#maybe ill draw it. but it felt like something that needed the context of narrative and not just oo here is a drawing!

[skitskatdacat63]

Boy King AU | Vettonso + Martian | 1.3k

There's something about putting the future emperor of the Holy Realm on his knees like this. About how easily he goes, how willingly, how obediently. What would his adoring public think if they could see him now. If they saw their beloved king pressed down like this, in the cramped space between Fernando's legs. When they realized their little boy king took it like he was a little concubine instead. 

Fernando's bitterness is lifted away in moments like these, like taking off a heavy cloak on a winter's day. It was hard to feel humiliated about his own situation when watching Sebastian debase himself like this. 

He always gives himself up so easily. When Fernando threaded his fingers through his thick curls. When he pulled them, and then when he pressed his face down further down into the vee of his legs.  Sebastian rubbed his cheek into the coarse fabric of Fernando's breeches and blinked up at him. Fernando had to smother an embarrassing sound; he was just like a little cat!

Sebastian quirked his lips up into an odd little smile and slightly rose up on his knees, "What's funny?" Fernando swallowed lightly and schooled his face back into being impassive, "Nothing. As you were." Sebastian simply smirked at him and let himself be pushed back down by the fist clenched in his hair. 

Fernando scoffed internally, there was only so much pleasure in putting the other man in his place when he instead acted like this, this degrading action, was his birthright. He took to ruling and indulging in carnal pleasures as if they were of equal gravity. To be privileged to hold such high station and also let himself be taken apart like this…Fernando felt embarrassed for him.

He is dragged away from his musings when Sebastian moved to settle his hands in Fernando's lap, clutching his hips over the fabric and slightly squeezing; Fernando fought against the urge to shiver. Sebastian pushed up the skirt of Fernando's waistcoat and smoothed his hands over the opening flap of his breeches.

His eyes darted up at Fernando again, a daft smile on his face. Fernando scowled at him, "What?" Seb's grin sharpened, "You could stand to be a little more gracious. This is your future emperor, and future husband might I add, kneeling for you on this dirty, depraved, derelict- ah–" Fernando tugged on his hair again and hissed, "Well then, why don't you show me how eager you are to perform your marital duties?" 

Seb licked his lips, completely unconcerned by Fernando's annoyance, and unbuttoned one side of the closure to Fernando's breeches and moved to open the other–

The door to the carriage flew open, arrival announcement dying on a wheezing breath as the servant took in the image the two kings made. One splayed across the seat, exuding power, the other kneeled, debauched, between the former's legs. 

One would be hard pressed to determine which was higher on the totem of power and titles. 

There was something gratifying about this to Fernando, about being caught. He had been humiliated enough throughout the entire courtship, what was one more thing? And, certainly, what was one more thing if he could drag Sebastian down into the dirt with him. 

"Oh Mark, don't act so abashed! It's nothing you haven't seen before, in fact, we have been in this very position not even a fortnight ago!"

Oh. Yes. That. 

It was hard to be completely pleased when he remembered how Sebastian had already spent years prior to their engagement sampling the palace's ample selection of fellow high-born men. And how all those men seemed to be completely and utterly wrapped around his little finger.

Fernando released his hand from Sebastian's hair as if it had burned him. He did not understand why he felt ashamed with Mark looking in on them like this. Fernando was the one marrying Sebastian, not Mark; Mark was just a lowly courtier who had the esteemed duty of spending practically every waking hour with the brat…something he himself was decidedly not looking forward to. 

Sebastian stayed kneeling, staring impassively up at Mark, still fiddling with the clasp on Fernando's breeches. Fernando gritted his teeth and looked up from where he was watching Sebastian's clever little hands; Mark stared back at him placidly. 

Mark's indifference made the entire situation worse. Fernando now felt as if he was not doing anything unique, not doing anything particularly new. How many other men had Mark caught Seb with in this exact position? Fernando felt like he was just another plaything of the boy king, soon to be boy emperor, except his position was forever, permanent. He was the "Kept King", the king who only kept his throne due to the whims of a boy who doesn't even understand what power is.

Mark coughed, "Well," he says, "Your Majesty, I do believe you have a meeting to attend." Seb pouted at him and whined, "We were just getting to the main course," but still braced himself on Fernando's thighs and got up off the carriage floor. 

Seb pranced down the steps Mark had placed next to the carriage, miming tripping sown the stairs, snickering when his action made Mark reflexively reach out to grab him, and then playfully skipped off the final step. 

Fernando couldn't help but stare as Mark made the weirdest grimace in response, and he inexplicably felt all his mortification seep away from him. Huh. Maybe Mark is-

Seb then turned around and frowned at him, seemingly disappointed, but his eyes are deceivingly sharp, "Fernando, I regret to inform you that I have other duties I must attend to, you will simply have to wait." He then grinned up at Mark next to him and giggled as the other man stiffened when Sebastian looped both of his arms through Mark's. 

He leaned all his weight on the other man, Mark not so much as shifting his weight, "Oh Mark, won't you carry me back to the palace? I'm so very tired after all the horse riding," Seb looked up at him imploringly.

Fernando observed as Mark rolled his eyes and shrugged off the man, though notably not pulling his arm from Seb's grasp, and he got the distinct feeling that this exact scene had been played out countless times before. 

Fernando clenched his jaw as he watched Seb turn and saunter off, Mark trotting alongside him like a loyal dog. Fernando was supposed to be the unaffected one in this partnership, the unflustered one, the unconcerned one. And yet here he stood, in broad daylight, in a foreign kingdom, on the steps of a carriage with his breeches half unbuttoned and his cravat in disarray. 

He heard a cough from beside him, jolted and looked to the side. Sebastian's loyal Horse Master stood there, lounging against the side of the carriage. Fernando had forgotten who had even been driving the carriage in the first place. After Seb has let himself be pushed down, his hair still windswept from their ride together, everything else seemed to fade away. His thoughts were reduced only to how he could mess up the younger man's hair further. 

Jenson grinned at him wolfishly, and casually crossed his legs,  "First time?" he inquired. Fernando glared at him. The other man laughed openly at him, "What? He's a busy man with big prospects. You're not his majesty's only conquest, you know. Now your throne on the other hand…"

Fernando seethed, it was one thing to be humiliated by the future emperor, but to be patronized by the king's horse boy? No. It would simply not do. He closed his eyes in annoyance, pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled, and prepared a speech about how he was not about to be talked down to by a man who didn't even have a throne to speak of! 

But when he opened his eyes again and opened his mouth to begin his tirade, Jenson was already wandering away to tend to the horses. Dios mío, Fernando was not mentally prepared to spend the rest of his life with all of these impertinent morons. 

[iron-touch]

Author's Notes: Chapter 37 (Swing and a Miss)

And I'm back! Again, this chapter took a little bit longer to come out due to other commitments. But I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out nonetheless.

While I always planned on having Hol Horse have an inner monologue about intending to ditch the group at Chicago IX, some of the context of this scene had to be redone from my initial outline because, as discussed previously, him leaving here wasn't part of my original plan. That being said, it did end up going well with the golf setting.

Okay, for some context. About a year ago while I was still planning this arc, @allshaftsfall played Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach on stream with the intent of 100%ing the game. One of the game's achievements calls for you to get a low score on the minigolf minigame, centered around the alligator animatronic Monty. Shaft lost his mind trying to get this achievement. "Gator Golf" has since become something of a meme between us and our friends (most of which are probably reading this right now; hi!), and I knew I had to incorporate it into Iron Touch somehow. This informed several different things about the chapter, like Screaming Jay's appearance, Mr. Williams' golf clubs, and the moment where Mr. Williams is disappointed he didn't get a hole in one. I mean, hey, I was already doing a resort/beach arc anyways. Those places usually have golf courses.

