#like fuck that. obviously. but i also find it hard to identify with movies like barbie that draw such a clear divide between genders

[annalyticall]

To be honest I think I'm starting to become so apathetic to gender that I could possibly be non-binary but at the same time I am also just apathetic enough to not care about changing my pronouns or doing anything differently about how i present to people

[lunar-years]

rjk hunger games au is SO GOOD i would read the hell out of that if u ever decided to write more. but also the everlark gifset you reblogged could definitely be a concerned and shaken roy (katniss) latching onto a recently revived and sarcastic jamie (peeta) who’s just casually joking about how he died. and maybe keeley takes on the role of finnick in this scenario, or she’s part of the resistance and supporting from afar.

how do you think jamie won his games? when and where do rjk figure things out for the first time? i don’t think i’m going to be able to stop thinking about this.

The book lines go so hard for that scene too: "You were dead! Your heart stopped!" *Katniss losing it* Peeta: "Well, it seems to be working now" vabvbjcsbj SIR. 1) generally a scene of all time and 2) very excellent content for Roy/Jamie AU yes yes.

I'm not sure how Jamie would win his Games because I want him to do something rebellious :) Maybe in keeping with the THG plot, he orchestrates the Katniss & Peeta berries movie only without the romantic angle. WHAT IF Sam is also in the arena and they become allies... Except Sam at the beginning is like "I am not going to last long here. I cannot kill anyone, I cannot." and Jamie is like...fuck that I'm not just letting you sit here until someone comes along and kills you wtf. So after that they have an unspoken agreement that Sam will forage for them because he's really good at identifying edible leaves and berries and Jamie will do the fighting if/when it comes to it. then when it comes down to just the two of them Jamie is like okay Sam i'm sorry but you have to kill me now. and Sam is like absolutely not. did you not hear me when I said I'm not going to kill anyone? It's okay Jamie do what you need to do. but Jamie of course says ABSOLUTELY NOT and comes up with the berry scheme!! I simply think a hunger games AU deserves a samjamie bestieism side plot.

as for rjk... Roy has isolated himself for sooo long after winning and meeting Keeley and secretly fueling the resistance with her as the liaison has finally given him a sense of purpose again 🥺 so those two are already getting close when Jamie is reaped, and Jamie again is friends with Keeley from school and because she gives him tasks to do to help the resistance. Jamie is still so young, so most of the others in the resistance dismiss him but Keeley sees how desperate he is to help and is like, well why shouldn't he? she's always seen his potential :) So they are also already very fond of each other. and roy and jamie are in their enemies to friends arc because that needs to be the royjamie dynamic in any universe, i don't make the rules. Roy finds Jamie annoying because he's always getting in the way. also in the early days after they meet Jamie tries to give Roy hunting tips just to be snarky lmao and roy is like absolutely fuck you i've been hunting before you could hold a bow. Also Jamie is relentless and nagging and won't leave roy ALONE to his own peace and loneliness in the victor's village. So by the time Jamie is reaped they have a tentative friendship and care about each other but would never admit it.

Then Jamie comes back and is obviously extremely traumatized from the experience, especially since his ally-ship with Sam had him doing all the fighting at the very end. Roy can uhhhh relate to that. more than a bit. So he takes Jamie under his wing in the Victor's Village and starts showing up to check on him and cook him meals. they learn so much more about one another and help one another to heal. Keeley continues to be their access point to the resistance in the District, because she's a bit more under the radar to the Capital since she was never in the Games. It's dangerous for Roy and Jamie to get too involved, but they help Keeley wherever they can and it basically becomes all three of them living together in Roy's giant victor village house. I'm imagining this as a slow burn of like, a year or two after Jamie's back home before they even get together. once they do though, the Capitol finds out about it and starts sending Jamie more and more often to the Capitol :( the only silver lining is that Jamie at least gets to see Sam on these trips, as Sam is another Capitol fan favorite. And Keeley and Roy get angrier and angrier back home about, well, everything but it's so much worse now that Jamie is so relentlessly being forced into prostitution. So yeah, they start getting reallyyy risky with resistance activity. Cue: Quarter Quell :(

[jacksprostate]

Do you like classical music? What are your favorite pieces?

Decently; I was a Band Kid back in the day lol so instrumental stuff has been a decent chunk of my life. I don't really listen to any of the classical greats or anything niche because I'm teeeerrible about finding new music in general much less like that; unfortunately, I've heard a lot of really good classical and jazz, but it's pretty hard to identify and retain songs (not to mention the difference of live vs recording), so all I've got is pretty well known recommendations haha. That said, they're still enjoyable and I recommend them both to people with classical and jazz exposure and people without.

Holst's suite The Planets is something I imagine everyone sort of interested in classical style music (feels weird to say. Not classical period but You Know What I Mean) already knows but they're damn good and I recommend anyone who hasn't listened to them, do so. They're essentially the blueprint for movie scores, to the point that *cough* some people just blatantly copy them *cough starwars cough*. Among those, beyond crowd favorites of Mars and Jupiter, I'm really partial to Saturn but suuuper picky about which recording I listen to for it. This is the one I like (though I recommend listening to other tracks I've linked here before this one because it's just. a lot of investment):

It's a little more uptempo than I prefer for the piece but the ending is fucking exquisite, man. A lot of recordings will have one or two musicians slide just slightly out of tune or a bit of a hard tongue and on a piece like this it's super noticable to me (in other times not at all lmao, this makes me sound like a snob), but this one is CLEAN. I'd kill to experience this in person

Otherwise, I generally prefer another album. I made myself a playlist with that album but the Saturn track is swapped with the one above, which I'll link here:

Dvorak's New World Symphony's 4th movement is fun too. I'd say it also falls into the genre of 'movie soundtracks got based off this so it feels more modern than it is'. It's also one of those songs that definitely is better live I can feel it in my bones where I should be feeling the low brass yk:

Beyond older stuff, I also like this piece:

And a favorite album of mine is:

Though obviously that's getting into jazzier territory. I'm kind of a sucker for more bigband type stuff. In particular I really like some latter sections in The Curtain, but really the whole album is fantastic.

Along similar lines:

I also enjoy some classic jazz standards like Take Five and In the Mood but who doesn't lmao there's a reason they're still insanely popular. Idk this shit rocks:

The upside of my instrumental music taste being very generic and friendly means if you haven't really listened to much, you should actually find something you like, here, though! If you're real in on it you can judge me for my answers but I will not listen to anything but recs.

I actually do want to explore more, especially with jazz honestly. Which I know you technically said classical music and those aren't always close things in people's heads but uhhhhhhhhhhhhh I did music theory for a bit and jazz is nuts man. If you think you don't like jazz there is 100% a genre of it that you'd be into it's so varied and cool as hell

I also want to go to (classical and jazz) concerts more. I miss live music. It really hits like nothing else. I really recommend anyone to look up local university bands and see if they have free concerts; they probably do. You don't have to really dress up or anything. I recommend going to full range ensembles over instrument specific stuff but that's just because I overwhelmingly prefer a more varied music texture and range. So stuff like jazz bands, wind ensembles, string orchestras I will technically count. Yea

[oldmanpuppyplay]

movie asks 9, 10, and 25

Oh bless you, I am Indulged *wiggles fingers*

9: a film from the year you were born.

So 1989 was full of bangers so have some bonus recs because I can't help it: do the right thing dir Spike Lee, Santa Sangre dir Alejandro Jodorowsky, and The War of the Roses dir Danny DeVito,

My actual pick tho is Three Fugitives a bit of a silly heart warming underrated gem about Martin Short as a desperate single dad who gets tangled up with a career criminal on the day he's released from prison (who is trying to turn his life around) and making his entire day worse. It's got James Earl Jones in there and the kid is adorable.

Also these two totally just, are in love and co-parenting somewhere but only in the subtext. I have feelings about this movie and I pitched it to my boyfriend as a romance and by the end he was like, huh you weren't kidding.

10: a movie where the main genre is horror.

I have to be brief or I will be here all day god I love horror. And we have so much overlap you may have already seen it but I'm gonna go with Prevenge.

This one doesn't hit for everyone so I think you already have to like brit horror which can be a bit slower compared to American horror, a bit more twee, but I had such a good time. It's about a recent heavily pregnant widow killing on the behest of her unborn child. The director is also the star and she was actually pregnant during filming so if nothing else a herculean task to appreciate it.

25: a box office flop.

My favorite kind of movie 👀 if I wanted to go the easy route it's Batman + Robin but that's easy stuff so I'll try to go more niche, a deeper cut.

The Darwin Awards. Now stick with me, I know there can be an air of cruelty around the book series and the concept as a whole BUT the movie manages to subvert that in the best possible way by making the main character just a man with so many problems, just such a fucked up little man who thinks he can save his company money (works in insurance) by identifying and tracking these Darwin Award cases, obviously instead he just finds normal people who aren't that different from himself and start developing empathy for these people written off as idiots and while I won't spoil everything it goes some places. Imperfect for sure, the ending comes out of left field but it's got a lot of heart and it's charming. Flopped hard tho. Like, I genuinely think the whole snotty concept of the darwin awards is ghoulish so keep that in mind with this recommendation - it had to work hard to win me over.

[eenochian]

Are there any fictional characters that you think you resemble?

I LOVE THIS QUESTIONNNNNNN <333

i don’t typically think about stuff like this, so this was sorta fun to research lol. i don’t often take pics of myself and i share them even less, so i didn’t exactly have anyone to ask for second opinions 😶

i usually focus on characters that i want to look like more than ones i actually resemble, plus my body type is hard to find in media… but here’s my list 😌

in terms of hair/eye color, my eyes are hazel-green and my hair is auburn. i’ve lost some of my redness in recent years (hair’s more of a cinnamon color currently), but i’m planning on dying it back to auburn lol. two characters i’ve always personally looked at and gone, “ah, ideal version of me!” are mary jane and claire redfield.

growing up, i frequently got compared to any redhead by my family, regardless of how much i actually looked like them – my mom would always compare me to ariel, merida, or anna whenever we’d talk about disney, for example. i’m biased towards redheads (esp. ones with green eyes too) because i’m so used to seeing myself in them, even though i don’t really resemble most of them lol.

as for body type…

i’m stumped, honestly :/ most women in media are given super “ideal” proportions y’know, whether that’s making her super slim, fat, or curvy in just the right places. i’ve got an odd body type, so i’ve yet to encounter a character that looks like me. also haven’t had anyone tell me “[x character] has your body!” so i don’t have any opinions to go off.

if i had to describe myself— i’m a very curvy girl. my thighs are perfect to fit my corgi-sized cat, it would take probably five of my own hands to wrap around the apex of them, and my hips are as you’d expect with that measurement lol. i’ve got a super high waist (just under my chest) that dips in pretty dramatically, and my bra size is 40i.

i know that makes me sound like some jessica rabbit-esque “thicc goddess”, but i’m really not. my stomach isn’t flat, i’ve got a rounder face, and i’m convinced that my legs are weirdly short lmao.

as i was typing this all out, i started talking to my brother about the body type issue, which ended up catching the attention of the rest of my household. according to them, apparently i sorta look like rose from titanic. aka kate winslet in 1997. which is a MAJOR COMPLIMENT, OH MY GOD??? 😭😭

i’ll admit, i kinda see it? face shape has some similarities, but obviously i’m no kate winslet, she’s fucking gorgeous 💀 my hair’s also stock straight to the point of barely holding a curl.

there’s a few more characters that i definitely identify with and could see myself feasibly cosplaying in the future, even though the resemblance is weak at best for most of them. several are women from comics because i love a woman that can kill me <3

(claire is here again bc i honestly prefer her game appearance over the movies lol)

and yes. #5 IS bloom from winx club. i think cosplaying her would heal my inner 9 y/o self that was obsessed with looking like her.

