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wangxianficrecs · 4 years

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Follower Recs

Stories I haven’t read yet, but clearly need to put on my ever-expanding List.

~*~

Welcome back queen [Thank you, it’s so lovely to be back!] if ur still doing follower recs I gotta recommend I would wait for a thousand years by bleuett it’s soooooooo good

[This one was actually recced to me by two different people, the other of whom said, “ Maybe I'm crying a little so I feel like a should recommend ‘I would wait for a thousand years’ by bleuett on ao3.”]... it’s def. on my List!

I would wait for a thousand years

by bleuett (T, 10k, wangxian)

Summary: During the worst of winter, a traveler comes to stay at Lan Wangji's inn. He wears a red ribbon in his hair.

“Do you see the rabbit?” Wei Ying asks and points at the moon. “That’s the moon rabbit, he helps make Chang’e more immortality elixir. He keeps Chang’e company.”

“I do not wish the rabbit for company,” Lan Wangji says tightly. “You are the one I want by my side.”

“And I’m here, Lan Zhan. If you go to the moon, I’ll follow you, I’ll always be here now.”

~*~

I just read a great fic by aisthuu "every love story is a ghost story", didn't see it in your recs so wanted to recommend it! LWJ is a guqin composer and teacher, buys a cheap guqin off eBay which ends up being attached to WWX's spirit from canon era. It's bittersweet, LWJ deals with Lan's homophobia (implicit in a Lan way) and his feelings towards the ghost. This is author's only ao3 fic and honestly I don't remember how I stumbled upon it, but I'm happy I did and hope you will enjoy it too! [I’ve recently read this one, and loved it!]

every love story is a ghost story

by aisthuu (M, 59k, wangxian, my bookmark)

Summary: The man is in Lan Zhan’s bed. Did they—he begins to wonder, eyes trailing to where the man’s body lies under the blanket. Had Lan Zhan—?

Then the sleep-fog clears and Lan Zhan realizes that the young man isn’t quite opaque around the edges.

“You’re a spirit.”

The spirit narrows its eyes. “I’m so much more than that.”

(Lan Zhan buys a guqin off eBay for a suspiciously low price, only to find that it’s haunted. And now there’s a ghost in his bed.)

~*~

Ok so I absolutely have to rec "see you yesterday" by glyphic. It's a wip, but it's currently at 101k so there's a whole lot there, and it's terrible and wonderful and beautiful all at once. The way the backstory of canon events is adapted to the modern-with-cultivation setting is brilliant, and then there's the amnesia, and then there's the time loop. This fic lives permanently rent-free in my brain.

see you yesterday

by glyphic (M, 101k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary:

Wei Ying 21:09 hey lan zhan what’s the weirdest way youve died

Lan Zhan 21:11 Falling encyclopedias.

Wei Ying 21:12 omg no way that’s so rude turning books against you???

Lan Zhan 21:13 A betrayal I will never forget.

On Halloween night, an exiled demonic cultivator and a Lan disciple get stuck in a time-loop, find each other, and try to figure it all out.

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If you are looking for recs for yourself I absolutely love (the complete!) story Just as the Snow Melts by draechali on AO3. It's a canon divergence where everyone lives, even WWX! ~ @airmidcelt

Just as the Snow Melts

by draechaeli (T, 67k, wangxian)

Summary: Like a snowy mountain top in spring the residents of the Burial Mounds trickled down the mountain and joined the flow of society.

“I went to the Burial Mounds,” Lan WangJi said.

“Ah, yeah… I’m sorry Lan Zhan,” replied Wei WuXian, “I hadn’t thought anyone would come to visit. I am still not sure how it happened; I brought A-Yuan to Yiling to play by the river and then ended up somehow teaching a bunch of children swimming and writing along with him.”

~*~

Hello! It's come to my attention that you have not as yet read Grandmaster of Meme-onic Cultivation! Please do! It's the only thing that gave me joy during 2020 😆 like proper belly laughs and disney villain style cackling. It is a wip, and it is long but so so worth it!! The author has reworked the entire canon through these message crystals and still conveys complex characters despite the tricky format. It's just so good!! Highly highly recommend it! ❤ ~ @theladypeartree [Oh! I’ve been subscribed to this one, and know that @swaglexander-the-great is a reliable provider of Hilarity, so I’m excited for it to be finished!]

Grandmaster of Meme-onic Cultivation

by Hades_the_Blingking (T, 49k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary: The Untamed universe is exactly the same, except everybody has magical crystals that have a suspiciously familiar messaging system. The story is pretty much the same as the show, except everyone lives!! (so minor changes).

or in which Wei WuXian tries his darndest to date Lan Zhan, Jiang Cheng possibly has a aneurysm, Jin ZiXuan is still the most awkward human alive, and Xue Yang makes me write some VERY cursed things. Written in chatfic format! :3

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Chomrafy on AO3 deserves love and encouragement; she’s written a body of compact, poetic, and eloquent shortfics each of which can stand alone, but that comprise an intricately cross-referential and mostly internally-consistent universe. They’re grouped as chapters in works according to theme; for example, “in cupped hands” focuses upon Jin Ling and his second-generation baggage; “Departure in Autumn” portrays the last years of WWX’s first life. Follow the tag “Chomrafy’s MDZS shortfics.” [I don’t see this tag?]

in cupped hands

by chomrafy (G, 2k, wangxian)

Summary: Of secrets, of futures, of love. A Jin Ling-centric collection of 200-word fics.

Ch.1: Jin Ling repays a debt (JL, JC, & WWX). Ch.2: Jin Ling and a ghost in the mirror. (JL & JYL) Ch.3: A matter of friends (JL & the other kids) Ch.4: In this house we don't keep dogs (JC & WWX) Ch.5: In the end, he remains silent (JL & uncles) Ch.6: A first night hunt, of sorts (JL & the other kids) Ch.7: Jin Ling, forgiving, forgetting (JL & LXC & JGY) Ch.8: Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling argue (JL, JC, & WWX) Ch.9: Jin Ling and his father (JL & JC) Ch.10: Jin Ling speaks up (JL, JC, & WWX) Ch.11: Jin Ling and a piece of home (JL, JC, & WWX)

Departure in Autumn

by chomrafy (not rated, 6k)

Summary: Four perspectives. A steady march to the end.

Ch.1: Because if anything happens to them, Wen Qing would never be able to heal with these hands again. Ch.2: As long as this is still home, Jiang Yanli will wait as long as she needs to. Ch.3: Five times Jiang Cheng reaches for Wei Wuxian, one time he turns away. Ch.4: Whether the road is broad or narrow, bright or dark, they would have to keep walking. Wei Wuxian digs Wen Qing's grave.

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Hello, hope all is going well. I don't have an ask, by I do have a recommendation. I read this fic a while ago and found it again. I just wanted to recommend this for everyone. Let me know what you think please. Thank you. [Oh! This one’s in my To Read list, but I’d forgotten about it. Mmmm, fox!wwx and dragon!lwj.]

Ten miles of Lotus Flowers

by Yukirin_Snow

M, 274k, wangxian

Summary: He was a mischievous fox spirit, wreaking havoc where he went, about to depart on a journey that would span centuries.

He was a heavenly prince, a proud dragon destined to ascend the throne to become emperor.

Neither expected their paths to collide over the span of three lives.

~*~

I forgot if it was your blog 😥 that recommended “Bestseller” (when Wei Wuxian writes the Xianxia cut-sleeve equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, based entirely on his experiences with Lan Wangji, he doesn’t expect it to become the next big hit) (https://archiveofourown.org/works/21528316/chapters/51318766)

But OMG IT WAS HILARIOUS!!! I LOVED IT!! And if it wasn’t your blog, I’m so sorry for how weird this sounds 😭😭😭😭 I just loved this fic so much that I have to tell it to someone 😢 [It’s on my List, but I haven’t read it yet!]

Bestseller

by pupeez4eva

M, 8k, wangxian

Summary: He had written the book to prove a point. It was never supposed to be a big thing, and he certainly never intended for everyone — Jiang Cheng, Zewu-Jun, the Juniors, literally everyone— to be reading about his sex life.

Oh God, he definitely needed to make sure Lan Zhan didn’t find out about this.

(Or, when Wei Wuxian writes the Xianxia cut-sleeve equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, based entirely on his experiences with Lan Wangji, he doesn’t expect it to become the next big hit).

~*~

I’d like to rec On Your Marks, Get Set, Bake! by @blackwiresgrowonherhead

It’s one of my absolute favorites and I laughed out loud so many times when reading it

on your marks, get set, bake!

by BlackWiresOnHerHead

G, 41k, wei wuxian & juniors

Summary: Jin Ling resumes thumping on the door to room 721, and the small collection of freshmen starts chanting “Senior Wei! Senior Wei! Senior Wei!” with increasing volume until finally Wei Wuxian opens the door.

“Yes?” he says with his widest, most innocent eyes.

“Senior Wei!” demands Lan Jingyi, shoving himself to the front of the group. “Why didn’t you tell us you’re a contestant on this year’s season of The Great Gusu Bake Off?!?”

Several months ago, college student Wei Wuxian secretly competed in the most popular reality show in the country. The show starts airing in the fall. The freshmen in his dorm collectively lose their minds.

~*~

If you're in the mood for v. short ridiculous fun fic, may I suggest My chain hits my chest/When I'm bangin' on the radio by x_los It's 2k modern cultivators AU, featuring WWX calling LWJ's sword Bitchin' [omg I’m laughing so hard] and I think it's more fun going in blind?

My chain hits my chest/When I'm bangin' on the radio

by x_los

T, 2k, wangxian

Summary: Lan Wangji finds he doesn't even need to call for help for Wei Wuxian to come running.

#follower rec #wangxian fic rec #I HAVEN'T READ THESE YET #wangxian #mdzs

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ranboo5 · 3 years

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Dropping the Ranboo mixtape

Anyway at time of starting to write this post I had two likes and two affirmative replies, which is Good Enough For Me, so here I am :D I was gonna link the YT but on second thought my YT channel is a mess so this is gonna be one of the annoying ones that doesn’t link to one you can actually listen to but

This is also a running list and currently organized roughly by increasingly hotter takes and it’s under a cut bc it’s 13 songs and I justified all of them

Everybody Likes You (Lemon Demon) - LISTEN THE ANIMATION MEMES WEREN’T LYING THAT EVERYBODY LIKES YOU CAN RANBOOCORE. The increasingly distorted, incredibly bright repetition of EVERYBODY LIKES YOU EVERYBODY LIKES YOU EVERYBODY LIKES YOU until you can hear it morphing in and out of EVERYBODY LIED TO YOU? Tell Me That’s Not Him In The Spiral Depths

Tall (Naps the Block on YT) - This is a) literally a theme for the End, b) sounds stumbling and anxious/high-strung, and c) echoes the Pigstep melody in the middle while still very much doing its own thing this is self explanatory

Dance of Thorns/Old Secret mashup (Tensei and James Roach respectively, feat. woodfur00 on YT) (yes this is Homestuck music) - It’s just the vibes. The energy. The way the elegance of the violin lines of Dance of Thorns sounds almost nervous especially against the almost noir mystery vibes of Old Secret, and the guitar lines of Dance of Thorns add like. Initiative/urgency especially when they underlay the other music it’s so good I don’t think either song alone is Ranboo vibes but this remix definitely is. Just the mix of perseverance and desperation and melancholy and mystery and Class

Touch-Tone Telephone (Lemon Demon) - This one is old news but tbh it just works. Man decides he’s the correct one in this situation and he’s losing his entire mind that no one is listening to him because he just is not