That being said, the golf course itself did end up changing a bit from start to finish. I originally planned on having it be a glow in the dark putt putt course like Gator Golf (which is, in my objectively correct opinion, the superior form of golf), but decided against it because I liked the visual of the sun setting as the chapter progresses, symbolizing Hol Horse losing all his options to go out with someone else (and drawing us closer to the next chapter). My next thought was to make the golf course feel "alive" somehow; like maybe slopes would form in the ground that would guide the ball to the hole or something. I decided against that because I felt like it made it seem like I was trying to hard to make Chicago IX feel like this weird, cryptid location that bends the rules of reality. We already have the giant spider car wash portal, we don't need a living golf course. I considered making this Mr. Williams' Stand ability instead, but I couldn't think of a good "mechanism" for how it would activate. The physicality of Stands is very important to me; the Stand can't just "do thing" because the user wants them to. There's gotta be something the Stand does that makes it work, or have it be part of the Stand's design. Plus, I wanted Mr. Williams' Stand to be less obviously tied to golf. Eventually I just settled on having it be a plain old golf course.

Mr. Williams' half-afro hairstyle was inspired by a picture of a real person I found online (where someone was arrested mid haircut), but is also meant to symbolize how the stress of running Chicago IX is causing him to lose his hair. I also liked how it split down the middle, like how his Stand does.

"What kind of a person just walks around with cough drops in their pocket?" Me. I'm person.

Here's a video of what the club flip would look like, if you're curious.

I rewrote the paragraph where Screaming Jay activates like two times in order to really sell the gross out factor of it. Iron Touch needs more body horror in it! I mean...not like this is the last bit of body horror we'll see this arc. Teehee.

Originally I was very hesitant on adding an animal Stand user to Iron Touch because I didn't know what else I could do with the idea that Araki hadn't already done himself. I didn't want to make an animal Stand user just because, I wanted the fact that the character is an animal be relevant to the story. While I suppose you could replace Lucky with an old and or terminally ill human, I think the narrative of Mr. Williams restructuring Chicago IX around Random Access Memories works much better when it's his pet and not another human. I also didn't want Chicago IX's owner to be Random Access Memories' user because I thought the narrative of seeking out supernatural abilities for personal gain was too similar to Depeche.

I had to fight every fiber in my body to not have Hol Horse say "Do me a favor and shut the fuck up" instead of "Do me a favor and shut the hell up." Even in a post Stone Ocean-dub society, I'm still only allowing myself one F-bomb in the fic, and I shan't waste it here!

Shit's gonna start going down next chapter :)

Music references:

Brackish, the resident brainwasher that Mr. Williams mentions, is named after a song of the same name by Canadian heavy metal band Kittie. Originally this character had a generic name; making it a music reference was a last minute change made literally as I wrote these author's notes. I like the implication of Brackish being important enough to warrant a music reference.

Mr. Williams is a weird one. Two of the collaborators on the album Random Access Memories were Pharrell Williams and Paul Williams (not related to each other). They're "co-references" of sorts. I'll add a Pharrell song to the playlist just to prevent things from getting too cluttered, but think of them both when you listen. Plus, I felt that the name William would be very fitting for a Fnaf inspired chapter.

Mr. Williams' beta name was Screaming Jay. My initial idea for him was for him to constantly be whispering despite his name, maybe have him lash out into a yelling fit when he starts rambling, but I decided against it because that wouldn't show up well in the prose.

Screaming Jay was named after American singer Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Honestly, I just wanted to put I Put a Spell On You on the playlist. Sadly, the Hocus Pocus version isn't on Spotify.

Screaming Jay's beta name was The Romantic, after the American rock band The Romantics. This was another Fnaf reference; since their song Talking In Your Sleep was used extensively during promotional material for the movie. However, once I actually got to writing the chapter, I realized that I hated the sound of the name and decided to change it to something else.

Lucky was named after the song Get Lucky from the album Random Access Memories.

[meandmyechoes]

Something I wrote May 8th, 2020 02:44 about Rebels that I forgot to publish. But actually contain a lot of context for how I feel about reusing Ahsoka in general. I formally apologize for every ill will I had for Rebels Ahsoka’s design.

hot take: I don’t like Rebelsoka. Yeah, as if you can sum up my opinion like that.

Why I don’t like her is a really petty and subjective bias, so I am not being fair.  The real problem I have with Rebelsoka was mostly my personal lack of enthusiasm in her art style and early on her role was... replaceable. Her unique place is as an ex-Jedi, which is why I’m glad and more accepting when they turn her story away from the Rebellion to focus on Jedi Business. Her early lines in Rebels was... delivering information that could easily been given to another rebellion officer. And it felt off to switch from that unsure teenager to this full-blown wise mentor.

With everything, the final verdict is of course, Rebelsoka is amazing. In the end the potential outweighs my complaints. Yeah, information feeder, cryptic vocabularies or poor cosmetic choices can be forgive in exchange for awesome duels, delightful mentoring and GOSH THAT ANGSTY “ANAKIN”. not that i hope we see more ahsoka stories but i hope we see more ahsoka stories you know. more than that 45 minutes of it ◔̯◔

As a TCW traditionalist, of course that was my definition of Star Wars. Bitter of replacement was a common feeling in the year 2015, but I’m also reasonable enough to expect a major stylistic change with Disney’s acquisition. So all in all, I am glad we at least have another show instead of none at all.

Even though I dropped out, I was there for Rebels in the beginning. If nothing, I learnt from Clone Wars not to underestimate a Season 1. Yes, no one from the Ghost crew captivated me the way Ahsoka did, but I liked them all equally. It was an enjoyable show when I judged it as an exposition and sanely do not compare it to the finale that Clone Wars was building. So Ahsoka coming back at the end of Season 1 really put me in a difficult place, when I thought I could move on to this new family, having accepted her departure.There were rumours, but I kinda expected her to set off the S2 premiere instead. I was also spoiled of that very last minute of revelation. Anyway, when she came back, and I heard Ashley’s voice, I just broke into tears. It’s literally a resurrection. I also couldn’t believe, that I actually get to see Ahsoka again in my life, and that she is suddenly so mature and wise.

It was difficult for me to adjust for two reasons: the art style and her maturity. I guess now I could put myself next to Anakin in 709 describing how I felt meeting Ahsoka again. I also really hated her art style in Rebels initially. She was... streamlined? had slick skin, but her lekku stripes are jagged, and i never get to see how her lekku grew into the shape they are now. and her whole facial patterns are different too?? and she actually doesn’t have clear sky blue eyes anymore? but somehow has deep purple eyes? and just all around no-no with the art style when it first came out. The style wasn’t an issue when you don’t have the my favourite as a veteran character for comparison. (say you don’t see me complaining about Hondo that much but didn’t they do him dirty) Even though I had no problem with her outfit or headdress, it’s just not my favourite of hers. and the fact that they’re forcing me to watch a cartoon character lined with age! and how tired she looks, with wrinkles! and pouches under her eyes! don’t do this to my poor daughter! let her stay happy and carefree as a 14-year-old 5ever! (18-year-old me holding an angry PTA sign)

It also closed a book on however I want her to be. stupid war in the stars making me accept canon. I would’ve been content with her just leaving and staying alive, when every fan set out on her dying before RotS. Yeah maybe she threw her entire ‘life’ away but at least, she’s not, dead you know. And seeing her thrown into another war, threw herself into another war, I wan’t sure I could handle that. The grief, the guilt, the regret, the sight of not seeing her standing by her family again. (good lord Filoni gave us the Rex and Ahsoka hug ;_;) I just want her to stay happy and carefree in my head okay?

and that constant battle of wanting to see more of your favourite character but also level enough to not want her to steal the spotlight form a promising new cast? and the lowkey distrust towards Disney that they brought in Ahsoka to trick more audience into a less-popular show? as a fake-ass apology? Are you suppose I’m ever gonna forgive you for cancelling Clone Wars even though you brought back its characters and basically made a TCW sequel? Are you asking me to overlook the damage, done to both TCW veteran characters AND Rebel’s originality if you don’t do it right? And when they really don’t give us much Ahsoka mid-season it was kind of.... *deflating high-to-low 7-note crescendo* If Disney is actually giving us “what the fans want”, it’s because we damn well deserve that apology without ever needing to forgive, less alone thank. 

So anyway, I did dropped out of Rebels after the Season 2 finale. A bit of real world reasons too because I was getting busy in college and I have Rider, an all-year-round show to fall back on. So i just totally turned away from Star Wars in general after March 2016 where it was dead dead for Clone Wars. I caught up a bit of S3 but never finished it, and I’ve been on and off trying to do it to recover from TLJ but it didn’t feel enough (+ plus real busy irl)

I only even found out Ahsoka the White on social media and was utterly confused. Not sure if it was the best decision creative-wise then, and frankly hand’t given much thought since. But I definitely don’t mind Ahsoka Not Dying. I think I have more questions directed to this girl in person on her life and fashion and spaceship choices more than anything. You just sort of reached a point where like god let them rest. 