[jbird-the-manwich]

just saw and reblogged your post about curses but i have a few questions!

what are witch bottles? are they like spell jars for protection? how can we protect ourselves better both from a spell backfiring and in general? what are your favorite methods? also, what is your thoughts on "karma"?

would be very glad if you answered my questions! additionally i want to make a spell jar for the upcoming month but i don't know what should i focus on, any recs?

Sorry this sat so long. Crazy times.

Yes. Witch bottles are a very old and very basic form of apotropaic device. Generally, but not always, intended to either protect a home or break a spell believed to be cast by a witch. Time was, they were more or less layfolk devices intended to guard *against* witchcraft but these days many that identify as witches use them for personal protection of self and or household. Depending where you look you can find very interesting recipes that tend to follow trends depending on region and era with assorted notes about useful ephemera. The most well known is generally the urine of the affected party in a bottle with bent pins and sometimes rusty objects. The rationale being that the urine, if cursed, links to the offending witch and the pins ensure she suffers horribly. sometimes tangles of thread are included to confuse the witch or their spell, basically, if you can come with a reason to put a thing in a bottle, somebody has, and said it was lit 100 fam. Some versions advise suspending said urine bottle over a fire and boiling it until it bursts, assisting in the breaking of whatever spell it links to or adding to the suffering the witch feels for daring to dream a madmans dream of a dirty bitch getting what they deserved. For obvious reasons I find them inhumane and prefer to send a nice holiday card that says "Please lift the curse daddy" instead. I'm kidding, of course. I just show up at their house.

For general protection, my best advice is carrying some sort of weapon - check your states laws to see what's legal in your area and the areas you frequent for statutes detailing exactly what objects are legal to carry open and concealed on your person or in your vehicle in your state. Many adorable weapons are available now. I have a plastic bulldog on my keys that's actually a pair of fuck you knuckles! And it's perfectly legal in my state! Don't come here though. We have enough tourists. magically speaking, I think a pair of fuck you knuckles dedicated to mars would be pretty hard to beat. especially if you don't have an electric mixer.

To answer your question about karma, I'm a white guy, so that's none of my business. But if you mean, do I think the universe keeps track of whos done me wrong and is working to fuck them as we speak, I'd have to say, no, and, if I did, why do witchcraft? I have a dried lizard, (that I found, dried, obviously) right now, in a jar of salt that smells like death. Why would I need that?

if the "universe" was "vibrating" the "tits off my enemies" because I "rise and grind"?? riddle me that. why did firefly get one season and why did joss whedon have to be so gross to women and make all the marvel movies suck harder than marvel movies already did if karma is real in the way other white peoples facebooks tells me it is?? Why is captain america???? Like in general?? If "source" is up there with my higher self "motorboating my butthole to the rhythm of lady marmalade" because thats the song my soul picked when I was dead before??

If you're asking if I believe any spell I cast, comes back to me, on one hand, that's literally the point of casting, because I want something out of it. I ain't doing this shit for my health. I don't even particularly like to be alive. On the other, to my mind, it really, really depends on how careful I am when I go sprinkling that lizard. Hear me out.

Do I want this spell on me? If yes, I proceed. If not, I do not get it on me. and am very careful to wash it off after. Similarly, I really just don't think much about it. Morally I don't see a damn thing wrong with wearing a certain mixture if one has a date coming up regardless of how much fake ass lucky mojo doves blood duoprime #70 is in it.

The older I get the more insular, and I tend to just let almost everything slide off my back before I try to use magic on anyone unless the crime is genuinely something that needs to be addressed and punished immediately.

If I am using magic on another person without their consent, It's 100% a curse, and I don't do anything unless I feel they truly deserve it. Offending my sensibilities, forgetting my birthday, calling me names, making fun of my outfit, any of that kind of stuff and Ill really just hex you straight to death. abracadaver or however they say it in those gay little books that keep making people think they wanna be witches when we have to stop to pick up every other dead lizard. but I digress.

If I *know* they deserve it, I don't worry about blowback because if they get what they deserve, I should get what I deserve, which is obviously good things, obviously. I'm helping karma not need to be real by hexing people, right? So I should get something out of it. so can I borrow 20 dollars?

As for your last question, I don't know what month it is where you are, but here it's april, so, if I was gonna do an april themed spell jar, personally, I think I would work something up to help key my intuition up to lead me to useful herbs in the wild, since, it's spring and lots of plants I refuse to tell you about are coming up right now.

thank you for your questions

[robitherat]

favorite marble hornets headcanon or theories Go!!

- Brian is good at cooking on accident. That post abt the persons mom who spun their spice rack around, chose spices at random, and never kept track of anything but shit came out tasting bomb anyways? That's Brian. Man doesn't know what he's doing but fuck if he's doing it well

-jay, Brian, and Alex all have asthma. Jay's is pretty mild, but Alex has it BAD in college

-sarah is super outdoorsy. Loves camping, fishing, hiking- if it means a day out at the lake shes in 10000%

-gang has movie nights. That's it.

-i always jumped between Brian being raised catholic and Brian being Jewish so here's my compromise hc: Brian's dad was Roman catholic but his mom was Jewish. She kinda half-converted to make it easier for the kids, but they still tried to stay connected to Jewish heritage nd stuff. In college Brian gets way more into learning about it, even knows some hebrew/ Yiddish !! He struggles with some identity stuff from it and is afraid he can't properly connect with either side of his family, but in the end both his parents are very happy and proud of him for being so interested in every aspect of his cultural heritage <3

-i actually have a lot of mh families hcs so here's some more: Tim's mom got pregnant at 17 and was essentially kicked out by her parents. Tim's dad stuck around for a little bit but once Tim started having issues he dipped and Tim doesn't remember anything about him. His mom tried really hard and did love Tim but obviously shit was really difficult and so she took him to the hospital. They don't talk a whole lot, and their relationship is pretty rocky, but Tim doesn't blame her for anything. Eventually she gets remarried and Tim has some younger half-siblings he doesn't know a lot about but loves.

-jays mom also got pregnant pretty young and she and Jay's dad had a shotgun wedding because of it. Jay's dad was quite a bit older and ended up leaving her for someone else. Jay has an older sister who is his forever best friend. Their mom gets remarried when Jay's in middle school and now he has 2 older step brothers too!! Baby Jay merrick ftw that man is a youngest sibling if I've ever seen one (and I am one so.)

- Brian LOVES kids a lot and always enjoyed babysitting like, cousins and nieces and nephews and stuff. He had a big family so it worked out well for him. It's bc he's a kid at heart <3<3

- tim likes kids and is also very scared of them. Kids love tim also and love scaring him. Tim's blood pressure does not like kids

-jay is kid-neutral but they usually end up liking him for his autistic swag.

-alex is awful with kids and they all hate him. Babies stare at him in elevators and if he looks at them they cry. He doesn't know what it is but they Don't Like Him

- jay is a bug lover. His special interest when he was younger was insects and he could probably correctly identify any beetle you show him and also name at least five of its most common relatives. He thought about entomology as a major but settled on film with a minor in biology :^)

-amy and Jessica are childhood bestfriends!!!best friends!!!! They were like. Playground dating in elementary school nd helped her find a good surgeon when she decided she wanted top surgery. Gfs

-Sarah, Seth, and Tim all talked MAD FUCKING SHIT on Alex during filming. They were the Alex kralie hate club.

[chrisevansgoodgirl]

zodiac theories for cevans characters

Okay, let’s go, sluts. (I would just like to say that this is all supposed to be fun and no one should be offended. I’m a Scorpio, which means that I’m insane, which mean I’m not actually judging anyone bc I know I’m insane.)

We’re starting with Jake Wyler:

Now obviously it’s hard to determine anything from a spoof movie. But that baby was an Aquarius. My proof? Idk, he was kinda rude and dumb lol. (I mean that in a loving way, you weird ass aliens) And there’s also just the fact that he doesn’t really look like any other zodiac sign and I feel like Aquarius are sometimes hard to identify because none of them ever really look the same.

Kyle from the perfect score:

Taurus. He seems grounded and logical, so that points to an earth sign. But if he was a Virgo or a Capricorn, he wouldn’t have needed to cheat lol. He’s also so against the idea of the SAT system, pointing to a stubborn personality. (I’ve only ever seen bits and pieces of this movie so I could be wrong)

Cellular was basically like a fever dream and I couldn’t pay attention to it. And I haven’t watched Fierce People because I’m scared I’m going to like his character but he is too fucking young for that.

And Johnny Storm:

A fucking Aries. Why? Because fire, but Leo is too obvious. He’s also a little more than hot headed on a few occasions and his impulsiveness is sometimes mistaken as a lack of intelligence. I have a particular liking for Aries and I find them very misunderstood and underrated, also how I feel about Johnny.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? I’m going to say it now, he has a public kink. He likes that he has celebrity status, which totally raises the stakes of getting caught, and increases the likelihood that you guys will get caught since he’s always been watched and followed. And disrupting arguments when he gets too angry to verbally express his feelings, so he just has to fuck you to show you how he feels.

Oh, poor baby, Syd:

That man is trash and too fucking emotional. I also felt like he weaponized those emotions, pointing to him being a water sign. But he’s not a cancer nor a Scorpio. This man who I love but will never be able to trust is a Pisces. I feel like he has that Pisces arrogance when he’s talking to London about god and why she believes in god. Alternate: Leo. Because of those mentioned emotions and arrogance. He was also pretty angry sometimes and I feel like him being a fire sign isn’t too farfetched.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? He has a god complex, meaning his most favorite thing ever is to get you on your knees and choke you with his cock. Things he has been known to do include making sure to get you on your knees in front of the mirror, you’re naked so he has the perfect view of your ass or you fucking your fingers while you get him off. Or recording you on his phone and he loves when you’re noisy and when you look up at him with your sweet eyes.

Mace from Sunshine;

A Virgo. I will not explain myself.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? I can’t really guess a lot but I can give you a scenario. Space sex—what would be more fun? But that means standing sex becomes something you’re both pros at. He loves fucking you against any wall you guys can find. Particularly, picking you up like you weigh nothing, your legs and arms just wrapped around him.

Harvard Hottie:

is hard to pick for bc he was so minimal, but I’d say a Gemini. Living two lives being that he’s so rich but having sympathy and “understanding” for the working people. I got air vibes from him but the other two just don’t make sense. I also don’t trust him so Gemini sounds right.