2012 (Will Wood) - This one isn’t really clever it’s just about memory loss, derealization, identity, and often self-hatred (“A miserable fuck, but a loud Tao mystical” is a lot). “Did you lose yourself?/It’s always in the last place that you check” sounds so mocking in ways internal monologues like Droice have been and “I might find myself/By retracing my steps” is literally just Ranboo dealing with the Enderwalk; “And not until lobotomy abolished my monotony/Did I applaud autonomy, and modify a lot of me!” works so much for him Dealing With Himself generally, and also “I heard the world would turn to hell/Compared to that, I’m doing well!” is a Him sentiment

Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In! (Will Wood) - Jokes about the three hour mining/grinding streams aside. Not only is the chorus so heavily a spiral/self-evaluation mood, but literally consider his thought processes abt the things he’s done/allegedly done and then consider “My dreams were shattered like a stained-glass window/Jesus in pieces! I believe I through a brick right through Him/But my memory could not be saved!/It just seems unlikely that it’s me who was to blame/So I bookmark my DSM, ‘cause I need to remember my place.” And now with the advent of the “experiments” the second verse’s “Take the road on higher ground, and tell me ‘don’t look down! You’ll fall and break your back’/But that just reminds me how there’s more to be found beneath the black!” is more relevant than ever

Friends With You (The Scary Jokes) - Oh my god. Oh my fucking god man. This could be on here for “I put myself to bed just halfway through the party/I love all my friends, but I hate when their eyes are on me” alone but the general almost empty saccharine vibe of the song is immensely his vibe; the humorlessly-smiling vocal fry on “don’t know” in “Why do you pretend/You don’t know who’s to blame?” is probably responsible for 80% of this read. Not to mention the first lyrics are literally “How long do I have to wait/’Til my lonely days are over?” which is really the. The waiting it out man the So When Do I Get To Be Okay of it all. Shoutouts also to “And the crumbling infrastructure no one else can see,” the self hatred of “I miss being friends with you/But what can I do/What can I do/But leave you alone?” and to “And I can tell you really love me/Can you tell I’m really sorry?” Just. The mix of hope+affection and dejected cynicism and self-hatred in the lyrics

Saline Solution (none other than Mr Wilbur Soot) - Remember what I said about waiting it out until you get to be okay? Anyway that’s crystallized in “If I could just break one more night/Maybe I could wake up and feel alright” and also this is literally a song about catastrophizing and self-evaluation just,, in general and I will not be highlighting all the lyrics about this but I will highlight the fact that he literally calls himself pragmatic and also the lyric “blurring the facts and the fiction.” Also, the sheer desperate anger-concealing-breakdown vibes of “I think I’ve made my choice” to “I think I’ve found my voice” deserves a mention, as does the culminating end of “saline solution to all your problems” with the tears+now splash water motifs of it all with Ranboo I am going to die

Funny (The Scary Jokes) - This is actually a softer take but not only does it literally start with the singer pleading with the addressee to look away, it continues with “I went up in the middle of the night and I climbed right onto the stage/And I raged/And I cried/Oh, what a funny joke am I” disregarding everything as performance, reemphasizes the opening demand with the qualifier “it’s not that I hate you, it’s just that I’m funny these days,” and then kills you with the last couple lines which. Yeah he does care and it does,,, just,,,,, a

Chemical Overreaction (Will Wood) - This is where the mood VIOLENTLY whiplashes because this is where we get unhinged. Anyway “I won’t stop to drop to draw a line in the sand/’Cause I’ll be picked apart to pieces by coyotes!” is LITERALLY the whole “I don’t do well with ‘peer pressure’” thing. “Where the sentimental value of the city around ya/Is deleted obsolete, but still completely will stun ya” is the single most L’Manberg lyric I’ve ever heard, especially from the perspective of a character whom I will repeatedly insist is narratively in the role of someone who’s shown up and seen the status quo as an outsider after it’s been established (hence the eternal New Kid vibes). Chorus very much has vibes of Ranboo Is Seized By The Urge To Do Something, and like. The entire dramatic end part. The last two lines especially (be very careful if you look up the vieo for this by the way it is NOT pretty; cws in the video for flashing, blood, suicide imagery)

A Mannequin Adrift (The Scary Jokes) - The Bitterness. This song is just fully The Bitterness at the environment he’s stuck in; the saccharine comes back as does the “peer pressure” thematic and just the Having An Awful Time; the sarcastic saccharine comes back too, which is always good I love passive aggression. Honestly the first verse is just everything like just listen to it it immediately makes sense

Poison Ivy Grows (The Scary Jokes) - This is overall a song about having bad brain and not knowing what the hell to do about it; it’s so faintly bitter and distant and melancholy and also so zoned out. Also, it’s not the only lyric that matters here but it is enough to be a full argument on its own: “I used to spend so much time/Wandering around outside/Now I’ve got too much on my mind/Now I’ve got too much on my mind”

Spring Haze (Tori Amos) - Listen. Do I know what Spring Haze is about? No. Is that gonna stop me from saying it’s about Ranboo? Also no. I just think “You say we’ll never make it there/So all we do is circle it” is so much, the fact that the bridge at the end is just “Why does it always end up like this?” repeated, and that it just feels so much like overall the song feels like a desperate attempt to figure Something out, and the chorus is just inexplicably him? It might be partially influenced by the fact that “Uh-oh, let go, off on my way” and, to a lesser extent, “Uh-oh, way to go” is not only in accordance with character vibes but also vaguely evocative of Ranboo’s speech pattern

#this also has a couple songs pending addition #this post is just That Enderman Is Deeply Troubled. Listen To Scary Jokes

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eligos-venator · 3 years

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Things I Like RP Partners to Know;

I like to be called:

I’ll answer to Eligos, Eli, ‘Hey you’, or whatever else, so long as it’s clear it’s directed at me. I’m really not picky.

One thing you should know about me:

Unhappy owner of a goldfish brain here. Work can get stressful at times, and when it is I tend to get extremely forgetful and sometimes require additional poking to be reminded of things, as I’ll take one look before being torn away to check on something else, and immediately forget what it was I was about to do, and never quite find that thought again. If I seem unresponsive at any time, just give me a poke! It’s absolutely not intentional.

One thing you should know about RPing with my character(s):

Eligos does not think in a linear fashion. There’s thinking within the box, thinking outside of the box, and then Eligos’s method, which is to consider the box, and then proceed to shake it a few times before kicking it over to see what happens. He might be harmless most of the time when not working, but he doesn’t think or react like a person. This includes his manner of conversation, and how he’ll say whatever he thinks will get him the information he seeks. He’s actually quite manipulative when motivated by the promise of a paycheck or something he’s seeking, but can’t be assed most of the time to muster the energy to act in such a manner. Yet this apparent harmlessness doesn’t mean he won’t put a bullet in someone the moment their back is turned if he truly believes they’re a threat to his personal safety or his work. Nobody’s the special exception, not even those closest to him. If anything, those closest tend to be the ones most scared of him, as they know what he’s capable of doing should they ever stand in his way, and just how empty that smile really is.

First language: English

Age range: under 13 | 14–17 | 18–22 | 23–25 | 26–29 | 30+ | 70+

Am I okay with NSFW?: yes (Eligos is not open to shipping, but other sorts of NSFW is entirely fine! Other characters are much more open to such though.) | no | some nsfw

Combat, plotting, even just meeting and discussing life over drinks, most anything’s on the table with Eligos. He is the sort that’ll listen to all the stories one might have at the bar and sympathize, yet only the next day be the source of a new story as his contractor demanded he bar the way or retrieve something personal from. And then the day after, Eli’s back to being friendly since he’s not on the clock. And what Eligos won’t do, Loth’sae and my other characters are willing to! There’s relatively little that I won’t consider if it’s properly discussed and planned out before the trigger’s pulled on setting off that plotline or starting on working the plot discussed reality through RP. But if it isn’t discussed and just thrust upon at random, I’m less likely to agree and try to figure out a way to make something work. Just communicate and I’m more than happy to help figure out ways to ensure things go according to plan.

Canon Character RP Friendly?: yes | no | depends

I have respect for those that play canon characters, and those that enjoy writing their stories with as well. Names might inevitably be mentioned given the limited world size and impact those characters have made on current events, but Eligos would not interact with them on a personal basis, nor have reason to ever do so. It doesn’t fit to have him involved in such given his complete lack of connection to story beyond how current events have impacted his homeland. Eligos’s story will not contain canon characters, and any he might meet will be dismissed in his mind as cosplayers who took their LARPing too seriously.

RP blog: does contain ooc posts | doesn’t contain ooc posts | occasionally contains ooc |

I will occasionally throw out random considerations into the void, and answer asks as the writer of the character if it’s something my character cannot answer honestly, but beyond that, there won’t be much in the way of OOC beyond the screenshot dump that is my main pastime in XIV when not roleplaying. I made this blog to have a place to post screenshots, do an occasional meme or bit of writing outside of roleplay, and interact with others on rare occasions. We’re all here to have fun, in the end. For me, that entails quietly tossing up shots and memes occasionally while reading the stories of others and seeing the stunning shots others take of their characters!

Tagged by: @kich-rp! Thank you for the tag!

Tagging: Anyone that wants to do this! I know it might be a bit overly personal for some, so just making this an open invitation for any who might be interested in doing it to just tag me as the reason if you need any!

#asks and memes #thank you for the tag!#rp meme

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hollowmoonpriestess · 6 years

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"There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.” -Brian Andreas

Self-Care tips can be found below. Remember, self care is not a one time deal. Once you find something that seems to work for you, that speaks to your soul, keep doing it. Let it change and evolve as you get older. Let it become more complex and keep your interest.

*Disclaimer* I’m no therapist, the self care listed under the cut is what I’ve found works for me through trial and error. This is not a guarantee that these tactics will work for you or in the same way. Ultimately, your brain is different from mine and that’s okay. I made this list for those who, like me, ‘don’t know where to start’ and need a list to cross off of. Take it for what you will and I wish you the very best on your journey.

For the Mind

Compliments file: Start documenting the nice things people say about you. Ask your friends “If you were describing me to someone I had never met before, how would you do it?“ and make a note of what they say. When bad thoughts start creeping in and getting stuck in your head, go back and read those compliments.

Scratch off a lurker on your to-do list: This one can be difficult because I am a “box checker” type of person. I need to accomplish things on my to-do list in order to feel... well... accomplished. When you look at your list, and see that one thing that keeps getting put off, every day, a glaring reminder that you didn’t get everything done. That thing that likes to keep you awake at night like a parasite eating up your lower spine. That thing... cross it off, right now. Release yourself of that burden. You don’t need to do it. The world didn’t stop spinning because it wasn’t done two weeks ago, I promise it’ll keep spinning when it never gets done at all. Let go of it.

Go cloud/star-watching: If the weather, and your area permits, lay down outside, turn on some soft meditation music, and lay in your yard. Touch the earth and find that it rises to meet you too. Staring at the openness of the sky and seeing just how small and insignificant you are, and still, you exist. You have created yourself by insisting you deserve a place in this universe, no matter how big it is, your imagination is bigger, your dreams are bigger.

Be goofy for 5 minutes: As embarrassing as it sounds, I have alarms set on my phone. Every two hours, that alarm goes off, and no matter what I’m doing, I stop and I play for 5 minutes. No structure, no games, just whatever sounds like fun in that singular moment that I can never get back. Find my happy place, feed the inner child. I blow the paper off of my straws at my husband. I dance. I improvise a song. I force a smile. I look up a joke and tell it to the nearest person to me because I’m a sucker for a good dad joke.