I only wrapped up the series before I saw Walkabout. And there was like a 3-month gap since I started rewtaching late January after ep9. But I ran through the last season in 2, 3 days? It was really good. I didn’t expect it focus on just one planet, but the plot was good, even though the primary enforcer villain monkey just looks meh. Somehow strangely, the character I grew attached to is Kallus. You know, he is not in the main cast whatsoever so he really may not die? And the whole time as the finale draws closer I just was on the edge of my seat hoping none of my faves die. (Yeah the only mistake that finale made was sacrificing Gregor. not nice Dave.)

And the epilogue was amazing. The resolution again subverts expectation in a good way and gave us what’s plausible but not expected. And I love how the show actually balanced warfare and lore. The mythological episodes border on fantasy fairy tales but it still suits my taste. The balance is actually better done here than on Clone Wars. In a show titled Clone Wars, you kind of expect it to be about Clones and Wars. But Rebels connected the spiritual journey of the characters to the wider warfare. They needed the Force to train and guide them to their victory. And this prominence of the Force as a plot element and narrative influence is something I found missing in the later seasons of the Clone Wars (6 not withstanding).

The show made me genuinely escalates in loving these characters and gave us a well-rounded, complete Star Wars experience. It’s not my favourite, but it’s definitely a good show. 

[tfw-no-tennis]

huntoxhunto

we watched 2 whole more eps but we’re abt to vacay so i better recap this biz now before i forget

ok so we finished the zoldyck arc and uhhhh gotta say we werent expecting like any of that to happen lol 

ok ill back up so we start w/killuas mom (i dont think we ever heard her name) confronting gon & co....and canary (i lov her) is not dead which i assumed but thank goodness. 

zoldyck mom was totally using nen. also she is off her rocker gotta say. tho that visor is super cool, albeit confusing - is it connected to a bunch of security cameras or something? how does she see all that shit? 

granpa is wild. his tunic thing that says ‘one kill a day’ or w/e is kinda hilarious, it reminds me of the ‘apple a day keeps the dr away’ saying...a murder a day keeps the....idk away????

i love that killua makes it abundantly clear that he couldve like escaped at any time lol. also tho why didnt he just escape....baby boy just leave 

killua getting all serious and threatening milluki if he messes with gon....my boys got it BAD 

this family has so many communication issues hvbjadkfbjaskdfj nobody is on the same page at all 

the butler guy continued to remind me of kuro one piece this whole time...i was waiting for him to bust out the ridiculous cat claws

oh my GOD wait the flashbacks of EVEN BABIER KILLUA were so precious ;_; he was soooo tiny and cute oh my god. so precious. and canary was also so tiny and cute 

baby killua really just wanted a friend :(((( and canary wanted to be friends w/him but knew that mom zoldyck would kill her if she overstepped like that :( thats so tragic mannnn

also canary is so cool man. her beating up all those guys was epic

ok that whole scene with killua and his dad was like, such a rollercoaster lmao

like....it was all over the place for me...first of all the ambiance was wack, the room lighting was weird and im p sure killuas seat was an electric chair??? and the dad was in a coffin thing..???? like....interesting aesthetic choices all over the place here 

also i see now where killua got his hair and also his catboy tendencies. the zoldyck catboy genes seem to trace back to zoldyck dad, who has kinda scary cat eyes 

also im guessing that the dad is the blood zoldyck and the mom is the one who married in. they sure seem to put a lot of emphasis on like, family legacy or w/e, but the two parents certainty go abt it in different ways 

the whole convo b/w killua and his dad was wild, it totally didnt go where i was expecting it to. his dad was weirdly chill while also being super intense? 

killua happily telling stories abt gon was so sweet....baby boy baby 

and his dad telling him ‘never betray your friends’ was rlly interesting...i wonder what his reasons were for saying that 

cause then he tells killua he can leave, and killua does, but then dad zoldyck tells mom zoldyck (i rlly need to find out their names) that he thinks killua will come back on his own time....inch resting 

i wonder if dad zoldyck made killua promise that bc he was trying to set killua up for failure - as in, he tells killua to never betray his friends, thinking that killua inevitably will & be distraught abt it, and then turn back to the zoldyck family when this happens. idk

also its interesting to me that zoldyck dad wants killua to lead the family someday. like, illumi is right there, hes the oldest and clearly dedicated to being an evil assassin, and he seems p good at it...i wonder why killua is the favorite....the grandpa (i think) did say that killua is Special(tm) which...yes he is a special baby boy i love him. i wanna see more zoldyck family flashbacks/interactions so we can see what led them to this point 

oh lord that reminds me of illumi briefly appearing in the killua flashback and hes just like, suddenly there, wearing some gay ass sweater....like ok dude did you just come back from the Evil Assassin Library or st?????

that reminds me too, ruth tells me that apparently in the manga illumi and hisoka got married or something???? to which i say, thats fucking wild, but also it makes sense, those two are both horrible and disgusting and they absolutely deserve each other hbvajvhsdfjbak peak evil nasty gay rep, i love it. i cant wait to see whatever the fuck the context to that is bc, thats fucking wild

ok back to the plot so like its so wild to me how smoothly everything went hvubsjduhfbjsh like....killuas dad was rlly like ok u can leave and killua just went to the butler house and then canary woke up and was like ok gon & crew lets go to the butler house to see killua, fuck the rules, (and she didnt even get killed for ‘disobedience’ or w/e, or more likely - in most big shounen, she wouldve been attacked by the other evil butlers and gon wouldve had to fight them)

killua Rlly was like fuck this place im leaving my boyfriend and his parents are here to pick me up [puts on gayest outfit he owns and skateboards away] hvbhsjdfbjdkf

i love killuas weird gay preteen fashion so far and i cant wait to see more 

killua telling the butler guy to let him know as SOON as gon gets there cause he wants to see him AS SOON AS HE CAN ;_; bro they r....in love 

of course the butler is trickey tho lmao, any other shounen this wouldve turned into an 8 ep long fight scene sequence where gon has to fight the butlers in order to see killua 

and the of course gon is the same way, gon is like i need to see killua RIGHT NOW take me to him!!! ohhh my god babies

the whole coin game was wild, it was funny when the other butlers got involved too lmao 

when gon was like ‘hey leorio can i see your knife’ i was like OH NO I DONT LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING. and i was right bc OWWWWW baby boy oh my god!!!! but that seems to have solved it even tho thats NOT how swelling works at ALL- 

anyways gon is a cute smart good boy and i also find it funny how killua eventually gets impatient and just busts in on this whole dramatic situation (and the tension immediately deescalates as a result lmao) 

tangent but god its so funny seeing all these butler guys deferring to killua, an actual 12 yr old....i wanna see the hilarious and hijink-filled results of killua being raised as a rich spoiled assassin prince. thats a lethal combo thats gotta result in some wildly skewed perceptions on how things work, especially paired with gon ‘probably eats dirt for fun and sleeps in trees’ freecess 

godddd gon and killuas lil reunion is SOOO cute they were so happy to see each other ;_; bro they are SO cuteeeee augh. two tiny babies

killua being like oh hi also uh kurapika andddd [looks at smudged writing on hand] lorpo 

hvhhbajfbs dont do my man leorio like that killua hes a hardworking father 

the fact that they just like. LEAVE...thats so wild. i cant believe how little fighting this arc had. this all wrapped up SO much faster than i could have ever anticipated lmao 

where the heck was alluka!? i assumed she’d show up here but uhhhh guess not......in the silhouette shot of all the zoldycks she and killua were holding hands ;_; my fucking uwus bro 

we also didnt see the grandma or great grandpa so im guessing theyll appear later 

gon being like fuck it im not using my hunters license til i punch hisoka in the fucking face hvbhahsfbjsk thats hilarious 

also a convenient way to let him have his hunters license but not utilize it til later in the story...its so early for him to have achieved that big chunk of his goal, which just shows that hxh is Not your typical shounen and isnt gonna just be centered around gons quest to become a hunter 

so we finally found out what hisoka said to kurapika....just as i thought, it was st to do w/the phantom troupe. so theres a handy setup for the yorknew city arc later. bam 

hisoka just being like ‘hey meet me in this (presumably) very large city on this date. no i will not tell you where in the city to meet me. bye seeya there’ 

tbf hisoka is very hard to miss 

god when they arrive and kurapika is just like ok well we got killua so im out lol bye everyone....bro hvbjkhgbfjhdksfhjk that felt so abrupt 

and then leorio was like oh yeah same i gotta go study time to take the fantasy MCAT or w/e