I will not be doing Paul Diskant bc it’s impossible to pick. All detectives seem like Capricorns or Scorpios. And I can’t do Jimmy bc I have never seen that movie. But if I had to make a guess, is he a Pisces?

my baby, Nick Grant:

Unexpected one, but he’s a Capricorn. I’ll take it a step further though and give him a cancer moon and a Aries rising. I would have said Aries sun but the plan at the end of Push? Nah. Too good not to be an earth sign.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? he uses his powers when he’s fucking you in literally any way he possibly can. it’s hard for him to find opportunity, but he completely goes out of his way to do so.

Jensen

That man is a hardcore Aquarius but Sag moon. He’s an almost himbo with one very specific skill that prevents him from being labeled a complete ditz. But he also has this odd intelligence about him that’s not traditional but somehow has gotten him that far in his life, so it just works.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? hard to say, honestly. Jensen is a hard character for me to pin down personality-wise, but I do think he has a lot of pride in what he does. Tech. So yes, in any way he possibly can, he will utilize tech in sex. That means sexting, that means video calling any time he’s on a mission and can manage it.

Lucas Lee:

that’s a Leo. No explanation necessary.

Mike Weiss:

That’s a Scorpio, my loves. Addict, shitty person, this unexplainable darkness for no god damn reason. The cheating is a little foreign to me (I hate cheating and I could never imagine cheating on a partner and like lying to someone you once loved about still loving them, I don’t think there’s anything more sick than that) but Scorpio men are a different kind of trash so. But also lonely, desperately reaching out to people just trying to feel some type of deep connection.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? obviously, there’s going to be something lacking here if he’s always high or fucked up, but when he can, it’s just going to be the most intense thing for no fucking reason. Sometimes you’re even like ‘can we calm down?’ But I see him loving eye contact, with him either on top of you or caging you in on any flat surface. But he’s also super closed off so I see him just being such a toxic hookup and he keeps you guessing and waiting and you never know if he’s going to want to fuck you again, but he’s also just magnetic and charismatic and you are addicted to him.

And of course, we all know Steve is a cancer.

Which is why I have not given that sign to anyone else. I don’t think any other character was as emotional as Steve, nor as kindhearted and selfless, up until it was for that one person that he would have given everything up for. So like, you know, a martyr until he just couldn’t be. I didn’t see that in any of the other characters. I also must say that I have fallen in absolute love with cancers, it’s expected as a Scorpio, but lemme tell you all…it’s hell. And hell is loving Steve Rogers after that ending, am I right?

what does this mean about how he fucks you? obviously we know he loves intimacy and being close and missionary, and he somehow makes it really good. but there’s also the ego of cancers that no one really mentions. I know Steve had a lot of insecurity before the serum, so after? he loves using his body and making sure that you know how strong he is and that you’re watching certain parts of him. he loves turning you away from him, wrapping his arms around you, just grabbing you or choking you. he loves when you focus on his arms.

Colin:

I know what you guys want me to say and I genuinely refuse. No, he’s not a sag, he’s not a Libra. He’s a Taurus. Flirty bc he’s bored. But won’t change his ways because he’s so damn stubborn. Until he does want to change his ways and just expects Ally to fully bend to his plan. But he’s also a really sure character, he knows who he is and knows what he wants always.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? it means he’s stubborn. what does he like the absolute most? edging. 

Mr. Freezy:

Well, the devil, of course. Yes, I believe he is also a Capricorn. He doesn’t mind being alone, he prefers it. He loves his job and he takes pride in being one of the best names there is. However, alternate: Aries, I think an Aries would be trusting enough to take in a partner like Freezy did, and maybe a Capricorn just wouldn’t be capable of doing that. Regardless of sun, he is a Scorpio rising. Why else would he keep that creepy hair and wear those insane shirts? and that ice cream truck? Don’t get me started. He thinks he’s cute.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? that’s he’s fucking crazy. i see him really liking bondage, and like the extreme kind. but i know he can be good w aftercare, i just know it.

Curtis:

Man is a Virgo. He didn’t create the plan on his own, but he was willing to follow it without hesitation. He sacrificed a loved one for the plan, in a way only an earth sign could. But he’s not stubborn nor is he particularly cold. I think, despite the walls he put up, he was very desperate for love. I will give him a cancer rising too. It was that desire to be a martyr and the guilt of simply not being able to do it.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? attention to detail! so, legit, Curtis will learn how to fuck you and learn exactly what you want, what makes you come, what makes you do all of those little things he likes, like crying, begging, whining, before he even lets you do anything for him. he acts like fucking you is his job and all he wants is to be the best at it.

Nick:

Now hear me out because the next time I say this sign, the man is going to be the polar opposite of Nick. But honey doll is a Libra with a Scorpio moon. He’s fucking addicted to love and he can only fall in love so damn fast because he’s an air sign. And I’ll also give him a cancer rising because we saw how hung up he was on his ex.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? as romantic as Nick is, he never wants to stop fucking you. and it’s never quick or simple, he thinks it’s sacrilegious to not spend an entire night on you. butttttt it can be so slow and it’s mostly because he knows how mad it makes you sometimes. i picture this man eating you out until you’re threatening to break up with him if he doesn’t fuck you immediately, and okay maybe that’s an extreme reaction, but he’s made you come too many times and it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop unless you make him.

Me from playing it cool, impossible bc it was a pretty gross character. I’m not even interested in analyzing it. It’s just going to sound like I’m coming for someone if I try.

Frank:

my baby! My man is a Leo. I don’t know why I feel this way, but I think that whole calmness about him is a façade. He’s lying to us to lure us into a false sense of trust, then bam, you’re in love with him and he’s ruining your life. And he’s going to keep you around to hook up with you and then continuously break your heart and use Mary as an excuse. The real reason? He’s angry bc he caught feelings.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? before he admits he’s in love with you, he’s a huge tease. a huge fucking tease who constantly taunts you, and at first, it really upsets you because he just reduces you to such a fucking mess and thinks it’s funny, but you soon get over, even start to like when he calls you all those terrible names you would never let another man call you. after, that’s a lot different. he wants dates, serious, elaborate dates, and he loves telling you what he’s going to do to you and making you wait for it. but mostly he just wants to push you to the point where you’re so impatient, you just start taking.

Mr. Levinson:

is a Scorpio. He’s cold and cruel and all to meet his end goal. But there’s also that addictive aspect too, he literally couldn’t live a normal life. He needs to be out there for that specific mission no matter how many people want him to stop. And it’s clear that it’s only death that can stop him. And he’s super self righteous about it, we see that in how he talks to Sammy.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? truly skilled at quickly fucking you and genuinely never leaving you wanting (for anything other than a normal life with him ofc, but seriously, you couldn’t ask for more in your sex life) but you know what the best part of him is? the after-mission sex. he doesn’t say much but he fucks you differently enough that you start to learn what he’s feeling that way. and the best sex? after particularly dangerous missions where you took a risk you didn’t need to or got a little too close to danger for his comfort. he won’t yell at you or try to talk you out of being you, he understands what kind of life you both have, but the way he fucks you makes it clear that the last thing he wants is to lose you. and what’s after sex? soooooo muchhhhhh cuddling!

Money daddy:

We’ve already discussed it! Libra. But you know what? He’s hella evil. Virgo moon, that crazy plan was all Virgo moon. Leo rising, I have no actual reason for this other than I know three men who are Leo risings and they’re straight trash lol. They’re selfish and their actions are usually dictated by their irrational emotions. They always act like they’re right too, and like you’re insane for ever questioning them. And they’re super manipulative.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? nothing good at the start tbh. he’s going to pretend that you’re literally nothing more than a hook up, he’s going to play games and make you jealous, and only if you’re strong enough to stick it out, he’ll admit the truth. (which is that there was never anyone else as soon as he took you out on that first date) but other than that, we all know ransom has a degrading kink. which probably creates a lot of roleplay scenarios where you pretend to be various members of staff and he pretends to be a customer that’s less than pleased with your performance.

The daddy of all daddies:

again, we’ve already talked about it. he’s a Capricorn. But let’s take it further with a scorpio moon. All those walls he put up, all the lying, and keeping those feelings to himself, undeniably Scorpio, along with probably at least 3 other placements. But there’s also just something about him that is comforting and sweet so I’d give him a Taurus rising.

what does this mean about how he fucks you? well, the Capricorn makes him a fucking demon. he just always wants you under him, or at least bound, disadvantaged in some small way. he likes reminding you that he is in charge and that no one is better at it than him. but then that Taurus rising makes him soooooo good with aftercare and intimacy that practically suffocates you on those mornings you wake up together or the rare weekends you guys have before he demands that you move in with him.

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

Here’s the final part of the “Raph is a system” theory compilation post! It’s the last of what I can scrape up from canon; while I still have ideas on how it might loop back into character interactions and plot and so on, they’re much more speculative in nature. (Part 1 is here) (Part 2 is here) (You’re reading Part 3)

---

"Red” is the alter with the least screen time, so it took a while for me to connect the dots on when and why he formed.

His shadowed face, the dramatic background music when he speaks, and his seriousness are reminiscent of the “brooding on rooftops in the rain while gloomily staring off into the distance” thing that Raphs throughout the franchise will do sometimes. That’s easy to poke fun at on a superficial level because most of us look back on our edgy phases with self-deprecation, but it’s a lot less funny in the context of the life he lives. Being a normal human teenager in normal human society is a fucking nightmare; being a mutant teenager who has no idea what to expect in terms of development or lifespan, only five people he can safely interact with ever, and a very limited future hiding from everyone else for as long as he lives has got to be just awful.

RR’s few lines in “Pizza Puffs” tell us a lot. “It’s the only way they’ll learn” and “this is for their own good” suggest that he formed when the turtles started exploring more of the sewers and going aboveground, and Being The Leader became more of a responsibility. A thousand new ways for them to get in trouble meant a thousand new ways Raph would have to bail them out, and that got old fast- especially since they didn’t have April’s knowledge to help them in the beginning. I doubt they met her the very first time they left the sewers. The wiki says April knew the boys for five years as of “Mystic Mayhem”, so they would have been nearly eight at the time, perhaps the mental equivalent of a ten- or eleven-year-old human.

A while back I sifted through all the eps with Raph in them in the vague hopes that “Pizza Puffs” wasn’t the only episode featuring RR... and lo and behold, I found something! The shadowed face and dramatic background music are also present in “Minotaur Maze”!

“I can’t do it. I got no mystic mojo. I’m useless.”

“Hey, that’s not true, brother. You just gotta believe in yourself, and know this: If I die in this maze, I will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

(I know that’s only two data points, but y’all canonically cannot scoff at me.) RR shows up when HR is no longer able to tolerate the bullshit at hand. “I’m not going to baby you Leo, get your shit together before your ego kills us all” was a reasonable response to nearly being shish-kebab’d.