Center on yourself: I intentionally changed this from ‘be selfish’ because the word Selfish has so many negative thoughts that follow it, it doesn’t warrant following the word BE. Make it a part of your day’s schedule, to do ONE thing that makes you happy. It may take some time to find it, and its worth thinking about, but whatever it is, make it a priority. One thing, every day.

De-clutter: If you suffer from depression, this is a typical thing. You have no desire to clean, but the mess still comes, it stays and grows until its overwhelming and you’ve broken down. This can be debilitating, terrifying even isolating because you get so embarrassed about it you can’t ask for help. This I get. Fear not, find one thing that will be easy for you to knock out, do that today. Feel the joy that your desk is cleared off, even if its just for today. Be happy you did the dishes this afternoon. The rest of the kitchen can wait, take that small victory, you earned it. Play in your closet and get out three shirts you never wear, you don’t love anymore, they don’t fit, whatever, and recycle them. Turn them into something else if they\re sentimental, or donate them so they can make someone else happy for a time.

Edit your social media feeds: Unfollow, take out negative influences. You’re on social media because its fun, because it keeps you in the loop on the best memes, its part of your support group, remember that that’s great! But if Sara’s posts are getting on your nerves and make you wish Facebook had an ‘eyeroll’ reaction, unfollow her. Get rid of the influences that don’t make you happy to see.

For the Body

Check in with your body: Give yourself ten minutes a day, as often as you feel you need to, and check in. Use the body scan technique. This will get easier and less awkward with practice. Communicating with your body and finding out your real feelings is always a good moment. This lets you unwind your shoulders, take your tongue down from the roof of your mouth, remind you that you’re in control.

Oxygenate: It sounds easy, I know. It’s just breathing. Lay down (or sit in a chair), one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. Breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth. Keep the hand on your chest still. The hand on your belly should rise up and down. Do this 3-4 times a day. This will: 1) Strengthen the diaphragm 2) Decrease the work of breathing by slowing your breathing rate 3) Decrease oxygen demand 3) Use less effort and energy to breathe.

Activate your self soothing system: Yeah, you have one of those. That tingly feeling you get when someone rubs your head, or drags their fingertips up and down your back, that’s it. Do that for yourself every once in a while, whenever it seems like the right time to do it, give yourself a few goosebumps and rub your arms gently. You deserve a soft touch. If that feels awkward, moisturize.

Make one small change in your diet: Eat an extra portion of veggies with each meal, or drink an extra glass of water during the day. I named these two things specifically because I don’t do either. I know that I should though, and that one small step is all it takes to build new habits.

Give your body a treat: Pick out clothes that feel good on your skin today.

Inhale an upbeat smell: Peppermint suppresses food cravings for me and boosts my mood and motivation. Peppermint gum is also cheap and easily accessible.

For the Soul

Imagination: Look at yourself in the mirror and pretend you’re looking at your best friend, they’re feeling the way you’re feeling right now, what would you tell them to make them feel better? Say that to yourself.

Beauty hunt: On your commute, search for five beautiful things you didn’t notice before. Take pictures of them and find out how quirky and interesting your town really is.

Help someone: Do a good deed. Offer to carry groceries out to someone’s car on your way out of the store. Hold the door open for someone. Grab that last gallon of milk for your neighbor.

Check in with your emotions: Sit quietly and make an assessment of everything you’re feeling in that moment, without judgement. Recognize the part those emotions are playing in the choices you’re making, are you strictly reacting instead of acting for yourself? Who are you letting control you in this moment?

Write your thoughts: Write them all down, go for 15 minutes about anything that’s bothering you right now, express all those bottled up things running circles in your mind.

Give love to a pet: Pet someone special and furry. If you don’t have one of your own, go to the nearest park and find one (with the owner’s permission!)

Take yourself on a date: You read that right. Prepare a special, romantic date for yourself. Go out to dinner, go see a movie, do make up if that’s your thing, dress nice, smell nice, take a bubble bath with candles when you’re done. Date yourself.

NOTE:

1] Scheduling can be a tricky thing, but you see me mentioning it a lot in this post. Me keeping a day-to-day schedule, lets me feel in control of what’s going on. Yes, not everything goes according to plan, life will flow the way it does and that’s fine. I decide I have three primary responsibilities every day: a) Something that has to be done today b) Something that’s just for me c) Something that’s needed to keep my home running. I refuse any new responsibilities until one of those three things are done. What this does is keep my schedule short and easy to reach, and also leaves room for those little things that are inevitably going to pop up that aren’t on the schedule. Even if I just get those three things done, that’s still three things I got done.

2] The reference to “Sara” was not directed at anyone specific and is not meant to call out anyone or offend the Sara’s of the world. To be fair though, regardless of the name of this fictional character, everyone knows a Sara, and during the description above, you thought of that person that needs to be unfollowed for your self care. The name doesn’t matter, its about cutting out toxic people, not letting them drain your mentality anymore.

Try a little every day. Let yourself fall in love with the magic that comes with being you. I hope this helps anyone reading them in some way. They seem small but they’re oh so important.

#self help #self love #mental #mental health #faith #love #trust #happiness

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vsplusonline · 4 years

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Would you rather prepare all three meals, or clean the house and do the dishes?

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/would-you-rather-prepare-all-three-meals-or-clean-the-house-and-do-the-dishes/

Would you rather prepare all three meals, or clean the house and do the dishes?

After centuries of debating, scientists in white lab coats have come to the conclusion that there are only two proven ways to wash away the sins of your past life. One is to meditate at the banks of the Ganges. The second option: clean something that really needs to be given a wipe down.

Sweeping grime off floors, picking apart cobwebs and washing vessels hold the powers of therapy. As the dust comes off a mirror, you find yourself forgiving your best friend for spoiling the ending of Harry Potter 6, when you were 15.

Because cleaning is that sort of focussed, one-track mindless work that does not get the credit it deserves. For once, you get to switch your brain off. And it is when your mind is at peace, that you allow fresh ideas to germinate.

All modern workouts are pretty much born out of cleaning actions. Except here, you get an output for your effort: a squeaky clean house to bask in. This was my grandma’s pilates.

Take that one step further and deep clean with good music on. Really get behind the fridge, under the sofas, and into your larder. Let the sense of a work well done wash over you, and rediscover objects that propel you down memory lane.

Oh, what a wonderful image of cooking TV shows have built into your head! Here’s the real deal: more often than not, it is going to be you alone in the kitchen, slogging away for an hour at over two dishes simultaneously, creating a mess everywhere, to finally gobble the meal up in 10 minutes. Your secret sauce: sweat and tears — add according to taste.

— Sweta Akundi is a fairytale princess these days: locked in a tower, talking to squirrels, forced to cook and clean

Do you know what is tougher than pilates? To chop onions without welling up. He/she who doth not cry at the sight of an onion’s painful execution is usually The One yogi, living amidst those lesser mortals who, inexplicably, attach meaning to pointless chores like running around one’s house with stained pieces of old cloth.

Does cleaning even stand a chance of getting one over the highly complex, immensely creative, and passionately demanding art of cooking?

What is white and small but has the ability to ruin an hour’s worth of work if you aren’t careful with it? Salt.

Picture this: you take up a job that exacts physical labour out of you. Grating coconuts, slicing onions, peeling carrots and potatoes, chopping cabbages and unwrapping a banana blossom is no mean task; it involves blood (literally, there is a knife involved), sweat and tears (damn onions!).

The job also demands you to work your creative faculties and come up with a method to cook these ingredients into something consumable. The job demands that you use a minimum of four out of five human senses: sight, sound, smell and taste (the sense of touch is also involved if you forget the utensils are burning hot).

And after all this, you drop a tinge extra salt into the gravy and the job will cause you to pull all your hair out. Phew!

Yet here we are. I appreciate my colleague’s acknowlegement of the fact that cleaning allows one to switch off, but is it therapeutic? Hmm. I disagree. The way I see it, and in the template of a famous meme, kids do the cleaning, adults debate the merits of cleaning over cooking, but only absolute legends can cook! Over and out.

— Pradeep Kumar aims to collaborate with locked-up princesses for post-cooking clean-up, to make more time for sourdough

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insomniparty · 7 years

Text

TMI CAUSE IM BORED

yeaTheI stole this from someone else but wanted to make it a post:

if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? if so, who?

list your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.

do you like your name? is there another name you think would fit you better?

do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do?

are you religious/spiritual?

do you care about your ethnicity?

what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime?

are you an artist?

do you have a creed?

describe your ideal day.

dog person or cat person?

inside or outdoors?

are you a musician?

five most influential books over your lifetime.

if you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same?

would you say your tumblr is a fair representation of the “real you”?

what’s your patronus?

which Harry Potter house would you be in? or are you a muggle?

would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?

do you love easily?

list the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.

how often would you want to see your family every year?

have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone?

could you live as a hermit?

how would you describe your gender/sexuality?

do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?

on a scale from 1 to 10, how hard is it for someone to get under your skin?

three songs that you connect with right now.

pick one of your favorite quotes.

and here are my answers:

1. Twenty One Pilot’s Self Titled album has always resonated with me

2. John Green’s writing always hits me in the feels

3. oh god i cant do the character thing but here we go {im missing a lot} Harry Potter, My Chemical Romance, twenty One Pilots, Game Grumps, Panic at the Disco, Jacksepticeye, Markiplier, Pewdiepie, Rick and Morty, Undertale, Gravity Falls, Maze Runner, Attack on Titan, Doctor Who, Ninja Sex Party, Starbomb and like a gazillion others

4. I think my name’s alright, idk what i would change it to tho

5. I will do stuff if stuff needs to be done, but for the most part im super lazy

6. nope, i am sciencey

7. not really

8. Oh boi My Chemical Romance, Twenty One Pilots, and Panic! At the Disco always connects with me

9. i write short stories and poetry, but i cant draw

10. no?

11. Hot Topic, FYE, Barnes and Noble, Books a mIllion, youtube, and tumblr.

12. cat person, tho doggos are pretty cute

13. inside cause im a hermit

The Fault in Our Stars, Deathly Hallows, We Are The Ants, At The Edge Of The Universe, and The Princess Saves Herself In This One are off the top of my head as some of my faves

definitely not, i moved a lot growing up and every environment influenced me at least a little

yeah, i post a lot about causes i support, also its filled with memes and Game Grumps appreciation posts, which is basically my brain

a hedgehog according to the test, which is probably accurate

i am Slytherin, 5000000 percent

I wanna go to Hogwarts! [even though there is like a 99% chance of death} either that or the Underground from Undertale

yeah probably

Youtube, Tumblr, Listening to music and feeling sad, Reading, Writing

i see them everyday but probably for holidays and stuff?

Not 100% but sometimes people actually get what im saying, which is nice

im cis and pansexual i think? its confusing man idk

kind of? I wish i could do my eyeliner better. Im always wearing band merch tho

it depends, mostly i dont get offended easily

Implicit Demand for Proof, Trapdoor, and Guns for Hands, all by Twenty One Pilots, are songs i have been listening to lately

‘‘That’s what life is all about, dude, straight up murder. It’s fun.’‘ -Arin Hanson, Game Grumps. Not but for real, any Dan Avidan or Gerard Way quotes have always stuck with me.

TMI tag i guess? I am so bored and felt like making a post so here ya go.