AND THEY BOTH LEFT....now gon and killua r chilling but im like oh my god no leorio kurapika come back, we need some (questionable) adult supervision over here 

and like immediately killua is like ok gon do you have money. and of Course gon doesnt have money. so killua is like well you need money and you need to train so you can deck hisoka, so lets go to a fantasy version of an underground fighting ring! this is why kurapika and leorio needed to stay 

tho they probably wouldve just gone along with it 

they did all promise to meet in yorknew city, but thats apparently like 6 months away. are gon and killua rlly gonna spend 6 months at heavens arena

the part where killua draws the diagram demonstrating how much of a n00b gon is....hvbajdkhfbhajskf

AND THEN when he drew himself into the diagram and was like :3c wow im so modest HBJHSKHDFHBJS that was so funny

it was like that post thats like ‘you can tell when a cats pupils change and they just shift into Silly Mode’ thats what killua looked like...catboy

so thats basically it i think, gon and killua are heading to heavens arena to join fight club or whatever. tournament arc time! 

PREDICTION CORNER: 

i doubt this is the last weve seen of the zoldyck family. i mean we havent even met 3 of them, and we barely saw the ones we did meet...idk when theyll come back but i suspect theyll be making some big money moves later on and fucking shit up somehow 

i think maybe illumi or someone will like, spy on killua sometimes to keep track of him. or theyll track him by other means

ill use the prediction corner to reflect on incorrect predictions so heres a few. i rlly thot killua was gonna be more edgy than he is but hes rlly just a good boy huh. like hes a gay baby assassin catboy but hes so cute and good too. he just wants to live his life and hang out with his tiny bf like... omg :’) 

also i thot hisoka held a totally different narrative role lbvahkfjhjjaksfl i thot he was like main villain guy....hes more like an annoying creepy clown dude who (probably) shows up a lot to bother the main cast. we’ll see, but thats what i think of him now

like i thought hisoka would be like p1 dio, where hed be/quickly become a powerful antagonist who would amass a bunch of followers/minions (when actually the only person he seems to hang out w/is illumi, and theyre more like equals than an evil guy/minion dynamic)...or like i thought hisoka would be very well known as a scary evil guy but nope he was just another participant in the hunter exam, albeit a weird freaky one whose rancid vibes everyone seemed to pick up on 

anyways actual predictions, i think hisoka is gonna be at heavens arena, which would be super funny. gon is like im gonna train to beat hisoka and he shows up to do that and hisokas just there like >;) hey

i think if i had to guess, the zoldycks will show up again (in a plot important way) at the end of the yorknew arc/before the greed island arc. i know basically nothing abt any of the arcs but i do know the order they go in so theres that

i do think illumi will show up earlier than the other zoldycks tho, since he seems to be out doing his own thing more than the rest. also we still really havent resolved the whole mind control thing that im still convinced of 

i think nen will finally be introduced/alluded to heavily in this arc...or like, characters will use nen and gon will be like whoa whats that 

i think killua knows what nen is...maybe? it would make sense since im sure all the zoldycks can use it (at least, we saw mom zoldyck use it, probably)

can killua use nen already? that would be pretty funny. i dont think so tho. maybe u learn nen at a certain age. i have no idea what nen is 

also isnt gons nen power the power to like, turn into a really buff version of himself or something. how the fuck does that work 

ok enough nonsense its bedtime zzzzz

[maxortecho]

Confessions - 1x01

For today’s Echo appreciation, I thought I’d use the theme of confessions and kick off a meta series following Liz’s S1 journey towards Max. 

Liz has been closed off and emotionally drifting for the past 10 years. She doesn’t connect. Once she hits Roswell though, she’s met with a shock to the system in the shape of Max Evans. Max emotionally blindsides Liz throughout S1. She likes to see herself as a rational person separate from her emotions, but she struggles to rationalise Max. Bit by bit, Liz finds herself becoming tethered to a connection and to her feelings again. Ultimately, Liz’s S1 romantic arc builds to her confessing these feelings to herself, to Max, and to Rosa. 

So let’s start with episode 1!

The Crashdown

The first episode opens with Liz spitting fire at an unknown cop for pulling her over at an ICE checkpoint. Except, well—turns out it’s Max Evans. Her anger subsides, her voice softens, and she’s suddenly remembering him smiling at her in high school. The thing is, Max is still the cop who pulled her over. Liz is shocked to see him, sure, but I think it’s her automatic association of goodness and safety with her memory of Max that has her combativeness and suspicion evaporating on the spot.

Then Sheriff Valenti comes over. Liz’s walls immediately go back up.

Liz: “Are you going to breathalyze me, or?”

Later, at the diner, Max causes the same shocked and breathless reaction.

I still find it cute that Liz spends a good thirty seconds speechless and staring at Max wide-eyed while he’s talking to her. She seems more stunned than she was the first time--he was in full uniform and a strange context there; here, he’s lost the hat and the jacket, and he’s in familiar territory at the diner and her family home. 

Max is only dropping in to let Liz know her left front running light is broken, and then he promptly turns to leave in the middle of her staring. Liz flounders and mirrors his spin, walking in the other direction--

(to where, honey? the window? lmao)

--before making a split-second decision to dive headfirst into that familiarity sparking between them.

Liz: “You want a milkshake?”

Liz doesn’t get time to rationalise in these initial moments. She stays in that vulnerable space during their diner discussion, tries drawing Max there with her (”You wanted to be a writer. So why did you join the force?”). Max references Rosa’s death and Liz visibly closes herself off. This is the first time she does so in reaction to Max--which is fitting, considering what happens next.

In the OG Roswell, Liz actually gets shot in the stomach. But Liz gets shot in the heart in RNM. I definitely think RNM upped the drama and the symbolism here. Max and his family’s betrayal has lead to Liz dying by the heart. It’s time for him to start fixing his mistakes or Liz is gone forever. Eight minutes into the series, Max literally and symbolically restarts Liz’s heart.

Big Sisters

After Liz is shot and Max tells her it didn’t happen, Liz decides she’s going to confront him. But directly before she does, Liz visits Rosa’s roadside grave. Liz doesn’t have a memory here that is specifically about Rosa. Instead, she has a memory where she talks to Rosa about Max. When I first watched this, I found it a strange choice for introducing Rosa. But!

I now view this Liz/Rosa conversation as representing Liz’s conflicting perspectives about Max. Flashback Liz is all heart and driven by emotions: “Maybe I don’t want to miss Max Evans”. 

Flashback Rosa is arguing to think with her head and not her emotions, and pushing the ‘cage around your heart’ narrative that Liz adopts after Rosa’s death: “He’s already in the rearview mirror, trust me”.

Liz’s memory at Rosa’s roadside grave feels like she’s seeking out her big sister’s advice. What’s interesting is that Liz already knows Max is lying to her and she has suspicions he’s hiding something bigger—and yet an emotional plea is her first plan of action. The rational, scientific plan (what we are consistently told is characteristic of Liz) is her back-up plan when it comes to Max. 

So Liz finds Max and gives him a milkshake. She reveals some personal information in an attempt to appeal to his goodness and sense of right. She can trust Max to tell her the truth. All he needs is a push. A secret for a secret, right?

Liz: “Can you keep a secret? My mother is mentally ill. My sister Rosa too. I was always afraid I’d end up like them. Hallucinating. You know I thought I was shot?”

Except Max doesn’t meet her halfway. He denies she was shot. Max changes his mind when Liz becomes more upset, but he gets interrupted by Michael exploding a car’s windows. Liz leaves the conversation without answers. She takes Max’s straw instead.