“Pizza Puffs”, on the other hand... LDM pulled through in the end, but that RR got HR to stay behind added an unnecessary level of risk. Getting his brothers to learn a lesson should have waited until after the giant mutant cannibal had been dealt with and they were no longer poisoned.

This hands-off “figure it out on your own” approach probably came from Splinter. I swear to Pizza Supreme In The Sky I’m not trying to shit-talk him, but his lack of involvement with his sons was a major flaw. Before all that character development he was terrible at things like “emotional support” and “life lessons”, leaving Raph without the blueprints to deal with a lot of problems. HR would respond by rushing in and figuring things out as he went, but sometimes RR would have to say “No, we’re maxed out and can’t deal with this, we’ve gotta step back”. As we’ve seen in other iterations, when Raph is maxed out and doesn’t step back...

...he goes too far. Plenty of folks have commented on how rarely the Rise turtles smack each other around compared to other versions; it’s telling that RR spoke up just a moment after HR smacked Mikey in “Pizza Puffs”.

Raph is much bigger and stronger than his brothers this time around, meaning such an outburst would have a much higher risk of Genuine Grievous Injury. And while his size and strength also mean a measure of gentleness has been baked into him since day one, there would still be times HR would feel himself boiling over and RR would head off somewhere quiet for fear of the above situation; which was potentially alluded to in “Hot Soup: The Game”.

“You went out on your own when you were his age.”

The context of “Man vs. Sewer” suggests Raph isn’t going to go off on his own without very good reason- such as cooling down before he does something he regrets. That this detail shows up in Casey’s debut episode suggests it is how they will properly meet and bond, since befriending Casey and doing vigilante shit with him is what usually gives Raph a way to blow off steam while having someone nearby to keep him in check. But that probably won’t happen until partway through season 3, since I doubt we can cram the rest of Casey’s redemption arc into the movie alongside the invasion and time travel trauma shenanigans and leader drama. So in the meantime RR will continue to brood on rooftops in bad weather and listen to Ephemerality songs and monologue to himself because he knows nobody’s going to hear him over the incessant background noise that makes up the cities above and below.

I was a bit stumped about how that meeting would take place- the events of the finale (and possibly also the movie) would no doubt have both the human and yokai populations on high alert, making it dangerous for RR to slip away for some peace and quiet. But the events of the finale also gave us some insight on Raph’s powers; he has a way to leave without actually leaving!

Hardlight Clone Jutsu, baby!

So whenever HR finds himself in a particularly sour mood, a wisp of power winds its way up through the open-air portion of the lair and forms into a clone aboveground. HR doesn’t have to leave for a while to cool down before coming back and dealing with the situation calmly, because RR is already on a rooftop somewhere dissipating those bad feelings by listening to the rain and/or yeeting trash cans.

But mutants can’t freely walk the streets of New York, and the Hidden City Police probably still have it out for Raph. And someone, hero or villain, will eventually realize that Raph has a gloomy stray clone running around and ask questions that can’t be answered without cracking open the can of worms that is This Whole Situation. RR needs to get creative. That we’ve seen clones have both full color and the basic red/white palette suggests their color could be altered in other ways; and that the holo-form grew extra arms in the lair fight vs. the Shredder suggests their shape could also be changed further.

So what will he choose to look like, if not his body?

Obviously he’ll use a red and black color palette because it slaps, leaning more towards black since I compared him to Batman back in Part 1. A low-detail design makes it hard to identify him, giving onlookers the impression that they just couldn't see him well in the dark. Mentally filing down his spikes and decreasing the curve of his shell are easy enough, but it takes him a while to figure out five fingers instead of three, and there’s not much he can do about his voice other than lowering the pitch so he just opts to not talk much within earshot of others. A cape further disguises his silhouette and again, it slaps. The impression of a mask means he doesn’t need a face and it lets peoples’ assumptions work for him. Humans are more likely to think he’s human than a Very Human-Shaped Mutant, and yokai come in so many shapes as is that he could be anything from a witch to a dehydrated googlyschmootz.

(You know how it is with franchises. Old patterns repeating in new ways.)

New York City never sleeps, and I doubt the Hidden City does either. He’ll run into Casey eventually, but in the interim he stumbles across and intervenes in some attempted purse-snatchings and kidnappings and the like. Most of the would-be victims use his arrival as their chance to escape, but one of them is too frozen with fear to move until their attackers are chased off into the dark. He escorts them home, and it’s only once they’re at their doorstep that they work up the courage to ask him who he is.

It’s... a difficult question, in more ways than one. “Raph” is out of the question. “Red” isn’t quite right, and neither is “Angel”- they’re a tad too identifying still, and the R.A.P.H. thing was HR’s idea anyway. So he shrugs, and melts away into the shadows.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m Nobody.”

[legionofpotatoes]

I love your art, it is very detailed in a neat way. Was wondering how you got started making it as a source of income? How did you get your first paid work, I'd love some advice on how to get started, if that's ok

Thank you. Of course it's okay, although I doubt I have enough work experience in art to really delve into this. I only went full freelance this year, and had been juggling art as a side hobby until then. If you're still interested in my somewhat narrow perspective, and are okay with my long-winded rambles, I'll give it a shot:

So to answer your question fully, I'll describe how I started and move into personal advice and learnings later on. As a disclaimer, I am a white cishet dude in my late twenties with a moderate cocktail of mental illnesses, but overall I can pass for a functioning adult so a lot I have to say may come laced with privilege I cannot fully identify.

So uhh I began drawing in around 2012? I think? Maybe halfway through 2011? And I mostly made fanart for things I enjoyed and tried to branch out in communities that felt nourishing to my style and interests (I caught a bug for alt posters and enjoyed mainstream movies so I spent a long time on posterspy early on). There were a handful of opportunities that came from there but I could only accept a couple because of primary workplace commitments. Still, it showed that networking in a focused community was definitely a good place to start; I myself have huge trouble committing to social networks and really staying socially active, but I knew it was an essential ingredient in succeeding so I tried to make myself be involved in challenges and art support trains etc. as much as I could.

In parallel to all that I also ran a few third party online stores (redbubble, teepublic) for disposable income and would sometimes, if rarely, hit around $100-150 a month from those sources combined. It is a sort of thing that requires helper accounts on other social media sites to promote it on, because the stores themselves have a huge volume of content that translates into low organic discoverability. Obviously it was never gonna be the way towards financial independence through art, and with community projects being few and far between, I opened private commissions in around uhhh 2017 I think, focusing on offering a few styles I knew I could do well, and sometimes operating in individual fandoms (it was mostly a bioware thing to be frank). But I had to close them back down after a year or so, again because of work-life conflict and how badly it was burning me out. The reason I kept trying to monetize this hobby is because I honestly hated what I did for my main job and wanted to see a way out in some shape or form in the future.

And then in 2020 I had to quit my main job altogether because of *gestures at pandemic* and deal with a mental breakdown from all the wonderful things it did to us and me specifically. I took a short break and decided to give art a shot full-time, and that was around May this year. I was planning on opening up commissions again (and I still am), but a few sudden opportunities that fell in my lap moved that timetable down and now I'm grateful to even be doing something I am getting adequately paid for.

So, with that somewhat limited perspective, here's what I've learned that I'd tell myself if I was just starting out:

1. Being a fan of something can be a shortcut towards effective networking kickoffs. Which are important evidently. If you love something and enjoy making content for it, join communities, settle into a combination of social media websites that feel right for those interests + your body of work + your inner rhythm, and try to play to content discovery as much as your mental health allows you to. Like I said, I know that I myself am incredibly bad at self-motivating to talk to people, so I found that synergizing common interests into fanart - which I enjoyed making anyway - could be a way to give myself a gentle nudge forward and build those bridges leading to community activities, which then net experience and coverage. Sometimes even freelance projects from official avenues. Again; picking the right spaces for what you're after is key. Companies roam twitter, concept art recruiters scour artstation or linkedin etc, instagram can land you private commissions and collab opportunities, so on and so forth. Find your niche and try to kick up dust. However...

2. I do not believe that any social profile can replace a good portfolio. The thing that made an immediate difference to me this year was building a coherent, simple website with my best work front and center and a contact form on top. Every single opportunity I got came from that form (maybe via twitter or instagram initially, but always sealing the decision after going through the website), so I firmly believe that showcasing your skills and portfolio in a visually arresting and user-friendly way is a big priority. I had some reservations about tackling that task but fortunately I had help from a savvy life partner and we slapped it together via wordpress in less than a day. Twitter/whatever social media is prevalent in your target groups is definitely important to get the right eyes on your shit, yes, but those eyes will then look for a second stop where your work and rates are more clear and concise. Simplicity is key imo, I cannot overstate this. So make a cute, simple portfolio!

3. Your skills and rates will grow and change as you do. Let them. Over the years I built several lasting professional relationships from my obsession over mass effect and kept getting opportunities both from bioware and their partner companies, some small and some a bit bigger. A one-off job earlier this year opened an unexpected door to another much larger commitment, and then the work I did there brought some attention from small businesses looking for commercial commissions. These were all incredibly different projects in terms of scope and budget, and I've been tackling them all on a case-by-case basis and slowly coming into my own irt my needs, rates, and SOW thresholds. It is still a work in progress (and a LOT of literal work as well), and very much a thing I struggle with in publicly marketing, which is why I felt a tad underqualified to answer your question in the first place (obviously I did not let that stop me). But what it means for me now is that I am rapidly developing into whatever my "version" of a functioning freelance artist is, and when the conditions for that guy are met, I need to be able to confidently plant myself and operate from that space despite past precedents. Do not let anyone bully you into downpricing what you yourself perceive as legitimate products of personal growth and development. Speaking of which...

4. The shitty challenge of turning envy into inspiration, and paddling outside your comfort zones in full riot gear. it is hard, but realizing that being a miserable, self-hating artist in my early days got me nothing but more misery back was the first real step I took and what truly blew the hinges off. I was just not pleasant to be around, I would badmouth my work all the time, and it all somehow made sense in my broken mind because the validation I sought was purely external and the way I sought it was through eliciting sympathy via self-victimization (even when I made something objectively nice). It all led fucking nowhere. Except perhaps to my own narcissism that I one day managed to identify and start managing. So I started looking at things that made me seethe with envy and calmly deconstruct and figure out their inner workings instead, do studies, and find nuggets of inspiration or discover new ways to approach rendering or building up specific elements. It was an application of analytical diligence to what I wanted to be a purely emotional, esoteric workflow, but that I deep down knew wasn't. Art is a discipline and a skill, and maybe it isn't a straight line, but you gotta find some line to thread nevertheless. Being self-hating was almost an identity I had to break out of, and despite it still being like, 4-5% there? I realize its cause and effect on me, my work, and those around me, so it is with a conscious choice that I gently set it aside when I work and especially when I learn. It won't always stay quiet, but the effort is the difference. Your doors towards accepting true growth and venturing into uncharted territories, art styles, and networking will really open from there. But there's a huge caveat...