#game grumps #tmi #im bored af #jacksepticeye #markiplier #rick and morty #undertale #twenty one pilots #my chemical romance #mcr #panic at the disco #patd #top #gravity falls #emo #slytherin

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dietadviser · 7 years

Text

5 Nutrients you`re probably not getting enough of in your diet

But, unlike Ryan Gosling memes, you cannot just scroll via Facebook passively waiting for nutrients to amazingly show up in your system. No, you need to actively seek them out or experience the deficiency consequences.

1. High-quality macronutrients

What are macronutrients, you ask? They're the 3 foundation of rather much every little thing you place in your mouth: proteins, fats and carbohydrates.

' Yet I believe I'm eating lots ... a minimum of the range certain says I am. Exactly how could I want?' Excellent inquiry. They vital phrase below is 'high-grade.' Not all healthy proteins, fats as well as carbs are produced equal. If you're loading your lunchbox with Cheetos, a Wonder Bread sandwich of processed peanut butter as well as jelly and a soda, you could be eating lots of calories, yet they're not being supplied in 'high-quality' form.

If you cannot consume top quality foods that are very closely connected to nature (as in a plant that expands straight out of the ground or a pet that consumes off a plant that grows straight out of the ground), your whole body will be thrown out of whack. Not just are proteins, fats and also carbohydrates vital for everyday function as well as power degrees, nature-linked foods are exactly how you obtain your micronutrients - nutrients that are vital for mobile feature, metabolic rate as well as hormone regulation.

Rachael Shontz, weight management expert and the voice behind Fit Cyster puts it this means, 'As a society, we are over-fed and also under-nourished.' She provides the adhering to tips for cleansing up your diet regimen and analyzing which foods must make it:

If you cannot articulate the ingredients in a food, do not consume it

If it's processed or packaged, check out the ingredients carefully and also continue with caution (describe rule one)

Shop the border of the food store and also adhere to the meat, create and also dairy sections, avoiding the aisles where 'trouble foods' have the tendency to hang out

And P.S., if you fix premium macronutrient deficiencies, you'll be more probable to correct several of the various other deficiencies on this list.

2. Water

Water - if you go without it for as well long, you die. It's that essential. And while the majority of us aren't in jeopardy of keeling over anytime soon (there's more compared to sufficient juice, soft drink as well as coffee running with our veins to keep us puttering along), that does not indicate we're not deficient.

According to a 2007 study by the Centers of Illness Control and also Prevention, 43 percent of Americans consume 3 or less mugs of water a day, with just 22 percent drinking greater than eight cups - the common pointer for day-to-day consumption.

Granted, real water demands vary from person-to-person based on elements like age, sex, body composition and also task degree, as well as overall food and drink consumption (every little thing you place in your mouth has some water in it). The problem is that even light dehydration can bring about significant deficiencies, including reduced power, slowed down metabolic rate, an unclear brain as well as over-eating. If water is the lube that maintains all your systems running efficiently, a lack of water can trigger everything else to decrease and run amok.

Make sure you're getting sufficient water by loading a 1-liter multiple-use canteen in your bag daily. Keep it on your workdesk and also make a factor to sip from it every hr. Your objective needs to be making it through at the very least two full liters each day. It seems like a great deal, once you start the routine, you'll marvel exactly how very easy it is to stick to it.

3. Iron

If you're feeling unusually inactive, you could be iron lacking. Iron is the nutrient in charge of bring oxygen to your cells. And guess just what? Without oxygen, your cells have a bumpy ride functioning right. The terrifying thing is that iron is the most common nutrient shortage in America.

There are 2 primary reasons for iron deficiency: 1) a dietary lack as a result of reduced intake levels or a reduced ability to absorb the nutrient, or 2) life events that boost the demand for iron consumption. Durations of fast development, maternity as well as heavy durations can all contribute to a requirement for enhanced intake.

Women have a propensity to be a lot more iron lacking than guys, so it's particularly crucial for females to pay attention to iron consumption. 'Females do not tend to consume the quantity of iron-rich foods, such as red meat, as men do. Females menstruate - a week out of the month, females lose iron-rich tissue,' specifies Shontz.

Before you run off and go chew on a railroad spike (that simply doesn't appear enjoyable at all), hold your roll. If you think you're iron lacking, go to your doctor for blood work. When you obtain a straight solution, she'll be able to inform you exactly what training course of activity to take - therapy could call for a nutritional adjustment and/or an iron supplement.

In the meanwhile, make sure you're eating a well-balanced diet regimen that includes high-quality (those words once again!) resources of dietary iron, such as seafood, lean red meat, pumpkin seeds, spinach and beans.

4. Vitamin D

Vitamin D's a complicated (and also incredibly vital) little nutrient. Maralana Fulton, advanced sporting activities and also nourishment consultant as well as creator of Go Do Be clarifies, 'Vitamin D decreases swelling (which plays a duty in cardiovascular disease), sustains bone health and wellness, boosts resistance and also really aids with state of mind problems.' The catch? It can be challenging to obtain sufficient of.

While vitamin D is readily offered in fatty fish and strengthened foods, such as milk and also yogurt, several people don't consume sufficient of claimed foods to absorb the advised 600 IU (international systems) daily. That's why its various other source - unguarded sun exposure - could play such a substantial role in protecting against deficiencies. The catch? The not-so-insignificant increased threat of skin cancer.

So what's somebody like me - that has already had two skin cancers cells, does not such as fish and doesn't eat much milk - expected to do? 'Put on sun block, however objective to get at the very least 15 minutes of (vulnerable) sun a day,' recommends Fulton. This level of exposure is not likely to be excessively damaging as well as will certainly additionally assist supply the good-for-you benefits of enjoying the sun.

5. Fiber

The juice trend can be killing your fiber intake! Christiana Greene, a licensed personal nutritionist that blog sites at Spilling Coffee 'N Dropping Things puts it by doing this, 'I enjoy a fresh, cold-pressed juice, however occasionally we miss the fiber offered in entire fruits as well as veggies.' Yep, that juice your sipping on has lots of wonderful nutrients, but not a lot on the fiber.

Even prior to juice bars started appearing on every corner, Americans had the tendency to be fiber deficient. Now, the very same holds ... and for some, may be worse.

Fiber is an extremely crucial nutrient that can aid maintain things moving with your digestive system track, essentially keeping you 'normal.' And also while there's not much to despise regarding a day-to-day poop (don't play, you recognize it's true), fiber can additionally assist with weight upkeep and also secure you from persistent ailments consisting of diabetes as well as heart disease.

Most grownups require between 28 and 34 grams of fiber daily, and also while that seems like a whole lot, it's in fact rather simple to obtain if you're diligent. Beans, entire grains, fruits and veggies are all outstanding sources. Even if you're not a huge vegetable eater, there are means to add a lot more in. For one, switch out your cold-pressed juice for a smoothie mix, so the fiber will not be stripped away. You can additionally adhere to Greene's lead, 'I take a natural supplement (Reliv) to ensure to get enough fiber, yet on top of that, I include kale or spinach to virtually everything - eggs, smoothie mixes, sandwiches as well as mix fry. My friends call me Popeye due to the fact that of all the spinach I consume!'

#balanced diet #detox diet #diet #dieting #health and wellness #liquid diet #metabolism diet #nutritionist #supplement #vegan diet #weight management #wellness

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yodepalma · 7 years

Note

Polyship meme: Gladio/Prom/Iggy for 7, 10, and 11. Dino/Prom/Noct for 1, 4, 14, 15 (sorry if this is too many, I like to send multiples - habit of people already doing one OR if you want to skip any aka backups xD)

My brain only wanted to make actual narrative for one of these but. >.>

Gladio/Prom/Iggy first…

7. One or more of them comes across a stray animal.How do the family members each react? Who tries to find the previous owner?Does anyone want the others to mind their own business? Do they end up keepingit?

No matter what kind of animal it is, Prompto is thefirst one to kneel down and start cooing over it. Especially if it’s injured. Fortunately, he’s also the first one toinsist that they have to find the owner right away, so the other two usuallydon’t mind. The only time it becomes a problem is when they can’t find theowner. Prompto gets attached fast,and Gladio is absolutely useless against his puppy eyes. Ignis usually tries tomake them see reason—they can’t keep every injured animal they run across—but he can’t possibly win every argument. Whichis how they end up with a house full of animals that Ignis is constantlytripping over. (He’s not nearly as mad about it as he should be.)

10. Who tells the ghost stories or watches the ghoststories, and who are the ones who need a cuddle sandwich to get through thenight every time they encounter anything the least bit spooky?

Gladio lovesghosts stories, especially at godawful times on horribly stormy nights. Ignis findsit irritating at worst, mostly because the stories are so predictable, butPrompto can’t stand it. He can handlethe movies on their own—he’s faced down worse in real life—but when he’s tryingto sleep? With the heavy air pressing against his lungs and the darknessplaying tricks on his eyes?

It’s a good thing he has two large and terrifying boyfriends. Gladio makes upfor his terrible taste by curling around Prompto’s back, solid and strong andimpenetrable. Ignis tangles his fingers in Prompto’s hair and lets Prompto curlaround his chest. They’re tangled together a little too tightly too becomfortable, and they’re going to wake up a sweaty mess, but at least this wayPrompto knows he’s safe. Any ghoststhat tried to get to him like this would be in for a nasty surprise.

11. Who steals everyone else’s clothing? Who can’ttell their own clothing from other people’s anymore?

Prompto is a notorious clothing thief. He claims he’s cold all the time, but Ignisand Gladio suspect he just likes the way their clothes smell. Neither of themminds terribly much, though; Prompto looks adorablein their oversized shirts.

Gladio, meanwhile, despairs of ever getting to wearone of his own sweatshirts again. He can never find one when he needs it, but he’s found them in Ignis’ office and Prompto’scar and tangled with the blanket on the couch….

aaaaand the dino/prom/noct…

1. A large spider has gotten into the house/apartment.How does each person react?

Dino checks his phone as he leaves the café to seethat he has six missed voicemails from Noctis, and he listens to them withgrowing bewilderment as he walks to the subway. They’re panicked andincomprehensible, and he can make out little more than demands for him to gethome immediately. Noctis isn’tgenerally prone to panic. Dino walks a little faster.

He hasn’t received any more calls by the time he getshome, but that doesn’t worry him. If it had been a break-in that had promptedthe first calls, Noctis could have handled the problem on his own. Anyway, nothingseems amiss when he steps inside.

“Noct?” Dino calls, stepping around the usual clutter.“Are you still home?”

“Finally!”Noctis’ voice comes from the hallway, muffled by at least one door. “We’re inthe bathroom!”

Dino walks to the bathroom door and tries the handle,but it’s locked. “What are you two doing in there?”

“There’s a spider!”Prompto’s voice this time, a high-pitched whine of terror. “And it’s huge. Don’t you see it?”

“It’s on the doorframe,” Noctis says. “Look up.”

Dino follows the directions and sighs. There is a spider up there, and he supposes it’srather large if you’re used to house spiders, but he’d hardly call it huge. It turns in place as if it cansense his eyes on it, and wiggles its pedipalps. Dino waggles his fingers back.

“Are you killing it?” Noctis demands. “It doesn’tsound like you’re killing it.”

“There’s no need to be so vicious.” Dino tsks and goesinto the bedroom to grab a pair of Noctis’ silver gloves. They’re a little snug,but at least once he coaxes the spider to jump onto his hand, he doesn’t losesight of it against the fabric.

He carefully cups it between his palms and carries itoutside. He has to poke it a little to make it jump into the grass, but then itdisappears instantly. Dino peels off the gloves and heads back inside.