Even though Liz has fallen onto her rational plan, how does she follow up the Max interaction? With another big sister. She seeks out Maria and The Wild Pony. The next step of Liz’s rational plan should be checking out Max’s DNA. But Liz doesn’t do that yet. Instead, Liz actually follows the next step of her emotional plan failing: girl’s gotta eat her proverbial bucket of ice cream before she can move on. Liz tells Maria that she thought she felt a spark with Max, but now she just feels like an idiot after getting the cold shoulder from him. 

Liz finds that switching off her emotional reaction towards Max--and transitioning into a rational scientist about him--isn’t coming easily to her for some reason. Strange. That usually works. I don’t think this is an influence of the psychic bond either; Liz has the same problem in the beginning of 1x03. She’s there to gather data about Max but has to visibly shake off her emotional reaction and the pull towards him. 

By the time the handprint turns up and Liz checks his DNA, Liz is ready to confront Max again. Except Max has already decided he’s ready to share his secret. Like their first scene at the ICE checkpoint, all of Liz’s fire evaporates on the spot.

The Desert

This whole episode, Liz has been trying to get some vulnerability and honesty out of Max. And boy does she get it. Max flays himself open in the desert for Liz—his identity, his feelings, his memories—and the amount he’s giving her blows Liz and her reservations away. HER FACE JOURNEY, Y’ALL.

Liz: “Max... Why me?”

Max: “Do you remember the first time we met?”

Liz: “I feel like I’ve just always known you.”

I ache at this line. This idea of Max embedded in Liz’s history and a piece of her identity. Max associated with familiarity and home, despite him literally being an extra-terrestrial figure. She isn’t bothered nor put off him by him being an alien. He’s still just Max Evans to her. (And, okay, for Max who simply wants to be the guy from Roswell, who feels scared of being extraordinary, I find this really sweet.) Max can show her his memories and how he feels about her (why her), but he’ll have to touch her.

Liz: “Okay. Do um… do whatever you want.”

Which is essentially the point of this meta where I descend into incoherent yelling. Liz will say in 1x04 that she keeps a cage around her heart. But here, Liz doesn’t even hesitate to give him full access to it. Max made himself vulnerable for her, so she’s comfortable fully reciprocating. Liz entered Roswell wary and closed off, but a few days later she’s 100% on board for weird, unknown, psychic alien bonding with Max. Damn. Over and over, we are shown that Max Evans is an exception to Liz’s rules.

Max refuses to kiss Liz after, thinking he’s interacting with a Liz mirroring his own feelings back at him. Liz doesn’t seem to agree. Instead of arguing the point though, she leaves it at “Fine. I’ll kiss you [when the handprint fades].”  (His delightfully scandalised reaction? Chef kiss!) She can prove him wrong later, if he won’t believe her right now. I do think Liz reflects Max here in some kind of feelings loop--but at the same time, she knows she’s also experiencing this purely, as her own source of feelings.  

While I’m here, if Max believes Liz is reflecting his feelings, then what does Max believe he’s feeling because of Liz? Does he consider that possibility? Is he feeling any doubt or fear? And if he is, is that Liz or him?

The Reunion

Hmm, reunion indeed.

Liz says she can’t connect. But she does.

Liz says she doesn’t dance in Roswell anymore. But she does. And she drags Max along with her.

Oh, I’m sensing a theme for Liz here.  

[dumdeeedum]

A More Expansive Review of “The Magicians” 4.13 and the Situation Surrounding the Episode’s Events.

So I read both the interview with “The Magicians” show-runners Sera Gamble and John McNamara and the interview with Jason Ralph trying to make sense of what happened here outside of the actual story in the show which I think we can all agree at this point was total hack nonsense but I’ll dive into that further into this post. 

It really sounds like Sera Gamble and John McNamara were trying to be edgy or who knows what the fuck with the story and decided to kill Quentin off. I originally thought it was Jason Ralph’s idea, not even sure where I got that from because none of it has been made clear so obviously I’m still not sure which it was. But the interviews make it sound like this was a narrative decision and not Jason Ralph simply wanting to move on. And if that was the case then that only makes this worse because that means that they weren’t even trying to write around a man who wanted out of a contract they were explicitly trying to write him out. So why do any of this? It only makes this entire question mark of a situation all the more confusing and fucked up!

And based on what I heard, again, I can’t find anything to definitively corroborate this so please feel free to correct me if you have evidence for this or to the contrary but Sera Gamble’s done this before when she was the show-runner on “Supernatural” and apparently fired Misha Collins who is fan favorite and either had to hire him back when she realized she fucked up or someone went over her head and hired him back. But this whole Quentin thing coupled with this information about “Supernatural” (and mind you, I stopped watching that show a reeeeally long time ago so I can’t speak to how it did pre-and-post Misha Collins) really makes me concerned about why these networks would continue to invest in her when she opts to make or go with really dumb business decisions.

I also want to say, to be fair, that I don’t have any experience with John McNamara’s work outside of maybe “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” that I’m old enough to have watched when it was originally airing but not old enough to actually remember. Shaddap. So maybe someone can shed some light on him as a show-runner in his own right because I simply don’t have that information and I don’t want to blame one half of this creative team fully for the fuckups of the pair. Though White women and White men have a bad track record when they get together, but I digress.

I simply don’t understand it if this was a creative decision they made, I really don’t. I also want to be careful to make it clear that this is speculation based on the information I have and it isn’t intended to make anyone feel like there’s any hope that they’ll hire Jason back or anything, because I really don’t think they will if the did fire him at all.

Something else the interview with Sera Gamble and John McNamara made very clear to me is that these are a couple of very prideful people who have already made up their minds that they know better and they’re edgy as fuck and won’t back down from their shitty creative decisions. And I think that’s really what I wanted to go into here. I’m all about seek to understand before seeking to be understood and I can’t make sense of this as a good decision at all, it seems completely self-defeating, especially when they had more story to draw from if they were stuck.

But again, I could be wrong, and maybe Jason Ralph dipped and they had to mitigate that and just did incredibly poorly at it. They don’t get to dodge responsibility for that, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it because the alternative is that these are incredibly insensitive, egotistical people and that’s an ugly thing to come away believing about people but there’s no excuse for what they did one way or the other so what is one meant to believe?

And what’s even more confusing about all of this is how everyone else’s characters were handled considering they’re meant to carry the show forward. They seemed to really try to branch out and give everyone time this season but with varying degrees of minuscule success. At the end of season 4 we come away with female characters who have had major character regressions even from what we’d previously experienced of them.

Julia is once again at the mercy of men and her entire ability to use magic ends up dependent on men, all of this even though she was a fucking God at one point, Kady literally uttered that dumbass shit about only wanting to be a man’s girlfriend as though she has nothing more to offer in the world despite how capable we know her to be, Fen is still off being half a child because we still don’t have much development for her at all other than she’s childish and coerced gay man Eliot into sex a couple of times, Marina just disappeared, coincidentally once she reveals that she has a same-sex lover, Margo is off fucking the comic relief and sure, she finally got to have her moments with Eliot but even during the episode she had the unmitigated gall to get angry at Penny when she thought he hadn’t saved Eliot while she was busy smiling and kissing up on her mediocre, some dude’s self-insert fantasy boyfriend, and Alice’s entire story was always dependent on Quentin’s because they never took the time to develop her as her own person even though they really should have because she’s presumably going to have to be her own person starting season 5 unless they find another dick for her to hop on and give her character development to some other dude.

The men fared little better. I can see they’re really trying to push this Josh shit on people and I’m glad I won’t be around for it, and Penny’s always had his share of development and hopefully for his sake they expand on that? Though, really, let the man find another show to be on, he’s too good for this.

Quentin and Alice as a couple was obviously rushed even though they had plenty of time to go another way and develop a trusting friendship or develop the romance in a more realistic way. An option could have been, y’know, not wasting time making people believe Eliot and Quentin had a shot at being a thing for the sake of their absurd “misdirection.” The way they’d been as a couple before paired with how they were rushed through in the last 3 episodes left no emotional impact for me at all when it came to them. 