5. Toolsets, accessibility, privilege, and all the good things that enable artistic expression and profitability are not given equal to all. you might do all the mental work I mentioned to be ready to rock and roll and learn and draw your way out of anything, but digital art is a fucking money pit that asks almost too much at times. I don't got a good case study here but identifying and ensuring accessibility to the tools you need to do your best work is, like, super important. The ergonomics can improve as you make money and settle into the job, but the basics have to be made available to you. And some of that might not even be under your direct control. That can be anything from pen tablets to software subscriptions to opportunities in hiring sullied by sexism or what have you. You gotta navigate all that through careful networking and money/time management. I don't do a good job of devoting specific slices of time to work/study, and my primary clutch is iPad software which went from a good deal to a nightmare scenario over the years. So all I can say here is do what I didn't; network, invest in a PC/tablet, and pick a software you'll learn that won't burn a hole in your pocket.

6. Be nice to work with? This one is hard to articulate and has landed my own ass in hot water in my early years because of how socially inept I am, but nothing is more worthwhile than being.. like. a good person to work with. That can be anything like meeting deadlines, or sometimes missing them but eloquently articulating why, being generous in early stages, being communicable and not too wordy in your emails, having a good grasp on abstract artistic concepts and how to describe them in simple terms, having a clear, laid out framework of your working rates in commercial and non-commercial projects and sticking to those guns with grace, understanding when you need to say no and saying it well, the works. Just being nice. Sometimes that might mean going headstrong with something you believe in, or simmering down and sucking up to the big man, all relative and adaptive. Part and parcel of the service provision dance that we all have to do in order to make bank. Know your lines here, obviously, and don't like. work for nazis. or uh.. *shudders* exposure. but be nice and empathetic and communicable and word will travel eventually. Skill may be in abundance these days, but good people are most certainly not, and capitalism has a way of bubbling up scarcity. Grim, but uh, them's the breaks.

I know I'm ultimately telling you to like. Have a body of work, make a portfolio, grow, and network. But that's really how I see it for now. And being nice can be a cherry on top that sets you apart, along with the inherent irreplaceable voice of your artwork. I think I rambled on enough, but if there is something specific you need my help with, even if you want to come off anon and talk in private, please feel free.

[alirhi]

How I'd have done TFATWS pt 1

Okay, I am such a whore for positive attention that, yes, it literally only takes one person expressing interest to get me to do something lol. So, for the lovely @goblin-tea, here is how The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would have gone for Bucky if I'd been a writer on the show!

Also, shoutout to @gunshou, who popped up showing support when I was in the middle of writing this lol 😘

Episode 1: New World Order

I actually love how most of this episode was handled; it's what drew me into the show in the first place, and gave me such hope for the rest of it. Most of the changes that I'd make here are pretty minor, tbh.

I'd specify the setting in some way for Bucky's nightmare. Obviously, since he was there and knows what happened, when, and where he was, it wouldn't be like the setting changes in movies where they slap a big, bold title card over the scene. Still, I'd probably open with a brief establishing shot showing the city skyline or something; some identifying feature so that viewers can work out where this happened without needing a direct statement from Marvel (note: if you need to directly address your audience to clarify something from within your story, you're a bad storyteller). What year did this take place? I show technology from the time; perhaps a dated cell phone in someone's hand. The point is to establish where and when The Winter Soldier killed RJ Nakajima, without detracting from the emotional impact of the scene. Why does it matter? Because we should know why. Why is Bucky dreaming about this particular incident? Was it his last mission before the events of CA:TWS (a theory I see frequently repeated but with no evidence to back it up)? Was it earlier on? Is RJ only on the forefront of Bucky's mind because of his (unhealthy, but we'll get to that) friendship with Yori? How long has Yori been suffering under the weight of his grief?

I would not have had him crash through the wall, btw. As cool as that shot looked, let's try to remember that The Winter Soldier was a ghost story for 70 years. Ghosts don't leave giant gaping holes in hotel walls. I'm not saying brazen wholesale destruction is out of character for him (obviously not. I've seen CA:TWS lmao. many times. this moment lives rent-free in my brain:

found on google without credit; pls lmk if it's yours so I can credit.

but you don't become a "ghost story" if you always leave that much evidence, ijs)

I'd leave the terrible therapy session alone. That scene was beautiful. Beautifully shot; I loved how claustrophobic it felt, and it really did a wonderful job of showing how Bucky felt on the spot, scrutinized, almost put on display for this bitch woman. This scene establishes Raynor as clearly wrong, and an unprofessional mess, and Bucky calls her out on it. I fucking love that!

lmao gods, I love his painfully awkward forced smile... Guys, this episode is fkn great. (betcha weren't expecting so much praise from me, were you? 😂)

"You're free." "To do what?"

👆👆👆 In my show? That would have more of an impact on Bucky's arc. That question would be one of the underlying issues moving his whole story along. Twice in this show, he's told that he's free, but no one addresses what he's free from, much less what he's free to do next.

It's a minor thing, but when Yori tells Bucky to ask Leah out? I'd have Bucky do more than just shake his head in silent horror. Not much more, just something that matters to me as someone who's worked in the service industry for many, many years and dealt with too many creepos: Bucky would flat-out say "she's at work! that's harassment, Yori!"

Yori can still stomp right past that boundary, and Leah can still smile and agree. I just really want someone to verbally acknowledge that you don't fucking ask someone out when they're at work. Ever. Bucky cringing and apologizing puts the power of the conversation back in Leah's hands; it gives her an out to politely decline if she's not interested, and just laugh off Yori's flirting on Bucky's behalf as a senile old man being silly, so I'm actually fine with how this scene turned out. I just would personally have gone that extra inch there for the idiots in the audience who don't get Bucky's subtle "wtf" reaction and why Yori's suggestion was so bad. If someone's livelihood depends on being nice to you, keep your goddamn distance. Flirting with them or asking them out when they're at that big of a disadvantage and have virtually no power to say "no" is harassment.

Here is where I'd make one more subtle change, too. When Yori sees the mochi and is reminded of his son, and tells Bucky about his death, I'd just slip in a time frame. "x years ago, my son was..." blah. (Guys, it really bothers me not knowing when that scene took place rofl can you tell?)

One complaint I've seen a lot online about this show is how it's a bit murky on just how well known Bucky is in-universe. He can walk around Brooklyn with more or less total anonymity, but he's also recognized as "an Avenger" (when he was never actually technically in the group)... but honestly? I think it's actually pretty realistic. Just because someone's famous doesn't mean every single person on the planet knows who they are and what they look like well enough to instantly recognize them on the street. People look different in photos than in person, and pre-Blip, Bucky had the complete Jesus look - long flowing hair and a full beard. In TFATWS he's a little scruffy, but not this:

Sebastian looks like about 10 different men from one moment to the next just irl with a change in haircut, lighting, expression, whether or not he got enough sleep the night before... 😂 I don't really find it hard to believe that people not expecting to bump into an Avenger would have trouble seeing Bucky post-haircut as anything other than just another attractive white guy.

Anyway! Sorry for the segue lol. On to the date!

Earlier in this very same goddamn episode, it is established that Bucky can remotely operate a car with a tablet. This is not a technologically-inept geezer. This is a 30-something nerd who loves new technology, who, yes, is facing a brave new world and a whole lot of new technology, but has never shown any issue picking it up. The crappy flip phone he handed Raynor earlier? a burner to keep her out of what little personal life he does have (we never see it again in the real show, anyway). The "tiger photos" line? Stays, not to show Bucky's floundering ineptitude with technology, but as a little nod to his bisexuality. (don't like it? don't wanna see Bucky as bi? go watch the show and read Skogland's borderline-offensive interviews. This isn't "how I would pander to a homophobic audience" it's "how I would have written it." the "Bucky is bi" interpretation is super fucking common and has been since TFA so bite me 😁)

Tiny nitpick, but I'd also have the Battleship boards actually set up properly lmao. What even was that? Anyway...

I don't think I'd have Leah get all ranty about Yori and RJ. That's not first date talk, for one thing. For another, let's ease up on the beating Bucky and the audience over the head with that one incident in a single episode, shall we? Instead, I'd have her stick with the date questions - she asked his age, asked about his family; I'd have her follow it with questions about what he does for a living (giving us a chance to not only actually have that question answered for us - how the hell does Bucky keep himself from being homeless? lol - but also set up...)

He shuts down a little when she starts asking about his past; she's innocently curious, just trying to get to know him, but he's flinchy and deflects with questions about her. The date is awkward, but doesn't abruptly end with him running away lol. He walks Leah home, like the old-fashioned gentleman he is, goes home, himself, and end on him grimacing in his sleep, in the clutches of another nightmare: not as much detail as the RJ murder scene, we see disjointed, disorienting images of fluorescent lights glinting off of machinery, the occasional shot of Bucky writhing in the chair, a shot of that damned notebook (to remind the dumber audience members why Raynor's passive-aggressive notebook thing was so triggering for him), and we hear echoes of a couple of the trigger words, and Bucky's screams.

[styleiswild]

Interview with Beastie Boys for Machina magazine, 07/1998

By: Rafał Bryndal

Translation: Anna Bak ( @styleiswild )

 -------------

Introduction: The party called Beastie Boys in Lisbon went on for two days. On the first day we (the journalists) were invited to the magical “Kremlin” club to listen to the new album [Hello Nasty]. I don’t think I have to explain how I felt knowing that I was possibly one of the first Polish people to listen to that phenomenal record. On the second day each of us got to meet the band in Hotel Ritz during the so-called “round-table.” It’s like a private conversation with the artists. It looks a bit like a coffee party at your aunt’s. (…) The whole meeting was just as absurd, in a positive way. The answers they gave us were often ironic, as one could expect.

R.B.: Don’t you think that being Beastie Boys is way cooler than being any other band in the world?

MCA: Unfortunately, we haven’t tried being a different band yet. So I can’t really answer your question.

Mike D: To be honest, there’s something to it. Maybe because we have so much fun working together. It’s not always fun, of course. We do work from time to time, but only sometimes.

R.B.: It seems like you work on your albums for fun and pleasure exclusively?

Mike D: I think it’s because we don’t release them that often.

Ad-Rock: Yes… Yes, you must be right, man.

Ad-Rock: Yes… Yes, you must be right, man.

MCA: Hey, we’d released Ill Communication after a two year break.

R.B.: Yeah, but this one took you four years.

MCA: Yeah, we had to level it out. It takes us three years most of the time.

R.B.: You grew up together. Are you always on such good terms with one another?

MCA: Sometimes there’ll be tripartite fights. Not sure you’ve ever seen what it looks like when three people fight each other. Each of them against the other two. That happens sometimes. Rarely, though. To be honest, we don’t really argue much.

R.B.: Your new album seems a bit like a departure from The In Sound from Way Out!

Mike D: Hello Nasty is a collection of a dozen or so songs, each of them stylistically different. That’s why you can’t really compare it to our previous releases. I guess, though, that at least two of the songs would’ve worked well as instrumentals on the previous album.

R.B.: How do you deal with the new technologies in music?