“The foul beast has been vanquished,” he says,knocking on the bathroom door. It opens immediately, Prompto stumbling out andfalling right into Dino’s arms. Dino pats at his bare skin. “Did the two of youget trapped in there after a shower?”

“I thought we’d neverget out,” Prompto mutters against his chest.

“Our hero,” Noctis says, rather more sarcastically. Hebrushes past them toward the bedroom. It’s probably not an invitation, but, well, Dino believes a gallant rescue deserves some sortof reward. He nudges Prompto upright and follows.

4. How do they all keep house? Do they assign chores,and if so, does anyone ever slack? Does anyone ever say, “let’s clean” and(most?) everyone suddenly hops off the furniture and pitches in?

Noct is, unsurprisingly, the messiest. It’s not thathe doesn’t want to clean, he’s justreally bad at it. Like, really bad.He’ll often get suddenly, inexplicably exhausted in the middle of cleaning andjust sort of drop everything and lay down instead. The only task he’s everreally expected to do is to take the trash out to the curb for pickup, and halfthe time that ends with him warping it out to the curb at the last second. Thetrashmen have stopped screaming when he does this.

Dino is surprisingly tidy, for the most part. It comesfrom spending so much time in Galdin: if you don’t keep up with your chores,the sand is impossible to get out ofthe corners. And don’t even get him started on the flies. He might let thingsslide when he’s chasing a story or really inspired by a new piece of jewelry,though.

Prompto is a bit unpredictable. He never reallylearned how to clean properly and he’sterrible with little details (like dusting), but he usually knows where everythingis (except stuff he’s absentmindedly put in weird places) and he never letsthings pile up for too long. Butevery so often his anxiety will get overwhelming and he’ll just clean the hellout of some tiny portion of the house. Dino and Noct drop everything to helphim when this happens.

…And all of them occasionally leave the sink full ofdishes, passive-aggressively cleaning only what they need until either: 1) Prompto anxiety-cleans them, 2) the sink isinvaded by ants, or, worst of all, 3) Ignis comes over and notices.

14. When grocery shopping, who budgets and makeslists? Who happily throws things into the cart and figures it’ll work out? Whoestimates their general spending as they pick up items, but they throw in acouple of splurges? Who oversees that the splurges don’t go too far and tellsthe other(s) to put some or all of the items back on the shelf?

Prompto always makes a list, but half the time heleaves it at home anyway. Dino makes a backup list, though, so it always worksout. Even if nobody can read Dino’s handwriting but him.

Noctis, meanwhile, has no idea how to shop, doesn’tlook at their lists, and just picks up whatever looks good according to hiswhims. It drives Dino and Prompto up a wall,because they’re both used to working on strict budgets and anyway who even needs five bags of miniaturemarshmallows, Noct!?

Dino will sneak a few a few of Noct’s morequestionable choices back on the shelf, but half of them end up back in thecart by the time they’re done. He never figures out how Noct manages it.

15. Something broke down! Are any of them handy aroundthe house with fixing things? Who thinks they can do it on their own and whatlevel of success do they have? Who breaks down and calls a professional out?

Dino is a lifelong renter/moocher. He can fix some basic things, like clogged drains andblown fuses, and he’s adept at hiding cosmetic damages in furniture and walls,but for the most part he prefers to just call people. Every so often he gets anurge to fix something himself, andhalfway through the attempt he remembers why professionals exist.

Prompto can fix damn near anything. Most of it he hadto teach himself, unable to get a hold of his parents when things were fallingapart, and he’s still not used to the idea that he can call a professional. Sometimes he ends up just jury-riggingthings, though, so it’s when they break the secondtime that it becomes a problem. He’s just happy he hasn’t managed to burn thehouse down yet.

Noct doesn’t even realize things are broken half thetime. And when he does he notice, heinevitably calls Ignis, who has to call a professional for him. Whileexplaining that he doesn’t live there, and couldn’t see the problem even if hedid. He always manages to get someone out there, though.

#ffxv #poly meme #headcanon #fic post #ask meme #dino/prom/noct #gladio/ignis/prompto

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mychristopherstokes66world · 5 years

Link

but the problem is that they're ALL connected. There's no ONE starting point to narrow in on and build a case from the ground up. NXIUM is connected to Fiji water which is connected to the Bromfmans which are connected to the DNC which is connected to Libya and Syria which is connected to CEMEX which is connected to the Trilateral Commission and CERN, which is of course connected to the US Government and its private sector investors like First Principles Inc which financed NXIVM and so on and so forth. Then other MKULTRA shit like Tavistock, Manson, Hubbard popped up and they had a relationship with Jet Propulsion Laboratories which was connected to Steve Paddock and then my bells really started ringing. My thesis is that the totality of their connections IS the one thing that is worth narrowing in on. Once the broad relationships are established then it will be much easier to explain the smaller details of who does what and where they fit in the hierarchy. Before we found Comet Ping Pong we needed the Wikileaks to break pizzagate, and once the connections were in place regarding David Brock, John Podesta and James Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong was an inevitable discovery. I will, one day. It's just truthfully too much to do at once, and people will ignore the information overload. And inevitably I'll get a couple minor details wrong, I'm already finding out so much today that I didn't know before, I'm by no means an expert. But I think the other thread does a good job of connecting them but you have to do the work yourself to see it. I get that normies won't, so that's why I'm trying to build to that point but I don't know if we're there yet. For example, I had no idea Manson's lawyer had any affiliation with Tavistock or any of this shit. I just briefly mentioned Manson because I was talking about the occult methods of mind control and I knew he was connected to Jack Parsons. That triggered another anon to dump a bunch of information on Manson's background that I never knew about. And that process has repeated itself over and over through the past two threads so I have faith that the connections will become more and more apparent the more we dig into it

mkultra programs never ended

now they have super ultra advanced tech which can literally fuck up our brains

Finally some people who will appreciate this information. Check out this patent that was filed by Keith Rainere

http://bit.ly/2FtCMxQ

http://bit.ly/2ZJkdgU

>Determination of whether a luciferian can be rehabilitated

This goes so much deeper than sex. Do you really think the satanic elites need a cult to acquire underage sex slaves? Absolutely not, they can get whatever they desire on demand. They don't need Keith or his cult for sex slaves. What they need from Keith is the information from his Mind Control experiments.

Due to the restrictions placed on the State after the Freedom of Information act, secret government programs like MK Ultra and Monarch Programming had to be transferred to the private sector where citizens can't legally sue for declassified information. I believe that NXIVM is sponsored by the CIA's private sector affiliates and is a front for running experiments on using sex to brainwash people and turn them into compliant citizens. This would help explain any connection between Rainere, Alefantis, Podesta and the Clintons. NXIVM is a government mind control program, not just a simple sex cult. Keith Rainere is a Crowley-like magician who uses physical and mental stimuli to reprogram people according to his desires. This manifests right now as "Have sex with Keith" but it could easily spiral into "Kill this person for me" the way Manson did (who was also a chaos magician likely affiliated with the government and L Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons, but that's a different story).

Thomas Petersen Co-Founder at First Principle worked on a project called Ghostnote: "Already one of the most talked about productivity apps. Featured on ProductHunt. Ghostnote adds contextual notes to almost anything on your mac. Add notes & todos to folders, applications, open documents, even websites. Think about it as post-it-notes for your OS."

Website: http://bit.ly/1F4PIk1 (visually very similar to First principle LLC website)

I am not really tech litterate but I wonder if it could have been used as a backdoor/spy app.

wo concurrent conversations, I know, but here's another doozy. David Attenborough and Cemex own a nature reserve together. Are you telling me that one of the world's worst polluters and the Bono of nature shows have a private patch of land where the elite can party away from the prying eye of plebs? Not bad for a Mexican cement company.

https://thedevilman666.blogspot.com/https://www.facebook.com/groups/qanonreports https://twitter.com/CIACLOWN1 https://www.bitchute.com/channel/ciaclown16661 It doesn't matter what you call it, manipulation of mental realities through language, glyphs and rituals is a real science that is being employed to make us feel powerless, anxious, and dependent on the stimuli that the elite feed us to control our personalities. Chaos Magic has a uniquely Crowleyan focus on ritual, but it's based on the same Hermetic principles of the Mind that Gnostics and alchemists study. The author of the Secret describes it as "Mental Alchemy". Magic is the manipulation of perceived reality through your Will. Hermeticists believe that the All is Mental in nature, so if you can change a person's mind then you can change their physical reality as well. It's more complicated then that, but you know the basics. Funny enough, The All is Mental is the FIRST PRINCIPLE of the Hermetic Kyballion. It's neither a good or bad thing, no more than "technology" can be considered an evil thing. The principles exist and can be manipulated. Meme magic is right hand path white magic, that seeks to use these principles defensively in order to protect our fragile sense of personhood from psychic warfare. The elites, gnostics, Masons, Jews, satanists, whatever you want to call them, want to use these principles to apply left hand path BLACK MAGIC to control OTHER people. Right = Defensive, Left = Offensive. The government has cozied up with occultists in the past, but they've demystified the process by applying the scientific method. What we are now witnessing is black magic on the grandest scale ever seen - Collective Mass Hypnosis thanks to the likes of Rainere and the other DOD experiments Rainere connects to. There's also ritual sacrifice, Goetia, and Theurgy but I wouldn't describe that as much as magic as I would Summoning. If you play D&D, it's the difference between a Wizard and a Warlock. Speaking of the Secret, it was first popularized by Oprah who we now know was in deep with John of God

rst Principle LLC is located at: 1012 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast Washington, DC 20003 United States https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0854192D:US When you type this address in a serach engine you end up with AMC Hawk & Associates ,Business Management Advisor in Washington. The weird thing is it seems they dissapear suddenly 3 years ago from a review (pic related) >Magic is the manipulation of perceived reality through your Will Yeah, that's not magic. That's Crowley. The whole will thing he stole from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said the will to mach...later translated after WW2 as "will to power". But German "Mach" is where we get our word machine, to craft. Nietzsche was saying all things that exist have a will to self creation or self preservation as forms, atoms, stars, life, planets... so on. NOW FOLLOW CLOSELY: The ORIGINAL meaning for "magic", it's etymology, was "craft". It came out of the pre-Persian medes culture. They were light worshipers who use to burn sorcerers alive. Zarathustra created Zoroastrianism and said all the gods were fake or more like angels/demons and there is only one god, the Lord of Wisdom (Ahura Mazda) and his symbol is light/fire. But real magic is creative works or craft. This can include: >art >masonry >metallurgy >science/tech of any kind >music >creating religions >story telling And so on... In ancient times someone who could pull metal out of the ground and make a sword was seen as doing the work of the gods, "magical" and as it became more widespread if became 'common' or not "high magic". So "black magic" = deception, illusion, cult indoctrination... in modern times it's know as black propaganda. Christianity is black magic. And "white magic" = creativity, technology, arts and crafts, building society, philosophy. In fact philosophy came out of a rejection of the corrupted Zoroastrian magi priesthood of the Greek's enemy Persia.

Nobody saw this video the last two threads, but you guys need to see it. If you do really care about this thread, then don't scroll past this video. Back it up and keep it some where. Somebody posted the interior image of this building before but it was empty. Now we see it with scantily clad children retrieving water (?) from separate sinks and pouring it onto the flat circle in the center. I know this video had big significance, but I don't know to what yet since I never saved the image of this room when I saw it, and I should have.