And lastly, everything to do with Eliot and Quentin was completely erased but for Eliot throwing peaches in the fire at the end... OK, I guess? They don’t see each other at all before one of them is dead at the end which Sera Gamble and John McNamara try to play off as “realistic” in all of their predictable arrogance. I mean, talk your fucking oxymoron, ey? A show about magic has to have a “realistic” look at death where sometimes people just don’t see each other before they die. Get these two dummies the fuck out of here with that shit.

But if I’m being very honest the entire latter part of season 4 and especially episodes 11-13 felt very odd to me. It felt rushed and forced and none of the emotion they were trying to convey really seemed to land and perhaps that’s down to the actors not knowing they were filming something with this level of finality but it just didn’t hit the mark at all for me. I was confused and bored the majority of the episode because it didn’t feel like it realized it was the last of the season. The big bads of the season ended up taking nothing to kill, which is really a problem this show has always had. Eliot coming back after being gone the entire season was treated as a throwaway scene with Margo overacting considering she couldn’t be bothered to show up before, while Quentin didn’t react at all, super weird. Then we get another awkward as fuck singing scene that didn’t suit the situation at all and just turned what should have been an emotional send off into something silly, especially when we can hear that they finally got half this fucking cast people to sing for them. Just very odd decisions all around that left very little emotional impact for me because most of the time I sincerely believe the writers of this show sit around trying to mimic scenes from other shows or movies that had an impact within the context of those stories but don’t work here. We didn’t need a pensive, sad sendoff to have a fucking musical number! You aren’t Paul Thomas Anderson and this isn’t “Magnolia”!

And at the end, their suicidally depressed, mentally ill character whom they had just kind of revealed to be bisexual had... committed suicide and not only was the takeaway meant to be that this was good for him because he might have helped his friends but even the actor and the show-runners are treating this like some sort of triumph in mental health representation. I’m legitimately scared at what the aftermath of this could be because this could very well push people past the point of just suicide ideation and into believing they’ll have some heroic death if they kill themselves. But in real life people who commit suicide don’t get to come back “It’s a Wonderful Life”- style and see the impact that their suicide or “sacrifice” has on the people in their lives as this show depicted. Why was none of this considered when this show was marketed to people who experience these things? It’s incredibly irresponsible! A fucking suicide prevention banner at the end of the episode doesn’t change that!

There’s just so much more and worse happening here than poor lgbtqa representation. I’m very glad people are seeing that because this show doesn’t deserve another season, not the way they handled this one, at all. This season felt so lazy and so emotionally manipulative to marginalized communities that it really feels like these two asshole show-runners thought they’d skate using the audiences they manipulated into giving a shit about this show. But I really hope this is a lesson to them and to all show-runners and creators that this shit won’t fly anymore. It simply can’t fly anymore, it’s actively harmful and people like this can’t continue to be rewarded for bad behavior that damages marginalized communities! I hope people see that and respond accordingly, I can’t stress this enough! The actors are still young and they have opportunities, let them go!

I also can’t stress enough that they not only did wrong by their entire audience but by their queer actor! It’s unbelievable that they did this to him to the point where I make it a point to not give a fuck or seek out anything to do with actors on twitter or any other social media because I really just don’t give a shit like that but I had to go and let him know he didn’t deserve this just in case he didn’t see this for what it was. I don’t know if he’ll see it, and the end of the day I guess it doesn’t really matter since I don’t know the dude, but wow, did they fuck him over.

There’s nothing more to say, I’ll continue reblogging other people’s thoughts on this and respond because I enjoy having these discussions with people but barring anything I might have forgotten to mention or if I think of something else, which isn’t likely, I’m done with these long diatribes about this show’s failings. I might write something up later reiterating again the importance of media literacy and critically analyzing media from an interdisciplinary, socioeconomic lens but that won’t be for a minute.

Again, I’m so sorry to everyone this show misrepresented, I can’t stress enough how manipulated you were and how wrong this was. But it’s 2019 so let’s take some of the responsibility for the media that gets elevated and do better moving forward for all of our sakes. We all deserve good representation and perhaps it’s time for people like this to stop being allowed platforms. Networks don’t have incentive to give different types of people and stories a chance while people like Sera Gamble and John McNamara are allowed to continue doing what they do with impunity. Period.

[sgtxpreacher]

headcanon: jake + mental illness/specifically cyclothymia (aka this is almost 1500 words and it doesn’t even cover everything)

part i. the meta of how i even wound up with this headcanon

so mental illness I’ve covered a lot before on this blog re: Jake + PTSD and Jake + alcoholism, though more in general blog content than particular headcanon posts. but, in case you’re new to this blog and haven’t had time to swing over to my about page, let me catch you up quickly: Jake has PTSD connected to his time spent fighting the Cybermen, and his already heavy drinking habits turned to alcoholism after he returned to London. (he insists, if pressed, that he’s a functional alcoholic, but that also depends on how you define functional. can he hold down a job? yes. is part of the reason he can hold down this job because Pete Tyler is lenient when he disappears on a bender for two days? yes.)

however, something’s been nagging at me since... pretty much the first iteration of this blog, I think. I think I originally tried writing Jake as having comorbid PTSD and depression, but I don’t think that worked very well, in part because I was relatively young when I started writing Jake and was still learning how to write effectively and respectfully about mental illness, and in part because it simply didn’t fit with how I wanted to portray Jake. he had depressive episodes, but not to the extent that would seem to fall under clinical depression. early on in this blog, I toyed around with the idea of Jake having ADHD; it seemed to fit some aspects of how I wanted to portray him, but again, it seemed like I’d be adding in symptoms to go “look he has ADHD!!” rather than letting them arise more naturally from the character. which may sound like a weird thing, but having written Jake off and on for four years, I feel pretty set in my characterization of his behavior, even if the details of backstory, likes, dislikes, etc. may change. and writing him as having ADHD still just didn’t feel right, especially since it felt like I would be constantly forgetting about it and having to think about it almost as a separate concern from the character – which just doesn’t feel like the write way to write about mental health to me. (and if you keep forgetting about a major headcanon, it’s probably not a very strong one.)

so, back to the drawing board. for a long time now, i think my mental picture of jake’s mental health has gone something like ‘PTSD + alcoholism + ??????? generally unhealthy coping mechanisms ????? other forms of addiction ?????’ i occasionally (quietly) tossed other headcanons at myself to see if they stuck, but nothing did.

and then i remembered that cyclothymia exists. it’s not as well-known as some other mood disorders and is easily misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, but it’s one that i’ve grown up seeing in members of my close family (though i didn’t know the official diagnostic label until a few years ago,) and i decided to do a little research. and, rather than feeling like i was adding additional symptoms onto my portrayal of jake to fit a Specific Diagnosis, it felt more like something that helped categorize and explain headcanons i already had, and help me realize other places in his characterization that might be expanded upon. maybe that’s a weird thing. i don’t know. but i think i’m keeping this headcanon.

part ii. so what is cyclothymia, you may ask the college student using this post in part to procrastinate on doing her homework

since people don’t always know what cyclothymia is, let’s explain it a little. (please keep in mind i’m not a mental health professional; the research i’ve done draws on personal observation, reading first-hand narratives of dealing with cyclothymia, and official diagnostic manuals/medical sources i’ve managed to find on the internet. i’ve tried to make sure they’re reputable, but i can’t make guarantees. if there’s any part of this post you think is wildly inaccurate or offensive or something along those lines, please let me know.)

cyclothymia (also known as cyclothymic disorder) lies on the spectrum of bipolar disorders, and could be considered a milder form of bipolar i and ii (though it’s important to note that milder does not mean mild. while some people can manage their symptoms without a therapist or medication, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily easy to live with.) it’s characterized by hypomanic periods and chronic periods of mild-moderate depression (also known as dysthymia) that occur semi-frequently (though i’m still trying to work out exactly what’s meant by ‘semi-frequently.’) 

here’s a list of some symptoms to start us off with, though of course not every person with cyclothymia experiences all these symptoms or all in the same ways. (and i grabbed this from the mayo clinic website for purposes of expedience.)

hypomania

An exaggerated feeling of happiness or well-being (euphoria)

Extreme optimism

Inflated self-esteem

Talking more than usual

Poor judgment that can result in risky behavior or unwise choices

Racing thoughts

Irritable or agitated behavior

Excessive physical activity

Increased drive to perform or achieve goals (sexual, work related or social)