Mike D: Technology is present in all genres today and you can’t run from that. Music evolves largely thanks to the new technology. Especially hip hop music. We do it like the true rappers do, which means we start with a drum machine, then we put it on a loop, and then we use digital delay system. That’s one of the newest inventions. Technology is unpredictable, because people – who are its creators – have no clue about what the artists can do with it.

R.B.: Is it true what they say on the internet? That this album is the first one of the three that you’ve recorded lately?

MCA: You’ve really heard about that?

Mike D: Gosh, you can’t keep anything secret today.

Ad-Rock: Three? To be honest, we’ve got many more albums recorded.

Mike D: The last one of the three is a country album. The genre is so popular that you can’t really keep such a record a secret anymore. Especially when you’re in Manhattan and you walk around in a cowboy fit, it’s suspicious as hell. Because there aren’t many cowboys in Manhattan. People see a guy in a cowboy fit and assume that he has to be working on a country album.

R.B.: Is it really so important for your clothes to fit the style of your music?

MCA: You identify with your music more when you dress up. People often cheat, they wear clothes that don’t fit the music they play.

R.B.: So what kind of clothes did you guys wear when working on Hello Nasty?

MCA: I wore a bat girl costume.

Ad-Rock: I dressed up as a scared woman.

Mike D: I’d wear a bathing suit, because I wanted to go swimming all the time.

Ad-Rock: We couldn’t really find what we were looking for at first. We tried on a range of fits and finally found those that went well with our music.

R.B.: You’ve been popular with skateboarders. It’s a group of people who wear unique clothes and listen to a lot of your music, as it seems. Do you identify with this subculture?

MCA: I don’t think it’s just that one subculture. There are a few more we’d like to identify with.

Mike D: For me it’s long gone. Skateboarding isn’t much of an extreme or exclusive kind of sports discipline anymore. It’s become very popular.

R.B.: You’ve worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry on the new album. Can you tell me what kind of benefits did that bring you?

Mike D: It’s hard to say, but we’ve always been pretty impressed with his work on dub music. He’s also inspired Mario Caldato, our studio engineer. For me, Lee is an artist of science, a living fucking legend.

R.B.: Do you think that you can inspire young musicians?

MCA: Sure, but that’s a normal thing, right? If music is evolving as a part of culture, then everything and everyone inspires that process. We’re happy that we can be a part of that culture to some degree.

R.B.: A lot of white kids have gotten into rap music thanks to “Rhymin’ & Stealin’.” At least that’s what happened to me…

MCA: As a white kid… Right, it’s hard to be a black kid in Finland.

Mike D: We discovered hip hop when we were thirteen or fourteen. We’d go and see Public Enemy and bands like that. We were totally enchanted. It’s not that weird that kids who listen to us want to do the same thing.

R.B.: Some people say that you don’t like it when other artists sample your music. Some say that you’re more liberal, though.

MCA: It all depends on how the sample is used. If it’s creative, then we’re here for it. But if they go and copy our own ideas, and the whole track revolves around that idea, then we’re obviously pissed off.

R.B.: Are you as satisfied with making music as you’re with your magazine and your record label?

MCA: It’s all really about creating something new, publishing the mag, recording albums or playing gigs… We’re really into humanitarian work, too. Sure, the music is the most important thing of all. Nobody knows where it comes from, it’s hard to define the process of making music. It comes from subconsciousness.

R.B.: I’ve heard that you were to make a movie based on your “Sabotage” video?

Mike D: Unfortunately, that’s not true.

MCA: It doesn’t change the fact that we’re planning to make a movie…

R.B.: About what?

MCA: You can actually watch it in the cinema already, because Spice Girls had stolen our screenplay and made it their own.

R.B.: In the 80s there were a lot of humanitarian aids, like benefit concerts during which quite a lot of money got lost for a very simple reason. Those actions were organized on such a grand scale that it was nearly impossible to control the funds. Aren’t you scared that the same thing can happen to your organization?

MCA: Free Tibet is there to help people find out about the issue and educate them on it. The money that we get helps us organize the Tibetan Freedom Concerts. It’s not like those other actions from the past that were strictly about collecting funds.

R.B.: Do you believe that the bands you invite to play consider the gigs something more than simply another type of self-promotion?

MCA: I feel that most of those artists are really moved by the issue we’re trying to bring to people’s attention.

R.B.: You’re fighting for free Tibet, while recently it’s been 50 years since the State of Israel was formed. And Palestinians are fighting for their rights to be respected. Why have you taken on Tibet and not Palestine?

MCA: Tibetans’ fight is based on the idea of non-violence. It’s a peaceful fight. The contrast between the brutality of the Chinese government and that quiet fight of Tibetans does make an impression, and that’s why we’re popularizing the ideas behind the Tibetan struggle. We believe that the non-violent, peaceful act is the only logical way of dealing with the issue.

R.B.: Even if the peaceful fight ends up leading to the extinction of Tibetan culture?

MCA: The same thing will happen if Tibetans decide to use violence as a means to gain their freedom.

R.B.: Is it true that your music is banned in Hong Kong?

MCA: That’s right. We can’t play there. Our albums can’t be sold on their market. All of the bands playing for Milarepa are banned from performing in China.

R.B.: You’ve met Dalai Lama on several occasions. Does he like your music?

MCA: Dalai Lama doesn’t listen to pop music at all. Lots of bands give him their CDs. He takes them because he doesn’t want them to feel bad, but he won’t give them a listen.

Ad-Rock: That’s why he stores so many demos at home.

R.B. What is Dalai Lama like?

MCA: He’s fantastic. He’s a great role model, representing all of the values people associate with Tibetan culture, with Buddhism. He’s got great charisma. He oozes calmness that comes from the respect he has for everyone.

R.B. What’s his opinion on Tibetan Freedom Concert?

MCA: He thinks it’s an excellent way of spreading his word. For him, the concert is a kind of holiday.

R.B.: As far as I know, you have a slightly different view on the future of Tibet. He wants to negotiate with the Chinese government about Tibet’s legal right to autonomy in China, while you fight for total freedom for Tibet as a sovereign country. Is that true?

MCA: It’s related to his view on the type of fight. He’s so scared of any form of violence that he’s ready to negotiate with the Chinese government. He’s choosing the lesser of two evils, that’s what he’s doing. We’re in a completely different situation, though. As American citizens, we want to speak with our government about freedom for Tibet. We believe that Tibetans should be free and we want to encourage the government to take action to help Tibetans gain autonomy.

R.B.: The “Sabotage” music video was unique and quite shocking. Are your new clips going to be equally as original?

Ad-Rock: It’s gonna be some good shit.

MCA: We had lots of fun working on it. The “Sabotage” video had a lot to do with the song, though. Our new clips won’t have anything to do with the songs. They can be treated as independent short features. We plan to make a couple more totally different clips.

R.B.: You’ve been a band for so long that you must be best friends and not only, let’s say, collaborators. Can you please describe one another?

Mike D: Adam Horovitz is, to use basketball terminology, the play maker. He shows us how we’re supposed to play because he’s the one in charge of the balls. Sometimes he can’t score from a distance, though. Adam Yauch, on the other hand, is a very unusual power forward. His style is completely devoid of aggression, unlike Karl Malone’s. Or Charles Barkley’s. He can dull his opponent’s vigilance with his slow moves and get all the points.

Ad-Rock: Mike is an idiot and a thief. Yauch is a liar. I’m as cool as James Bond.

Mike D: Some people might say that we’re CSC. Crazy Sexy Cool. And that’s what we wanna be.

R.B.: Can you explain your record cover? You’re in a tin and you look like sardines.

Mike D: Doesn’t it sound pretty? “Sardine tin”? It’s almost like a big surprise. You open the tin and it turns out that people’s lives are similar to the life of sardines.

MCA: Maybe this album was recorded by sardines and you’re now talking to them? Who does know?  

[mellowasinyellow]

100daysofwriting - Day 1

So I thought for the first day I might just briefly outline all of the WIPs I have actually made a start on and that might help me to decide where I want to focus some energy. I have some for Katniss/Peeta in THG fandom and some for Natasha/Clint in the MCU.

Everlark

folklore series - so I started this series of fics inspired by songs from Taylor Swift's album folklore because honestly those songs just immediately bring to mind so many scenarios that made me think of Katniss and Peeta. I made a start on chapters based on peace, my tears ricochet, invisible string, this is me trying, and mad woman. I also have a bit of an outline for continuing the story that was started in 'the 1'.

I've had this one WIP ongoing since about 2015(?) which is a bit of a monster that has grown beyond me but basically it involves Katniss and Gale being raised in the Capitol in relative poverty after their fathers are conscripted into the peacekeepers because of traitorous activity. Mrs Everdeen is still from 12 but was moved to the Captiol to be married (this part is sketchy) and she still had a little childhood romance with Mr Mellark. Peeta gets reaped and Mrs Everdeen reacts to this as he looks like his father. Katniss gets a crush on him as she watches him prepare for the games. She hates herself for it but finds herself checking up on how he is doing even during non-mandatory viewing.

Arranged Marriage - I feel like this is such a cliche for thg fandom, but I just imagined my own way that the pairings happen but I'm so bad at writing slow burn so this will probably never materialise, but if you want a semi-decent thought out pairing/arranged marriage system I would be happy to lend you mine.

Miscarriage fic - I will never post this, but it's in my WIP folder. It's full of nasty feelings that feel a little better when they are written about.

Modern AU Pandemic Quarantine! - ofc, this is essential. Katniss and Peeta end up as the only people not to move home from their dorm for the quarantine. Slow burn that I can't fucking write should ensue.

Canon Pandemic Quarantine AU - pandemic a few years after the end of the war forces Katniss to admit she wants Peeta as more than a friend with whom she hunts, bakes, rebuilds the district. Cue sexy pandemic times and a resentful Haymitch that keeps accidentally breaking the rules.

Divorced but co-parenting Everlark - obviously finding their way back together

Another classic of their children being reaped and dying - I don't know why I write things this depressing. They just tend to come out in one big rush and then I never address them again.

Real weird teen pregnancy modern day AU - don't know where it's going or why...

Modern day AU dead Prim - Peeta and Katniss just met each other through mutual friends and are kind of flirting. Peeta is a bit infatuated. Katniss stops going to mutual friend parties and he finds out it's because her sister died. Instead of staying away he gets tangled up in her grief and does all sorts of practical things while Katniss wallows. Also it's E rated but not that much fun... can't entirely explain where this one came from either...

Single Parent AU where Finnick and Annie play match maker. Probably my fave Everlark in the works but it's another one that has grown so big for the 20 minutes I can dedicate to it each week.

Clintasha

Red Room Take Down - Nat and Clint are retired and living a quiet family life with their child. SHIELD appears asking for Nat's help in taking down the red room and dealing with the fall out, specifically what to do with the girls that they get out. Nat is torn but chooses to go. Chaos ensues with the 'rescued' girls. I need to actually develop some OCs a little if I ever want this to be good but tbh the pending Black Widow movie is kind of holding me back on this one too because I hope we find out more about the red room.