"Will power symbolism" is straight up gnostic escapism bullshit that came out of Christian mysticism (aka Alexandria Egypt and the gay christian-judeans who were fighting with the NeoPlatonists elite because they feared Christianity, so some Christians created an alternative to D&C the elite culture of Alexandria and the philosophy schools). Paul writes to them in 1stCorenthians because they're practicing orgies, incest, and money scams. Pizzagate 101 http://bit.ly/2ZCTTou #Spiritcooking http://bit.ly/2FtKHv7 Newfag rundown on the players http://bit.ly/2ZBT5Am It all started with Hawaii bro and secret pedo media distribution bunker http://bit.ly/2FqV8Q0 Comet ping pong connection http://bit.ly/2ZD308A Comet ping pong was hacked during the election and Anons found this download portal but couldn't get further http://bit.ly/2Fu3KoV On a separate page Anons found pizza menu items in detail http://bit.ly/2ZGh6WX And these pictures. They've essentially been completely blacked out. NSFL http://bit.ly/2FtCKGe Comet ping pong false flag shooter http://bit.ly/2ZD2VBO http://bit.ly/2FwWits #Elsagate rundown http://bit.ly/2ZLt1CH The CIA has been running child trafficking rings since the beginning. Definitely NSFL http://bit.ly/2FqD9Jl They've been threatened before and they killed a sitting senator and her husband http://bit.ly/2ZLt2qf It's all about the adrenochrome http://bit.ly/2FtJOCO Justin Beiber snaps because he was pimped out http://bit.ly/2ZLt3dN Child actress Heather Orourkes, 5, raped to death by Hollywood executives. http://bit.ly/2FqV7vq Sex trafficking of children on YouTube http://bit.ly/2ZD2XJW More #pizzagate http://bit.ly/2Fs8Gus http://bit.ly/2ZLt4OT http://bit.ly/2FtCKWK http://bit.ly/2ZEV7jd http://bit.ly/2FuNeVK Tony Podesta smocking Trump tweet http://bit.ly/2ZEV7zJ Anderson Cooper slips up, #pizzagate http://bit.ly/2FsxDpO Israel children farming http://bit.ly/2ZD2YO0 Allister Crowley and human sacrifice http://bit.ly/2Fur2Lp

Raniere is tied in with the DoD through various people and businesses. To understand it better, take a look into his schooling. He's 'private sector', of course it's a step further. Look at all of the patents he holds. I only linked the ones I thought to be most interesting, some patents were repeats of patents he already had which I thought was odd.

#CIA CLOWN #RED PILL #REDPILL #ANON #HONKHONK

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

Epic Dollhouse Review of Doom: Why I Am Calling It Quits

by Dan H

Monday, 22 June 2009

Dan on Dollhouse, The Sopranos, and Slow Builds~

Previously on Ferretbrain: I started watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and was doing an episode-by-episode review.

I kind of stalled on it, because I've come to the realisation that part of what the show is trying to do is to make you, the viewer complicit in the activities of the Dollhouse, trying to draw a comparison between you watching the show and the clients hiring the Dolls. Just as the Dollhouse caters to their needs, so this show caters to your needs. Do you see.

Eight episodes in I decided I was no longer going to be complicit in anything. I can take being bored. I can take being annoyed. I can take having Joss Whedon masturbate in my face. What I can't take is being bored and annoyed and having Joss Whedon masturbate in my face all at the same time.

Just to be clear. I did not stop watching Dollhouse because the dolls are all rape victims. I did not stop watching Dollhouse because I was uncomfortable with a television series where human traffickers are sympathetic viewpoint characters. I did not stop watching Dollhouse because its damning insights into the human condition were outside my comfort zone. I stopped watching Dollhouse because it was preachy, inconsistent, condescending, self-aggrandising, clunkily written, boring, exposition-heavy, mcguffin-driven, shit with the intellectual sophistication of a sixteen year old's GCSE essay about how we should totally abolish money, because that would make everybody equal.

So here are my final thoughts:

A Very Specific Level of Evil

One of the “memes” I'm trying to spread around the internet is

A Very Specific Level of Tired

. For those who don't want to read the link, the salient exchange (from a hypothetical D&D game) is this:

“No, you have just enough energy to climb this hill, but not enough energy to go on or look for someplace else to camp.” “That is a very specific level of tired.”

I like to use the phrase “very specific level of [blah]” to describe any situation in a work of fiction where a character or institution is supposed to be sufficiently [blah] to do what the plot demands, but not quite [blah] enough to do all the things that a [blah] person would do that might wreck the plot. Voldemort is a classic example of this. He's evil enough to kill helpless babies if they get in the way of his plans (or at least, fail to kill helpless babies) he's evil enough that he routinely uses torture and violence to get what he wants, but somehow he is not evil enough to – say – round up all of Harry Potter's friends and start killing them until Potter shows himself.

The Dollhouse (the institution rather than the show) has a similar problem. The Dollhouse is evil, it takes people and scrubs their brains and programs them to do things for rich people.

But it's a very specific level of evil. It takes the time and energy to provide its Dolls with comfortable living conditions, even though doing this pretty clearly makes them harder to control. It seems to vet its assignments extremely thoroughly, so that the Dolls only get sent out to do things which are basically okay. It gives the Dolls names – admittedly names based on military callsigns, but they're clearly designed to function like English Proper Names, not codes. They seem to encourage their handlers to form an emotional bond with their actives and if the handler abuses the relationship, that handler is actually killed.

It's the most naïve representation of human trafficking I can possibly imagine.

Now the counter-argument to this is that the Dollhouse is only superficially nice, and that in fact they are just as evil as you would expect from an institution which (as we discover in episode seven) is run by an evil biotech company that does experiments on babies.

There are two problems with that argument. The first is that the “good” parts of the Dollhouse are most assuredly not superficial. They do in fact take genuine care of their actives, they do in fact try to make them as happy and comfortable as possible. They do in fact use them to help people (sometimes, apparently, for free).

The second problem with this argument is that evil institutions do not look superficially attractive because they do not need to. There were no Callisthenics classes in Auschwitz. Josef Mengele didn't have cutesy conversations with his Jewish prisoners before pouring bleach in their eyes. Guantanamo Bay isn't full of happy, smiling Muslims with slightly vacant grins on their faces. The Dollhouse's veneer of respectability is not for the benefit of the staff (who shouldn't care) or the clients (who shouldn't care, and who never see inside the building anyway) but for the benefit of the audience.

It's another incarnation of what the girls at

Boils and Blinding Torment

used to call “the Misdirection Fairy”. Joss Whedon is chronic for having characters in his shows behave in ways which only make sense if you assume they are consciously performing for an audience. Classic examples of this in Buffy include Jonathan deciding to commit suicide by shooting himself with a sniper rifle in a bell tower (almost as if he was deliberately trying to fool the viewing audience into thinking he was about to embark on a killing spree) and several bits in season seven where Buffy persists in acting confused and frightened, even though everything is going exactly according to her plan. The Dollhouse keeps acting “nice” but there's no earthly reason for it to do so.

To put it another way: Joss Whedon fails at Atrocity 101.

If we are to accept that using Dollhouse technology on people is a genuinely atrocious act, then we have to assume that it works the same way all atrocities work. You start by dehumanizing the victim. Giving the Dolls names, making them comfortable, letting them socialise and caring if they get raped are all totally incompatible with wiping their minds and handing them over to the highest bidder. There's a reason that lab rats aren't given names (or, for that matter, toys). The Dollhouse treats the Dolls like people, and they shouldn't. Not if they're supposed to be genuine human traffickers.

There's a bit in Episode Eight (the last episode I saw, and the last I will ever subject myself to) where de Witt explicitly says that the Dolls should be thought of as pets. This is supposed to be chilling, I think. It's supposed to highlight how dehumanizing the Dollhouse really is. But it doesn't work.

Anybody who has ever worked in a laboratory should know that you absolutely, under no circumstances, treat your test subjects as pets. Pets are, in fact, treated as people. They are cared for and protected, they are given names and they are individualised – humanised, in fact. De Witt consistently singles Echo out for special treatment. One cannot treat a person in this fashion and then commit atrocities against them.

Show, Don't Tell, Dickhead

We spend a lot of time in The Dollhouse having people present the cases either for it (it “gives people what they need” and “helps people”) or against it (it is “slavery” and “human trafficking”). We do not ever see the Dollhouse behave in a manner that fits either of these descriptions, or at least not consistently.

In Episode Eight we finally discover that Sierra was wiped against her will (unlike all the other Dolls, who were volunteers) specifically because she turned a millionaire down for sex. De Witt later explains at the end of the episode (in which the Dollhouse arranges for its three primary Dolls to achieve “closure” or something – I was too bored and pissed off to care by this point) that she “needed to confront the man who took her power away.” Now hang on. You can't talk, sympathetically, about how horribly Sierra was mistreated by this guy when you run the organisation that made it possible. Not because it's hypocritical, but because you shouldn't care. The whole sequence seems to be designed to make you realise how awful the Dollhouse is, because of what it did to Sierra, while at the same time making you think that de Witt is an okay person, because she sympathises. It's not subtle, it's not complex, it's just fucking stupid.

A comparison that I've been wanting to make for a while now is with The Sopranos.

Tony Soprano is very seldom called a criminal. People very seldom tell him that what he does is wrong. He seldom justifies his actions, because he seldom needs to. But he does things that are demonstrably, obviously horrific, and we see them in harsh, unflinching detail, and we see the consequences that his choices have on ordinary people. We don't need trembly emotive speeches where people say “the Mafia is bad!” because we already know. We don't need Tony to say “we help people” because it would be completely stupid.

And we certainly aren't asked to question our own complicity in the work of the Cosa Nostra.

Dollhouse is two shows. There's the show Joss Whedon wanted to make, which exists entirely in the exposition, and is all about Big Serious Issues, and the show that Fox wanted to commission, which is an adventure show about a hot girl who wears a series of different outfits. What we are left with is a show about a girl who has crazy kung fu adventures which keeps stopping every five minutes to explain how it's really about human trafficking and free will and shit.

The Slow Build Fallacy

I once met somebody who said that the thing they hated the most about Buffy the Vampire Slayerwas the fact that they kept watching it, and not liking it, and everybody they talked to kept saying “yeah, well that season wasn't so great, but the next season is really good”. They gave up after season three, possibly because nobody could quite bring themselves to say that about Season Four.

People keep saying the same thing about Dollhouse “sure, the first three quarters of the season sucks, but then you see where it's all been going and it's awesome”.

This is bullshit.

Good TV is good TV from the start. No ifs. No buts. No exceptions. A series should not have to waste my time for upwards of eight hours before it starts displaying whatever dubious merits it is supposed to possess.

To put it another way, if you like a television program, and it shows consistent improvement in ambition, complexity of storytelling, and of course acting, you are going to see that as a show which gets better every season. If, like Buffy, there is also a marked change in style every season, you will also mark every season as the point where it really gets into its stride. I know that I've been guilty of identifying pretty much every season of Buffy as “where it starts to get really good” when talking to more sceptical members of my social circle.

Basically this is an elaborate piece of self-deception we engage in, convincing ourselves that our appreciation for a show is based on a slowly developing understanding of its many subtle advantages, when actually we just think it's a cool idea.

If you don't like Buffy Season 1, you will not like Buffy, period. The reason for this is simple: if you don't like Buffy Season 1 it's probably because something fundamental about the show doesn't work for you. Maybe it's the cutesy dialogue. Maybe it's Sarah Michelle Gellar. Maybe it's the whole idea of a cute blonde chick fighting monsters when she transparently doesn't have enough meat on her to open a stubborn jar of pickles. It doesn't matter how complex the arcs get, or how well they handle

the subject of bereavement

the nature of forgiveness

the whole thing is framed in cutesy dialogue and a blonde girl kicking vampires in the face and either you buy that shit or you don't. I personally bought it big time and Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of my favourite television shows ever.

