assures me that he will find a costume and that he will see me at the party tomorrow without fail.

I couldn't be more excited right now. Tomorrow I'm going out with my party friends, without Sam and her excessive control. I will see my boyfriend and I plan to take advantage of a moment of inattention on the part of my friends, to spend time with him and enjoy the party by his side.

And who knows. Maybe after the party, I can sneak him into my apartment and do what I've been wanting to do for a while now.