So I have a weird habit of writing from Lila Barton's POV. I can't explain it. I have AoU and like to pretend it never happened but anyway I have a WIP about Lila detailing the collapse of her parents' marriage after Clint retires and he and Laura actually have to spend time together without Natasha. She then goes on to describe the custody settlement and her utter joy that Auntie Nat sleepovers with them at her dad's place. She feels utterly betrayed when she finds out they are getting engaged.

Fluffy AU - Clint and Natasha in an established relationship with a son born between infinity war and endgame. Natasha still sacrifices on Vormir, but Steve gets her back no bother and it's so nice and happy and fluffy and Clint and Natasha are together and they have a son who has both parents back and Steve gets to make all this happen and he is so happy too and they have a barbecue and go swimming in a lake and clint/natasha have private time, and their kid wants to be captain america, and did I mention how HAPPY everyone is?

Another fic similar to the above just about everyone being so HAPPY. Endgame reverses the snap and instead of weird farm family coming back Clint and Natasha get their daughter back and it's just a cute moment about her reappearance and their race back to the spot she disintegrated from. (Steve/Bucky go to Vormir and Steve is sacrificed, but that fucker CHOSE to leave).

This is another one that has just grown bigger than my brain. it's based off the idea that Natasha helped with coordinating fosterings during the blip time. Clint loses his mind when he loses his family and crashes in BedStuy but finds a neighbour girl (Kate Bishop) who is fending for herself in post-apocalyptic Brooklyn. He helps her out and tries to get children's services involved but it has collapsed. Finds out Natasha is the one getting everything in order. He gets in touch. She's at the end of her tether and asks why he can't keep looking after her. In the end he does and she ends up getting involved and all three get overly attached to each other. I haven't got as far as the events of endgame and idk what's going to happen. It might be tragic.

Pregnant Natasha but nobody knows what is wrong with her because they don't even suspect her being pregnant is possible. Just a real vivid description of the early unpleasant pregnancy symptoms.

Another absolute monster - Sort of canon compliant to begin with aside from before the farm family disappear. Clint and Laura are in the middle of separating and tensions are running quite high at the farm. Snap happens. Nat and Clint accidentally run into each other while both a bit low during the blip and get drunk and share home truths. Begin working together from HQ and both get a little less sad. He convinces her she doesn't have to be responsible for the world's fate every moment of every day. Clint has a break down at Morgan's 1st birthday and realises that things will have to change. Nat has this realisation later. They begin sleeping together. Accidental pregnancy. More feelings come out between them. They enter a more conventional relationship and have baby. Baby is really hard work (colic) and they struggle with comparisons and feelings of inadequacy. Pepper helps them to identify the colic and improves everything greatly. Happy times with baby while also running the avengers. Opportunity to reverse snap. Some good scenes between Nat and Tony. A big conversation between Nat and Clint about what it will mean. Steve and Nat end up going to Vormir together. Nat is obviously about to commit suicide. Steve over powers her and gives her a pep talk about the situation she is running away from and how to deal with it. He self-sacrifices. Clint goes back to farm fam and Natasha goes back to BedStuy with baby. Clint has to tell Laura and then the kids about the last 5 years and their new siblings. Nate is super into it. Cooper is a bit aloof and cynical. Lila is confused. Laura is quietly seething. Clint helps put the farm back together about 5 years of neglect and the kids meet baby. Family gets happier. Laura and Nat eventually meet again and it's civil/friendly.

My own version of what happened in Budapest.

The Call - inspired by a post here on tumblr. Nat calls Clint as she bleeds out. Just needs a beta reader and then I would consider publishing.

AoU reimagined but with Clintasha - I'm not sure where this one is going it's like a massive spider web right now with lots of ideas shooting off, but basically it is inspired by this post and just involves a lot of hoodwinking the other avengers.

Accidental Baby Acquisition - Natasha becomes Yelena's child's legal guardian after Yelena gets taken out. Natasha and Yelena are estranged at this point and Natasha things the whole thing is a trap and brings Clint along. He is surprisingly good with the baby so she ropes him in to teach her. The three of them end up bonding.

5 times there's only 1 bed + 1 time they choose to sleep in the same bed.

non-superhero AU Clint and Nat both think they have adopted a stay cat but actually the cat has owners and just likes strokes and eats a lot so has many 'families'. They get into an argument over which of them the cat belongs to only to find out the cat has owners and they are moving away. They decide to adopt a cat between them as both are not hope that much and the shelter refused them as single people. Slow burn ensues, which I am shit at writing.

[flameontheotherside]

This is actual garbage!

I decided to stop reading the 50 SoG book. It felt annoying. I rather read historical fiction\nonfiction anyway. My reading wasn't going to last long, I knew that. Tonight I stopped reading and began to feel emptiness because I realized when it comes to the main character, I can't relate. I can but not in picture. Everything else is almost spot on. It's just a book. But my life feels like a book. Sometimes I just wish it wasn't.

Noticing my favorite books don't have a main character who is a female person of color. I can't read and identify much with books like these anymore. I'm proud to be a mixed raced latina. All these characters are either black or white. Nothing else. It got me less and less interested in reading. I feel no connection or a real relatability.

I'd love to write my story as a science fiction novel.

Someone else would sooner rip my story without my permission, take the credit and...BAM! There's either a movie or TV series based off of that. Obviously if there wasn't one already. Idk...I'd not be surprised if it happened. Sounds like a long shot but the universe has a way of manifesting crazier shit. I wouldn't be cool with not been credited or had a say in how the story goes. I would love it to be more diversified and relatable to people of color.

With my luck it would be all of that above and it would completely go off another direction. I try not to think about it but it's so frustrating. I want to write a book but it requires me to go over painful things. When I tried a 3rd time it got me in a funk for weeks. My story is very sad...With actual help I'm sure I could create something. Just not right now.

It's been a few days since seeing Erik in a dream.

Idk if I could call it a dream. He was barely there. Sometimes I can dream but I feel him with me. It feels very warm and idk makes me feel like a gitty school girl? The dream can be about anything but I'd feel him. Sometimes he will look like someone else. He's trained me to tell the difference. I know what he feels like. It's hard to see him sometimes. My emotions. So he would play it safe by looking like someone else. Usually someone I find attractive. 😂 Of course and I can feel Erik coming from that "person". If I don't, I disregard that "person" and move on in the dream like no big deal.

I guess I'm missing him? Maybe it's my hormones being weird because of the antibiotics interaction with my birth control pills? Idk why suddenly all this dumb shit matters...Of course I'm going to keep training myself to be 💯 okay with seeing Erik in dreamtime and in trance. When I'm emotional it's nearly impossible but I like to give it the good ol college "try" 😆. That line never gets old ROFL.

I have to get up early to be awake...

...For the much needed piece of paperwork to come in to be dropped off at the apartment office. There so much going on. I have the 2nd round of the singing contest on Saturday and I've not yet picked a song. There's an idea though. We've also started cleaning and packing up for the move if that's even still a thing. There's drama over that one piece of fucking damnit to hell paper and I just want the stress and mayhem to be over with.

Also I've not had a proper 😩👉👌 in over a week due to an infection ironically because of antibiotics I had to take for a very bad and bloody UTI. So yeah...Mamma is very very frustrated. At least I finally got the shit I need for a yest infection this bad. Which never happens. This had to be the one and only first fucking time just to spite me. All this stress, I had gone behind my bfs back and ordered Taco Bell while I sat in the laundry mat. Did a lot of fucking laundry. The taco and burritos was the only glorious thing about my day; overrated tex-mex fast-food. Worth it.

We are running low on weed. We have to fix that or I'll go over the deepens. I love my nighttime bowls 🌿 😙💨 occupanied with cuddles and Netflix\Hulu\YouTube.

😘💕 I'm really fucking tired...

[mst3kproject]

Invasion of the Star Creatures

I promised you guys something truly awful this week, didn’t I?  Well, how about a space invasion ‘comedy’ (big emphasis on the air quotes there) produced by Samuel Zarkoff to be a double-bill with The Brain that Wouldn’t Die?  The closest thing it has to a star is Frankie Ray, whom MSTies might know as the writer of Laserblast.  He also wrote Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, which I really, really need to see one of these days.  Film Historian Bill Warren described Invasion of the Star Creatures as ‘so helplessly bad it’s almost unwatchable’.  Let’s find out if he was right.

Fort Nicholson is the world’s center for atomic research, despite apparently being staffed entirely by idiots.  The two biggest idiots are, unfortunately, our main characters.  Their names are Philbrick and Penn.  No, I don’t know which is which.  No, I don’t care.  I’m gonna call them Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice.  The first ‘comedic’ sequence involves Rick With The Squeaky Voice sitting in a barrel pretending he’s going to space, and getting his ass set on fire.

That sets the tone for the whole movie quite nicely. It’s stupid and it’s not funny, and it never gets any better.  In fact, as we shall see, it gets significantly worse.

For some reason, Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice are assigned to a mission to explore a cave recently exposed by a nuclear test.  This turns out to be the base for two seven-foot space women, Tanga and Pona, and their tuberous minions, the Vege-Men, and the entire party is soon in their clutches.  The aliens say that they have come to save humanity from destroying ourselves through nuclear war, but naturally the army isn’t into that.  Rick With The Squeaky Voice discovers that kissing the women puts them into a daze, allowing the two idiots to escape, but of course nobody back at Fort Nicholson believes their story.  Is it really up to these two to stop Tanga and Pona from heading back to their home planet with their report?  We’re doomed.

I don’t remember which review it was, but I once invited you to imagine a movie in which every character is Dropo or Watney Smith.  This is that movie.  This is proud of being that movie.  The aliens try to read the two Ricks’ minds and one is completely empty while the other is full of superhero fantasies.  Pona calls what she sees ‘completely illogical and infantile’, which is a fair description of the whole movie.

There’s a sequence where one of the army men shoots a rattlesnake that was about to bite one of the Ricks, and then cries because ‘he might have had a family’.  They try to lampoon the thing in old movies where the characters walk through the same set from different angles by doing it without cutting away or changing the camera angle, but it just looks dumb.  The Colonel gives a long-winded speech about the merits of getting straight to the point.  A forced march stops for a lovely picnic and wine tasting.  A guy gets his ass kicked by a Vege-Man and declares, “that’s the first time a salad ever tossed me.”  There’s a running ‘gag’ about fans of ‘Space Commander Connors’ recognizing each other’s secret decoder rings and immediately going into a full-on geek-out.

None of this is funny, much of it is downright embarrassing, and the worst part is that the writers have no idea how to include their attempts at comedy in the story.  Rather than the hijinks advancing the plot, every time something that’s supposed to be funny happens, the whole thing comes to a dead halt.  This gives the impression that the movie is stumbling around in the dark with no idea where it’s going.  It finally seems to settle on a plot when we find out that the spaceship is about to leave and must be stopped.  After some bullshit the Ricks convince the Colonel (and only the Colonel) to help them take on the aliens.  At this point I was thinking that this movie was pretty terrible but it hadn’t actually pushed me to the point of being tempted to turn it off…

And then it got racist.