I just don't buy Dollhouse. I don't buy the premise, I don't buy the boring, stilted, not-at-all-cutesy and therefore not-at-all witty and therefore not-at-all interesting dialogue. I think the show is heavy handed. I think the show is boring.

Nothing can change in the last four episodes of Season One or the first four episodes of Season Two to change this fact. My issues with Dollhouse are with the root and the core of the show, with the ideas behind it, the way the characters are presented, the way the dialogue is written. No penultimate-episode revelation will change that. Nothing the show can be building towards can change what the show is built on.

Which, from where I'm standing, is Joss Whedon's penis.Themes:

Damage Report

TV & Movies

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Whedonverse

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~Comments (

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)

Arthur B

at 12:47 on 2009-06-22

So what you're saying is that you're fine with Joss jerking off in your face, but you draw the line at him asking you to give him a hand? :P

Seriously though, awesome article. I think a lack of, for want of a better word, psychological realism can absolutely kill any hope shows like

Dollhouse

have of being appreciated on the sort of level Whedon clearly wants

Dollhouse

to be appreciated on. This isn't always true, but I think it's often true, especially if the show hinges on the internal psychological states of the characters, and having your show hinge on a mind control process means the mental states of the characters is

the

most important element of the story.

The Prisoner

did this sort of thing

right

. Even though most interrogation processes are vastly grimier than what Number Six went through in the Village, you still had the impression that people were behaving in the way you would expect them to behave in a paranoid schizophrenic Welsh village where Number Six never knows who's working for Number Two and Number Two isn't sure how much Number Six really knows. What's more, what goes on in the Village is an atrocity with a thin veneer of pleasantness which is

actually

a thin veneer. The various Number Twos and their lackeys were perfectly pleasant most of the time, but behind their kind words there was always a snare, and they never hesitated to knock people on the head and drag them in for a lobotomy if they felt the need.

I think part of the reason that the last episode is so controversial is that it abandons psychological realism for tripped-out 60s allegory, and whilst there's nothing wrong with allegory it does tend to involve unrealistic behaviour on the part of characters for the sake of making a point. I do wonder whether

Dollhouse

would work better approached as social allegory as opposed to a psychologically realistic study of rape and/or slavery, but I suspect not since it certainly sounds as though it were written as the latter, not the former.

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Andy G

at 13:57 on 2009-06-22Blackadder comes to mind as a counterexample to what you say about slow builds ... though I guess you could make the case that that is a slightly unusual case since so much was changed after season 1.

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Andy G

at 14:09 on 2009-06-22

And we certainly aren't asked to question our own complicity in the work of the Cosa Nostra.

I agree that the show isn't making some sort of didactic point, but surely it is very much about the uneasy relationship between mainstream American society and the violence that it either hypocritically condemns while supporting, or simply turns a blind eye to? Especially with the outsider liberal figures like Meadow or Dr Melfi.

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Dan H

at 15:46 on 2009-06-22

True, but there's a difference between making a point about society in general, and making a point about you, the viewer.

The Sopranos doesn't ask you to view the act of watching the Sopranos as making you complicit in the work of the Mafia, if you see what I mean.

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 17:58 on 2009-06-22

Blackadder comes to mind as a counterexample to what you say about slow builds ... though I guess you could make the case that that is a slightly unusual case since so much was changed after season 1.

I'd say with Blackadder it's really the same all the way through. There are major changes b/w season 1 and the later seasons, but the basic idea is the same. I think the biggest tweak is in exactly how Blackadder fits with the world and the other characters. But a lot of the basic ideas are the same. The final episode isn't so much fantastic because it shows you where the show is going; it just applies the same formula to a part of history where it's most powerful imo.

The Sopranos doesn't ask you to view the act of watching the Sopranos as making you complicit in the work of the Mafia, if you see what I mean.

I agree. I just started finally watching

The Wire,

and interestingly, in the commentary for the pilot the creator talks about how the first chapter shouldn't be as good as the series is going to get--he's going for a slow build. But at the same time the first chapter clearly lays out what the series is about. And there too it's about society, but not in an accusatory way. Characters don't explicitly justify or condemn everything about themselves and others.

Also maybe another thing that also applies to the Sopranos and doesn't seem to apply to Dollhouse is that there's little need for characters to justify themselves because the world in which they live makes what they do understandable. We can see why being born a Soprano might encourage you to be Tony or AJ or Meadow, or how someone like Carmela would wind up this kind of wife. Likewise how the characters in The Wire become criminals or cops.

But is there any explanation why these people created and work at the Dollhouse--any human reasons with which a reader can identify? This is partly where the proble of all those nice guys working at the Dollhouse come from. We can see where a nice guy on the Sopranos or the Wire could get pushed to stay in a life that goes against their nature (and so probably slowly kills them) but when I read your descriptions of these characters I still wind up asking why they don't work somewhere else.

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 17:59 on 2009-06-22Sorry about that strange comment--I didn't realize the whole thing was copied in italics!

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:18 on 2009-06-22Haven't finished reading the article yet but I thought I'd mention before I forget: the link to

Boils and Blinding Torment

doesn't work. It looks like it has the same problem I got when I was putting up my last article, namely the process of pasting into the Ferretbrain article editor and saving has somehow added "&8221" to the beginning and end of the URL.

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Jamie Johnston

at 19:04 on 2009-06-22Have now finished reading and very much agree, not specifically in relation to

Dollhouse

because I haven't seen any of it but in relation to your general thinking about how fiction should work and how it goes wrong.

Funnily enough the section on the 'slow-build' made me think of exactly the same bit of commentary on the first episode of

The Wire

that Sister Magpie mentioned. David Simon says several times in that audio commentary (and not without sounding just a little smug and patronizing about it, I'm sorry to say) that the series was very demanding of its audience in following a single complete story at a relatively slow pace across 13 episodes rather than the more usual thing of playing out a long over-all plot over the course of a series of somewhat self-contained one-hour-long stories. But you can get away with that if each episode, whether self-contained or not, is in itself enjoyable (which in the case of

The Wire

it certainly is). You can't use it as an excuse for boring your audience out of its collective skull for twelve weeks on the promise of something exciting happening in week 13.

I'm also put in mind of what Neil Gaiman has often said about

The Kindly Ones

, which is that it was the only sequence in the

Sandman

series that he allowed himself to write not as a series of 24-page monthly episodes but more or less as a single 312-page comic, knowing that the pacing and plotting would not really work very well when it was published in 24-page chunks and would only properly make sense in a trade paperback collection. The point here is that Gaiman knows enough about good writing that he clearly feels rather sheepish about doing this.

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http://skull-bearer.livejournal.com/

at 19:24 on 2009-06-22

osef Mengele didn't have cutesy conversations with his Jewish prisoners before pouring bleach in their eyes.

Sorry to disagree, but that's exactly what he did. But that's a case of reality being more screwed up than fiction, and that guy was an utter nutcase.

Sorry, carry on.

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Rami

at 20:52 on 2009-06-22

process of pasting into the Ferretbrain article editor and saving has somehow added "&8221" to the beginning and end

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that -- it's the magic of Microsoft Word.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/ck5gg.gRlPbLG2WYCqrJ5k2.qjxalTVt0AHQ#14479

at 23:37 on 2009-06-22Dan Hemmens is a man after my own heart.

Okay, enough sucking up.

You make a good point, though about not liking Buffy because something doesn't 'click' with you about it, but I'll go one step further and say Whedon's propensity for not really understanding the underlying psychology of a given situation precedes Dollhouse by a country mile.

I was first totally turned off to the Whedon way of thinking during the "Graduation Day" episode of Buffy when I was insulted a total of three times.

The first was when Buffy was given an umbrella and the title of "Class Protector". First of all, are you kidding? If all the kids in high school knew about the growing vampire population, don't you think there would be a massive exodus of people from the town, not to mention a mass ostracizing of Buffy (in the same way people would avoid Fairuza Balk's character in The Craft)?

Most normal teenagers back away from things that are dangerous, even if there's an overall 'good' associated. Why? Because lots of people believe that if you lie with dogs, you get fleas. Hang out with Buffy, you're taking your life in your hands. Better to turn a blind eye to it also, if you know what's good for you.

The second was that the Scooby gang let same said high schoolers in on the plot to take down the mayor. Are you kidding? Are you seriously telling me that the same group of kids isn't going to stay home that day because they might just end up dead?

And third, and the most final and grating of insults, was that upon reflection of the day's events, Oz says, ponderously, "We survived high school."

I get the fact that Buffy was supposed to have been a metaphor, but seriously? The metaphor works best when you're not being beaten over the head with the fact that it's a metaphor.

Golly!

So, I'm not particularly surprised that Whedon has this odd base in non-reality that quite a few people seem to think is clever. (What can I say, I'm a sucker for sci-fi, even if I hate the creator, and yes, I have daggers for Whedon the same way Dan has for JK Rowling - who I also have daggers for.)

So, I made it a point to watch Dollhouse. Hey, if Adam Sandler can have "The Wedding Singer" in him, surely Whedon could have something interesting (and good!) to say at some point, right?

But only three episodes, two of which after the mythical "game-changer" episode. The first was the pilot. Oddly, I didn't see much difference in between the former and the latter, no matter what the fans say (I think the fans have convinced themselves that they're seeing something that isn't really there...I just thought everything I've seen was unilaterally bad in all the same ways).

What constantly annoys me about Whedon's work is often a complete lack of understanding of how people actually work. And this is the point that Dan makes very well above. There's Dollhouse, which tries to give everyone, no matter how 'evil' a supposedly sympathetic edge, and then there's The Sopranos, where the writing goes so far as to make you understand why the characters do what they do, instead of relying on plot contrivances to masticate pathos out of them.

I certainly wouldn't have, for instance, pegged Topher for 'lonely', and if I did, I would think he'd be sneaking dolls more often than just for his birthday (he being a 'genius' and all). Reminds me of that episode of Firefly where Jayne 'betrays' the crew and Mal threatens to throw him off the ship, or into a turbine or something. The rest of the episodes (of either) don't seem to have a thread that bears out these particular plot contrivances; they merely exist to demonstrate what Whedon wants us to see in the characters.

And Adelle, being Miss Lonelyhearts? Why can't she just be ruthless? Or is it not empowering for women to have blind ambition and nothing else? Or is that too cliche for Whedon? (I'll save my rant on why what Whedon writes isn't feminism for some other time because I'm sure I'm just rambling now.)

But yeah, I totally agree that there's just no "there" there with Dollhouse. It's insulting pseudo-intellectual garbage.

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Dafydd at 00:37 on 2009-06-24

"Dollhouse" is indeed boring, but as for Whedon wanking in our faces?

You need a Klein bottle to turn Whedon through 180 degrees.

http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Whedon's head is stuffed so far up his arse, that he will need to be rotated at right angles to reality before it is anatomically possible for him to wank in our faces.

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Robinson L

at 05:15 on 2009-06-26So, being annoyed, bored, and having Joss Whedon's rather malformed and immature "messages" and "insights" shoved down your throat all at the same time is too much for you? Reasonable. Dunno if I'll ever watch another episode. It ain't going to get any better.

If you don't like

Buffy

Season 1, you will not like

Buffy

, period.