Decreased need for sleep

Tendency to be easily distracted

Inability to concentrate

dysthymia or depressive symptoms

Feeling sad, hopeless or empty

Tearfulness

Irritability, especially in children and teenagers

Loss of interest in activities once considered enjoyable

Changes in weight

Feelings of worthlessness or guilt

Sleep problems

Restlessness

Fatigue or feeling slowed down

Problems concentrating

Thinking of death or suicide

i’ve also seen a couple of first-hand accounts mention that the depression experienced in cyclothymia tends to be atypical depression rather than melancholic depression. so, a tendency for excessive sleep rather than insomnia, increased appetite rather than loss of appetite, and still experiencing mood reactivity to environmental circumstances – mood reactivity being a major differentiator. something good happening can still cause a positive uptick in mood, but when the mood drops again, it drops into a depressive state rather than what one might consider the baseline mood (if i’m understanding this correctly; if you know otherwise, please feel free to shout.) there are a couple of other symptoms (increased sensitivity to rejection, a physical feeling of being weighed down or paralyzed, etc.) but that probably sums it up for our purposes.

part iii. so how does this actually tie into actual headcanons, raptor???

taking into consideration we’re (in this case) talking about a fictional character, and given that people (fictional or no) aren’t just a walking list of symptoms, how does this tie into the context of jake’s life? i wrote down some thoughts. 

jake’s been living with cyclothymia since he was a teenager. it runs on his father’s side of the family to varying degrees, but none of them have ever been given an official diagnosis. it’s just common family knowledge that simmonds men (some simmonds women, too, including jake’s aunt evie) have a “switch” in their head that sometimes just flicks off or on.

has never been diagnosed with cyclothymia, nor does he know that it exists (he’s got a pretty vague idea of mood disorders in general)

the same therapist who diagnosed him with PTSD misdiagnosed him with depression. he was put on antidepressants. they triggered a hypomanic episode. he stopped going to therapy and taking medication (partially in an instance of “i’m fine, i don’t need any help” fueled in part by his general stubborness and reluctance to accept help, fueled in part by exaggerated feelings of his own well-being.) in the grand scheme of things, it was not a good time, and it contributed to his eventual decision to quit therapy and quit medications.)

instead, he self-medicates with alcohol and nicotine. (in university, he also smoked weed every once in a while, but he kicked that habit in jail.) alcohol continues to not mix well with his brain chemistry, and can trigger (usually short) depressive episodes. he usually dismisses these as really bad hangover blues.

most notable major depressive episodes have been after returning to london at the end of the cyber wars, and after journey’s end. both were triggered (in part) by feelings of Well, The World’s Safe, What Point Does My Life Have Now? the first one was exacerbated by being wheelchair-bound and recovering from major injuries; exercise is a really important part of his routine and helps ground him, so being left without it at the same time as a major depressive episode hit was not at all good. not to mention feeling like the cause he’d spent years of his life working for – and risking his life for – was suddenly being dismissed by politicians who never bothered to speak with anyone directly involved in stopping the cybermen. the second one, post-journey’s end, was exacerbated by the major shake-up to his support system that mickey leaving caused, then further exacerbated by the bender he went on shortly thereafter. the first time, and possibly the second, he had suicidal ideations, though he’s never made an attempt.

his struggles with mood stability became worse in general after the war; he attributes this to PTSD.

during hypomanic episodes, his sleep habits fall to shit. (i mean, he doesn’t sleep well most of the time, but it’s particularly pronounced then.) he’ll feel well-rested and alert after four hours of sleep, wake up, go on a run, look over case files from work, go on another run (generally with a camera to do some photography in the early-morning light,) get distracted flicking through his photographs in the middle of making breakfast and end up with burned eggs, etc. he’s more likely to go out clubs than he usually is (which is... already almost a weekly occurrence, so it does not do good things for his rate of alcohol consumption)

alternatively, there’s that fun combination of irritability + poor judgment + extreme optimism, which in jake’s case leads to things like bar fights, getting on pete tyler’s nerves, dangerous motorcycle driving, and picking a fight with his friends over relatively minor issues. (he usually ends up apologizing for the last one, though sometimes only a week later.) (also ought to note that jake doesn’t just get into fights when in a hypomanic period; it would happen anyway, even if he didn’t have cyclothymia. jake’s mental health issues may affect or compound upon the ways in which he expresses aggression, but they’re not the root of him being prone to aggressive behavior. this has been your reminder that equating mental illnesses with violent behavior is gross and stigmatizing.)

more headcanons will probably end up coming up later, but these are the main things i wanted to talk about for now! if you read through all this, i congratulate you. if you have any feedback, i would love to hear it! especially if there are any places in this where the language that i’ve used is inaccurate or disrespectful; i’m continually learning, so please let me know if there is anything i need to improve upon!

[aion-rsa]

The Blair Witch Project to Skyman: How Director Daniel Myrick Came Full Circle With His New Sci-Fi

https://ift.tt/2CyBT8K

“Blair Witch, which I consider incredibly fortunate to have been a part of, does come with its own set of baggage,” says Daniel Myrick, one half of the duo who made the found footage phenomenon which scared the hell out of audiences when it was released in cinemas in 1999 and went on to change the face of horror as we know it.

We’re chatting (via Zoom) in the context of Myrick’s new movie, Skyman, a documentary style sci-fi which feels like it could be real, featuring elements of found footage and starring relative unknowns Michael Selle and Nicolette Sweeney, who play Carl Merriweather and his sister Gina. Carl believes he encountered an alien when he was just 10 years old and he’s convinced the being he calls the ‘Skyman’ is going to return for him on his 40th birthday. Along with a documentary film crew, Carl, his sister, and their friend Marcus (Faleolo Alailima) venture to the tricked out shelter in the desert where the encounter took place all those decades ago.

It’s easy to see parallels between Skyman and The Blair Witch Project – both are low budget, with a small cast, shot on location and in documentary style. It was something that Myrick was very aware of when he was developing the script. 

“Even though I felt intrinsically drawn to the documentary form for Skyman I was very conscious of people making direct comparisons to Blair,” he says. 

“I have three versions of the script. I’ve got one that’s a straight-up scripted narrative, I’ve got another version that is a complete found footage version, where it’s just all Carl’s found footage. And then I’ve got the one I ultimately shot, which is sort of an Errol Morris-style documentary following a character, and drawing my own conclusions, both consciously and subconsciously with the way I put the film together.”

Similarities aside, Skyman is tonally very different. Though the marketing material positions this squarely as hard science fiction the end result is more like a sympathetic character study. 

“I wanted to look into the life of a lot of these ‘experiencers’ and people that we would normally write off and maybe dismiss at first glance,” says Myrick. “Carl, I think, represents a subculture of experiencers that, even if you don’t believe what they say is real, they believe it, and it has a huge impact on their lives and their families’ lives. I thought it was a different take on the UFO genre and not necessarily a procedural or whether they’re real or not that we’ve seen a million times. I wanted to take more of a character approach to it.”

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Skyman is a portrait of Carl. He’s a bit of an outsider. He’s a smart guy who can fix things but he’s also a little bit odd. He sincerely believes aliens made contact when he was just a child but it’s clear Carl is haunted not just by this experience but by the passing of his and Gina’s father and the stress of trying to connect with and support their mother who is now in a care home. 

Myrick knew what he was looking for – or rather what he definitely didn’t want – when he held open auditions for the role of Carl – a part which would make or break the film.

“What I wanted to avoid is the typical or stereotypical wacko that you see oftentimes portrayed as UFO experiencers,” he says. “What I thought was important is that you had to like Carl. Whether you believed in him or not, you had to like him, you had to find him somewhat endearing. He has a little bit of Asperger’s going on so I needed an actor that could play that and all his subtleties and not come off as an over-the-top Rain Man in that.”

Selle nails it, as does Sweeney as the fierce, funny, sister who teases Carl but loves him and sees him clearer than anyone. While Skyman, like Blair Witch, is a journey of three people into the unknown, rather than venturing deeper into a feral, folk horror forest until they are impossibly lost, Carl, Gina and Marcus travel to the wide open spaces of the desert, a place which is, as Myrick rather beautifully puts it, “a vast openness blanketed by stars that are so vivid, you can almost reach out and touch them.”