The last ten minutes or so of Invasion of the Star Creatures are a downward spiral in which it seems like they gave up trying to be funny in favour of being actively offensive. First, they encounter what’s supposed to be a group of Native Americans on horseback.  Rick With The Squeaky Voice tries to get their attention by saying “hey, Kemosabe, I wanna buy some blankets!”  The Natives don’t speak much English but they do a lot of grunting, and threaten to kill the Colonel because they think he’s General Custer (?!).  Then they kidnap everybody and force them to smoke the peace pipe and drink firewater and the white guys only escape once the Natives have passed out.

Holy shit.  Not only is this repulsive, it is, as previously noted, irrelevant.  It has no effect on the plot other than to waste time.  The Natives do not help them defeat the aliens and neither does the Colonel, who is also in a drunken stupor.  And then, just when we think this can’t possibly get any worse, the defeated alien women declare that they must throw themselves on the mercy of the Earth Men.  This turns out to mean marrying them, and the dialogue specifically likens marriage to slavery, which Tanga and Pona seem to consider a point in its favour!  The end of this movie left my head spinning.  It’s like I watched a guy get ‘comedically’ knocked over by a punching bag for forty-five minutes and then he suddenly turned around and punched me in the face.

(Hey, I just realized… remember how I said the cave was exposed by a nuclear test?  The dialogue emphasizes how this whole area is irradiated and dangerous – and then totally forgets about it.  It’s never mentioned again and the characters take off their protective gear and never put it back on.  So… that was useless, too.)

There is stuff in this movie that could have been funny.  The secret decoder ring stuff almost got a smile out of me once or twice, because the characters seemed so earnest in their love for ‘Space Commander Connors’ and his lore.  The ‘Vege-Men’ also had potential.  We get to see a greenhouse room where they’re grown to be the women’s slaves, and the seedlings are hands or feet sticking out of flowerpots with a few leaves around them.  This is fairly amusing and I could see it being the juvenile form of a sentient plant on Star Trek TOS.  Adult Vege-Men are actors in stupid carrot costumes that they obviously can’t see out of very well, which should have been funny just because it’s so terrible, but Invasion of the Star Creatures is so bad you can’t even laugh at it ironically.

The idea of using a bumbling idiot as your main character, let alone two bumbling idiots, frankly baffles me.  Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice are supposed to be the guys we, the audience, identify with.  We’re supposed to like and root for them and to perhaps be able to imagine ourselves in their places, but the only thing I feel for them is contempt.  Why would anyone want to see themselves in these guys?  Perhaps it’s an attempt to say that anybody can be a hero, but the two Ricks don’t even qualify as that.  When they save the world, it’s basically by accident.  The ending, which rewards them with promotions, medals, and beautiful wives from outer space, actively makes me angry because they didn’t earn any of that!

Invasion of the Star Creatures works very hard at being pointless, and there’s very little in it that comes anywhere near a theme.  If any such thing exists, its in Tanga and Pona’s insistence that they’re here to save humanity whether we like it or not, and how the humans react to that idea.  The women say it would be a shame to see a young civilization destroy itself because nations were too stupid to work together.  Rick and Rick With The Squeaky Voice reject this entirely, which is supposed to be a joke: these guys are in the army, so if humanity transcends the need for conflict they’d be out of a job.  The rest of the plot then seems at pain to emphasize that humans cannot work together, and do not want to.

After all, the two Ricks’ attempts to summon help come to nothing.  The Native Americans never understand that these men want assistance, and the Colonel thinks it’s all a Space Commander Connors game before sliding under the metaphorical table, having never done anything useful.  The Ricks themselves spent most of their time arguing and complaining and in the end succeed only through good luck on their part and poor timing on that of the invaders.  Usually a story that begins with ‘aliens want to save primitive humans from ourselves’ would end with ‘the aliens were wrong about us’.  Invasion of the Star Creatures seems to want to say the aliens were right the whole time!

So there you have it – Invasion of the Star Creatures.  It started off kinda bad and not funny, then swirled down the cinematic toilet into outright offensive, racist, sexist drivel.  I’m trying to think of some small thing I can say about it that’s nice, but I’m having a very hard time.  I guess I kinda liked the rumbly noises that represent the alien language – that was more fun than just having the actresses spout random gobbledygook.  Other than that, I’m at a loss.  The actors suck, the sets suck, the effects suck, the costumes suck, and everybody involved was a bigoted dickweed.  Fuck this movie.

[collectivefandomstuff]

Hey mom! I’m stressed at 1am, any advice? I’m having trouble in school via studying sometimes it feels like we’re going from 0 to 100. And I need better study habits, do you have any advice? Bc sometimes it feels like I’m so afraid of failure that if I do study to my full potential (sounds weird) I feel like I loose the excuse of saying oh I got a bad score bc I goofed off. Like if I actually do all my effort to study and do bad, then is there something wrong with me??

(A/N: this answer is so long I almost feel ashamed to post it. I’m very sorry everyone. Anyway, if you’re looking for the concrete tips they’re at the end :) )

Hey :)

This doesn’t sound weird at all because I’m the exact same way. This way of thinking is actually more common than you’d think, and is often a part of the cognitive profile of perfectionism (btw, perfectionism isn’t that apt a name but I digress. Also, this way of thinking doesn’t mean you’re a perfectionist.). Anyway, I know a bunch of people who’ve experienced this, and the common factor isn’t fear of failure, but rather what it is you think you’re failing at. For example, I once told my therapist that I was super stressed over a bunch of stuff and I also had a paper I had to get done, and he asked me what would happen if I didn’t turn it in on time and I was like “academically? nothing. mentally? I wouldn’t be me anymore.” And that’s the stitch.

The people I know who struggle with this are often (though not exclusively) girls, and often people who’re pretty smart. They spent their childhood being told over and over that they were gifted, intelligent, and good at school. And back then, that was easy to live up to. They danced through the first few years of school without any issue, and enjoyed it a lot. They did their homework, understood stuff, and were usually “good kids”.

Now, we’re always growing and re-shaping our sense of self, but the foundations are lain when we’re children. So, when people around you keep identifying you as a smart/good student, then we start identifying ourselves like that too. Especially if it is being reinforced by your actual achievements. And then, suddenly, getting good grades isn’t about doing well or working hard, it’s about identity. It’s about who you are at your core. Thus, the stakes become infinitely higher. If you fail at a math test that you really studied for, then that means that you don’t have what it takes, and that means you are no longer yourself- the intelligent kid who’s good at school. A test might not be that anxiety-inducing, but losing your whole sense of self is. So, in that case procastination makes a lot of sense, because as long as you don’t fail while doing your best then you never put your identity on the line.

(This also applies if failing at school has become synonymous with being a failure, i.e. if you’ve been taught that doing well academically is the only way to be a successful/useful person in society, or if academic success has merged with the idea of a happy future so it feels like failing autmatically leads to an unhappy life. Essentially, mental structures that lead to a misconception of the stakes involved in a single exam/paper/task.)

That said, I do have some more practical things to say here. First off, sometimes we’re in a situation where we can’t do our best and that’s okay. I’ve failed exams, tests, papers, you name it and I still have my degree in the end. It’s never the end all of things.

Now, my own biggest freak out like this came when I started uni. My first paper I went completely insane and procrastinated like crazy, and I failed. And then the though crept in “what if I can’t do this? What if this is it. I can’t handle higher education, even if I try my hardest?” The anxiety was... big bad and mad.

I should say for this next part that my therapist once told me that I have a strangely aggressive approach to handling anxiety. Moving on. I sat down and said to myself “what is worse, to try my hardest and fail or half-ass it and never be able to live the life I want?” Since the answer was pretty obvious, I got to it. I had about 5 weeks until the next exam, and I sat down and planned every single hour until then. I studied for that damn test like I’ve never studied before, and whenever I felt anxious I would tell it to FUCK OFF and focus on the task I had planned. I didn’t allow myself to think beyond that first planning session, I just did what was next on the agenda. What am I supposed to do right now? read these 10 pages? Ok.

I’ve had two exams during my studies where I failed (the second due to the situation I was in) and ended up in this spiral. And here’s the funny thing: I have a small number of courses in uni where I got a higher grade. They include 1) courses that I found extremly interesting and 2) those two courses.

Okay! I know this is already so fucking long but I want to give you some actual tips too. Number one is obviously to plan. Take a whole day, sit down and plan the next month. Consider all your assignments, when they’re due, what you need to do to study, how long that’ll take and when that is done most efficiently. Plan everything in your calendar. Give yourself enough time for each task that you can do it even if you’re not super super focused. Do not study outside these hours. When you’re done for the day you’re done for the day. This way, there’s a clear, reachable end to each study session and you don’t feel as compelled to postpone tasks. When you sit down to study, don’t worry about the other stuff you have to do, or other subjects that you haven’t done yet. They’re all in the plan, all you have to do is what is in front of you. As long as you keep doing that you’ll make it. (If the plan goes to shit for some reason, take a day to plan a make a new one. It happens).

Some things to consider:

Different subjects are best studied in different ways. I used to set aside 15-30 minutes every day in high school for Italian, where I’d sit down and read the chapter we were working on out loud. I didn’t even focus that hard, I just did it every day- the chapter and the glossary. I STILL remember some sentences from that book. Math is best done in longer stretches, but not too long. 1-2 hours preferably. Think about how YOU work. Do you best read a textbook in one go or in increments? Do you learn better in a coffee-shop or your room? Silence? Music? This can also change depending on your subject. Plan accordingly.

For reading, time your reading speed for the book. Read a page at normal speed and clock it, then multiply that by the pages you need to read to see how much time you’ll have to plan for. Round up to give yourself room for spacing out.

Plan for breaks. Think about your normal need for it, but the uni standard is 15 minutes for every 45, making an even hour. Find a break activity that’s has a specific end, for example making some more tea/coffee and snacks and doing some stretches, or maybe playing one race in mario kart. Avoid things that you can get stuck doing beyond the alotted break time.

Buffers. For every five hours or so, plan one hour of buffer time. This is time that you can use if something takes longer than expected. If you do everything as planned, this is surprise free time! :D If you have a long study session, plan 30 minute buffers every two or three hours to be used for extra breaks and to keep panic at bay. Buffers will save your life.

Make a chart with different tasks and have little boxes that you get to fill in with fun colours when you’re done. If you have to read 100 pages, do a bar with ten boxes, that way you can see your progress visually.

Plan for days/evenings that are free. Plan what you’re going to do those days, like “movie night with X”, “play videogames and eat cupcakes”, “take a long bath and read a good book”. That way, you use your free time well and can use those days and evenings as incentive.

Prioritize your work. If you have too much to do, make a list of what’s most to least important and focus on doing the important stuff first. This includes studying tasks. What’s more important, reading that text for the third time or really understanding integrals?

Drink lots of water and eat sugar. It’s brain food. I usually bake before an intense week. That way when I feel myself going down I can go get a cupcake instead of taking time to make something to eat, or worse- try to soldier through which never works.

I hope this helped a little at least :) Good Luck! I believe in you! 💙💜