It’s a very spiritual place for many people, he explains. Myrick seems particularly interested in spirituality, or rather belief, whether that’s in UFOs, ghosts, religion, myth, or anything else – our need to believe there is something more than us out there. 

When Myrick was a kid he had a UFO club with his friends where they would research ufology, Roswell, Area 51 and the like. It was around the time when Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, “so it really tapped into my imagination as a kid – I wanted to ride on a spaceship!” he laughs.

“But as time moves on you start to become more realistic about whether or not there’s little green men living in your backyard,” Myrick says. He’s certainly not ruling out the possibility of intelligent life on other planets but he says what fascinates him more is why people are drawn to it.

“What is it about this subculture and the similarities between the need for explanation in ufology and the need for explanation in religion? There’s a lot of overlap there. We also have to be careful as individuals not to come in with too much preconception of someone we see. It’s easy to polarize and cast generalities on people.”

There’s no more polarizing moment in Skyman than when Carl’s journey takes him to a UFO convention, in search of the truth but also to meet like minded people. These scenes were shot at a real UFO convention and Myrick tells us that in some of these sequences it was just Selle and Myrick and the camera, really getting a sense of intimacy against the backdrop of the busy carnival-like celebrations.

“I wanted to get across that Carl isn’t the festival type of guy. He’s not there to check the parade out or enter the alien costume contest. He’s there to really seek answers,” Myrick explains. While Carl’s there he’s mockingly interviewed for a blog and declares that it’s good to know that he’s not alone, in a sequence where to the viewer he’s never looked more alone.

“Going with unknown actors and taking this approach to it, I felt made the film more intimate and more sincere,” explains Myrick, and he’s right – like with Blair Witch, the subtle and completely convincing performances are what gives the film such pathos.

When The Blair Witch Project arrived, premiering at Sundance, the marketing material tried to convince audiences that Heather, Mike, and Josh really were missing. The actors had to genuinely pretend to be dead. While Skyman definitely has a real life vibe there’s no serious pretence that it’s actually real. In fact it’s debatable whether another Blair Witch could ever really exist in this day and age.

“I mean, I never say never,” says Myrick when we pose this. “Paranormal Activity came out 10 years later and blew everybody away, which was its own phenomenon arguably.” Paranormal Activity certainly started its own found footage boom and deserves a spot in the horror pantheon but whether it’s as culturally significant as Blair Witch is another matter. 

Heather Donahue has certainly talked about the down side to her sudden shot to fame at the same time as having to play dead, but for Myrick, who was making his debut with Blair, there were different consequences.

“Yeah, it was quite the whirlwind. I think Ed Sanchez, who co-directed it with me, and I were … we were ill-prepared for how big it became. I mean, if you could pick a film that was smaller by design that ended up being bigger in the consciousness of the culture, you couldn’t find anything bigger than Blair Witch,” he recalls. “I remember joking with Ed. We were in a little crappy office in Orlando, and Blair Witch was really hitting its stride at the box office. And I had the box of these 12 little videotapes that were the raw footage of the movie. I said, ‘This is what this is all about. These stupid little videotapes.’”

12 little videotapes that changed the face of horror and the careers of Myrick and Sanchez almost overnight.

“We had hoped that we would make a movie that would be a calling card project,” he says. “When we got into Sundance, we thought we hit the motherlode and maybe we could get a project or another gig out of it. Our primary concern at the time was just to get the investors’ money back and move onto the next project.”

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They ended up getting much more than that.

“Nobody anticipated how big it would become. I know at Sundance, we started getting an indication it was going to be pretty popular. The whirlwind started building there at Sundance in the industry. But it wasn’t until Cannes, I think, for me, that it became much bigger than ourselves, that suddenly it was international.”

Myrick recalls being on a panel at Cannes in the South of France, right on the beachfront, with Spike Lee and John Sayles in the same line up. “We were like, ‘What are we doing here? We have no idea,’” he laughs, saying that he and Sanchez spent a lot of time on planes for the next couple of years. They were the golden children of low budget, high impact horror, and that involved getting sent a lot of bad scripts. 

“They wanted us to direct Exorcist 4, which I didn’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole,” Myrick says. 

 “Artisan, at the time, that bought Blair Witch, wanted us to do a sequel, and offered a lot of money for us to do it. Ed and I felt that it just was too soon, and we wanted some of the hype to die down for a couple of years and revisit some of the other ideas that we had on the Blair Witch mythology and explore some of the backstory. But Artisan had other plans.”

Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows followed just a year later in 2000 with neither Myrick or Sanchez behind the camera. It was a meta-horror in a completely different style to the original which imagined fans of The Blair Witch Project, the movie, travelling to Burkittsville to investigate the story. Director Joe Berlinger was bought in – Berlinger would later make his name as a documentarian, mostly recently making excellent series The Ted Bundy Tapes, and less successful Bundy dramatization Extremely Evil, Shockingly Wicked and Vile. Book of Shadows had a much bigger budget and in no way replicated the success of the original, either critically or in terms of box office.

“The pressure’s very high to continue the money machine for Hollywood, and they don’t really care too much about your creative whims and what’s inspiring you and what you’re passionate about,” Myrick says. 

“It’s one of those things that you get pigeonholed in, and it’s hard to get out of. Especially when they’re throwing money at you and saying, ‘Do this or that.’ It’s tough to say no when you’ve been broke most of your adult life, having to make these choices.”

Instead Myrick moved to Hollywood to forge his own path. Teamed with a couple of studio producers he struck a deal with Warner Home Video where he made six features back to back – movies he describes as Twilight Zone-esque.

“On paper, it’s like a great setup, where we had six films funded, and we write the stories ourselves, but they all had to fit within this kind of marketing box, that Warner DVD wanted us to be within. Naively, I thought ‘Oh, I can make that work, and I can get my vision on the screen’ but it was a rude awakening. You realize that you don’t even get to choose your own title of the film or what the poster looks like or how it gets marketed. They were successful efforts. There’s nothing against that period of time, but I also felt it was very restricting for me. I’m just not good when I don’t have control over my own destiny.”

The Blair Witch legacy wasn’t over then, and perhaps it’s not over yet. 2016 saw the surprise announcement that a mysterious Lionsgate horror called ‘The Woods’ was actually a direct sequel to The Blair Witch Project, entitled simply Blair Witch. Myrick was involved as executive producer and says it’s his favorite interpretation so far, because it doesn’t mess with the mythology of the original. Though the movie wasn’t especially successful Myrick isn’t ruling out a wider Blair Witch expanded universe – and even one he might want to be involved in more directly.

“I would love to do a black-and-white noir Rustin Parr period piece, which I think would be super-creepy,” he says. ‘It’s a bit of a risk, right? Lionsgate, who owns the rights now, would have to go, “All right, Dan, go do your black-and-white noir.’ But it would be cool. I don’t know a Blair Witch fan that I haven’t mentioned a black-and-white Rustin Parr story to, that doesn’t go, ‘Oh, man, I’d go check that out.’”

Oh man. We would go check that out.

More than 20 years on and Myrick has of course matured as a director but there are lessons he says he has learned back from his days on Blair Witch. Namely that a film taking on a life of its own is something to be celebrated and not fought.

“That is a big thing that I learned, especially through Blair Witch, which was an experiment in its own right and tossed out a lot of the rules we were taught in film school about how to direct and how to position the camera and lighting. All that got thrown out, so it really forced you to, in a way, un-direct – to allow the process to happen and recognize when it’s going right and when it’s going wrong, but not be your own worst enemy, trying to steer it too much.”

Perhaps this is part of the key to the special ‘realness’ that comes across in both The Blair Witch Project and Skyman, as different as the two might be. Whether you see similarities in the content and style, what definitely links the two is that they are personal and they are Myrick’s own, through and through. They are passion projects, and they are what he wants to make.

“I’ve just seen too many people in Hollywood, making a ton of money, absolutely miserable making movies, and I never wanted to be that person,” he says. “I would rather live more humbly and make smaller films and have a blast doing it, like we did with Skyman. I can die a happy man if that’s all I get to do.”

The post The Blair Witch Project to Skyman: How Director Daniel Myrick Came Full Circle With His New Sci-Fi appeared first on Den of Geek.

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