Gonna play Hack's Advocate for a second here and point out the "Growing the Beard" phenomenon. I suppose the counterargument is that people who like, e.g.

The Next Generation

even before it gets good, and people who hate it when its bad will still hate it when it gets good.

the intellectual sophistication of a sixteen year old's GCSE essay

I seriously doubt that. My sister was sixteen last year, and I know she could right more sophisticated stuff that

this

back then.

One of the “memes” I'm trying to spread around the internet is A Very Specific Level of Tired.

Oh yeah. Good one. (

Love

that comic.)

Jonathan deciding to commit suicide by shooting himself with a sniper rifle in a bell tower

I saw this episode long before I began critically engaging with my entertainment media, and even then I knew this sequence was bunk.

True, but there's a difference between making a point about society in general, and making a point about

you, the viewer.

Actually, I've always thought one of the things which could've made

Firefly

much better would've been if Whedon had made his feminist message about how ordinary, well-meaning nonsexist (in their own minds) people (by implication

you, the viewer

) are complicit in systemic sexism, rather than scapegoating it all on the Misogynist-of-the-Week.

Josef Mengele didn't have cutesy conversations with his Jewish prisoners before pouring bleach in their eyes. Sorry to disagree, but that's exactly what he did. But that's a case of reality being more screwed up than fiction, and that guy was an utter nutcase.

very

hostile territory in the middle of the night. Some people, apparently, really

are

that sick. (Or that desperately in need of a real human relationship and that screwed-up about how to go about it. Don't mind me, rosy-tinted ocular sensors filtered by a rose-tinted brain.)

"We survived high school."

Again, watched the episode before I got my critical thinking in gear. At the time, I just thought it was a good joke. (

That's

what you consider the bigger accomplishment?)

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Jamie Johnston

at 19:59 on 2009-06-26Keeping the ever-riveting technical side-discussion alive:

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that -- it's the magic of Microsoft Word.

Surprisingly I got it even with Mac TextEdit. But I'm not complaining - it's no trouble to fix as long as one remembers to check for it, and the only reason I mentioned it was to alert people to the need to check.

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Jamie Johnston

at 20:01 on 2009-06-26Actually, having said that, I started writing in Pages rather than TextEdit, so composing

ab initio

in a plain-text programme might well solve it.

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Rami

at 00:33 on 2009-06-27

Surprisingly I got it even with Mac TextEdit.

Word is the most common offender but pretty much any rich-text program will screw up HTML. Starting out plain-text will fix this for sure :-)

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Arthur B

at 02:09 on 2009-06-27

Word is the most common offender but pretty much any rich-text program will screw up HTML. Starting out plain-text will fix this for sure :-)

Wise words for sure. Should there in fact be a note in the article writer's guide - or, indeed on the main article-editing page - strongly suggesting that people use plain text editors such as notepad to compose their articles for best results?

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 15:55 on 2009-06-29

On a somewhat-less-evil (though perhaps only because of opportunity) scale, Bull Connor apparently had a quite friendly and pleasant conversation with a couple of Freedom Riders on his way to dumping them in very hostile territory in the middle of the night. Some people, apparently, really are that sick.

Definitely. Though I think when people show them in fiction that comes through. Like, there'd be a difference in deciding *why* Mengele has these creepy cute conversations that make him even more evil before he hurts a person. What Dan's talking about seems to be more people being portrayed as genuinely normal and well-meaning and nobody seeing any disconnect between that and human trafficking.

Maybe an even better example would be something like slavery where you had a slave owner who was sentimental with some of his slaves, but that just makes the rancidness of the relationship all the more clear. They're not really being nice the way they would be nice to a real person. It seems like Dollhouse thinks you can genuinely have it both ways where the human trafficking genuinely doesn't inform other interactions.

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Robinson L

at 03:30 on 2009-06-30*slaps forehead* You know, I think I'd meant to say something like that and then forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me, Sister Magpie.

While I was pedantically pointing out a minor argumentative error that somebody else had already pointed out like the arrogant little prick that I am, I agree with the general point that the Dollhouse staff do not behave at all realistically for a human trafficking organization. In all these cases the victims are being dehumanized--that's just about a tautology for someone who's a slave or in a concentration camp or even a second class citizen: they are viewed as less than human. Their masters/overseers may still have affection for them, but not the affection you'd have for a fellow human being--an equal.

Despite continually mind-raping their subjects and stifling their free will to almost nothing, the Dollhouse executives still show a distinct tendency to treat their "actives" as human equals, or near-equals.

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http://tabaquis.livejournal.com/

at 03:58 on 2009-06-30

There's a reason that lab rats aren't given names (or, for that matter, toys).

Loved your review as always, but just to nitpick: http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/enrich/rodents.htm

Lots of lab rats are in fact given toys, because it stimulates their health and reactions in a positive way so that you get more out of your experiment with them.

Just sayin'! ;)

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http://wemblee.livejournal.com/

at 06:30 on 2009-07-06

Good TV is good TV from the start. No ifs. No buts. No exceptions.

I... what? Star Trek: The Next Generation isn't a good show? Because I thought it was... starting with season 3, because anything before that is a

wasteland of unimaginable suck

. And Deep Space Nine? That was an even better show... except for pretty much the entire first season, which was horrible. And Farscape, which didn't find its way until the end. And Torchwood had a terrible beginning, but found itself in its second season. And Moonlighting's pilot is slow and awful. And pretty much no sitcom, ever, has had a pilot that was as good as the episodes that came later. And and and.

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Robinson L

at 08:06 on 2009-07-10Mm, yes wemblee, although I think what Dan

meant

was that people who enjoy a bad programme will enjoy it even more, but people who don't enjoy a bad programme probably won't like it even when it gets good. I suppose he could be right.

I can enjoy Next Generation and Deep Space Nine even before they got good, and Torchwood, too (although I'll have to see the second season to believe it gets any better), so I'm open to them being good. Maybe people who dislike them do so for reasons more to do with taste than quality.

Although if that is the argument, I agree that particular passage was unfortunate.

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 19:31 on 2009-07-10I thought it was also more like saying that if you don't like the basic idea of a show, that basic idea getting better isn't going to do it for you. Iow, there was always some good fundamentals there, it just took a while for them to be used in the best way. Somebody turned off by those fundamentals isn't going to suddenly like the show when they get used better.

Blackadder I think is a good example since there's such a marked change between S1 and S2-4. I much prefer 2-4. The characters significantly shift their dynamics. But there's still stuff in S1 that I like that sound like the Blackadder of 2-4.

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Dan H

at 22:47 on 2009-07-10

I... what? Star Trek: The Next Generation isn't a good show?

Sister Magpie pretty much sums this up. All the things that are good about Star Trek TNG are things that are part of the show from its inception. All the things that are bad about Star Trek TNG are things that are part of the show from its inception.

Everything that's good about DS9 is in it from the beginning. Everything that's good about TNG is in it from the beginning. You might have thought that the first three seasons of TNG sucked, but you obviously weren't turned off by the premise of the show, you didn't think the idea of flying around in space seeking out strange new worlds was stupid, because if you did you wouldn't have liked series four onwards either.

TV series don't get better they just get better executed.

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Niall

at 23:55 on 2009-07-11

Everything that's good about DS9 is in it from the beginning.

I think I would be prepared to make the case that (a) the Dominion, (b) the Defiant, and (c) Worf are substantial parts of what made DS9 good, and they were grafts onto the original concept, not a part of it.

I would also be prepared to make the case that Torchwood is a counter-example here. Children of Earth is good in large part because it discards or transforms most of what was characteristic about the first two seasons.

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Arthur B

at 00:33 on 2009-07-12

But would the Dominion, the Defiant, and Worf be enough to make you enjoy the show if you couldn't stand the Bajor/Cardassian conflict, Sisko's accidental messiahism, Odo and Quark's frequent run-ins and all the other elements which were important to the show from the start?

Arguably, each of the things you mention is simply something that enhances a pre-existing element of DS9. The Dominion is an added complication to the "interstellar politics" dimension of the show. Worf is an addition to the "ensemble cast with complex interrelationships" element. The Defiant is a plot device for moving subsets of said ensemble cast to off-station locations. They embellish the show, but they don't actually change the premise of it: it's still a show in which an ensemble cast with complex interrelationships have to deal with tricky questions of interstellar politics.

And I'm sure that there's a number of people out there who actually liked the first two seasons and are completely livid about

Children of Earth

, although they may well be in the minority. Major changes to the very premise of the show are an

enormous

gamble, and the BBC is arguably one of the few broadcasters who are really in a position to attempt such a roll of the dice, and even

then

they may still not have considered it if

Torchwood

wasn't a significant part of their grand plans for the

Dr Who

franchise. I suspect 9 out of 10 broadcasters out there would rather scrap a series and commission a new one with a new premise rather than alter an old series to fit a new premise.

It remains to be seen whether Whedon will, in fact, do anything similar with

Dollhouse

, but it would be stupid of Dan to keep watching merely in the

hope

that Whedon will undertake such a drastic retooling.

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http://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/

at 04:08 on 2009-07-12Um - just chiming in as a Niner, to say that shows certainly can develop. But much of what I absolutely loved about DS9 was there from the first season. And that included the Dominion. Yes, they were introduced in the first season! (at least, I'm pretty sure they were - or very early in the second).

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Niall

at 09:01 on 2009-07-12Mary, you're right; I'd remembered "Rules of Acquisition" as being late-S2, not mid. Nor am I saying, actually, that DS9 wasn't good until S3; I have a substantial amount of affection for S1 and S2. But the *perception* exists that DS9 didn't get good until S3, with the appearance of the elements I mentioned. And while Arthur is in a sense correct that the grafts are more organic than I allowed in making my point, I dispute that it's still the same show: it changes complexion radically, from a show about building peace to a show about fighting war. It's as radical as the change in Torchwood, just done more gradually.

Arthur:

And I'm sure that there's a number of people out there who actually liked the first two seasons and are completely livid about Children of Earth

Yes, there are. The arrogant, superior part of me finds them hilarious. But if you're going to make "some people like the early version" your counter-argument, well, that could apply to any TV show. I'm sure plenty of people were pissed off when the Dominion showed up, too (probably pissed off for reasons not a million miles away from those behind my dislike of the recent Trek film, come to think of it: a betrayal of the Trek vision). That said, as it happens I think Children of Earth would have been better as an original production -- the ending is hampered by the need to fit into an ongoing continuity.

but it would be stupid of Dan to keep watching merely in the hope that Whedon will undertake such a drastic retooling.

Indeed, and I wasn't suggesting he should. I was disputing his general argument. Angel is yet another example: later seasons bear very little resemblance to the format they started out with (indeed, you may remember how vocal fans of the initial help-the-helpless-of-the-week concept were when the show moved away from it). But there are plenty of fans who joined the show at S2, or S4, or S5, who don't like seasons earlier than those points because of the ways in which they are different from the version of the show that they like.

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Arthur B

at 15:54 on 2009-07-12

And while Arthur is in a sense correct that the grafts are more organic than I allowed in making my point, I dispute that it's still the same show: it changes complexion radically, from a show about building peace to a show about fighting war.

There I think we just have to disagree - the threat of war was

always

present in DS9, it's just that we were led to expect trouble to break out between Cardassia and Bajor. (If war wasn't

potentially

about to break out at any moment, the whole "building peace" thing would have fallen flat after all.) The fact that the war turned out to be against the Dominion instead was a misdirection, but not one without precedent in the sort of story being told. (In fact, it's a lot like the similar misdirection in

Babylon 5

, where at the beginning we're all expecting shit to kick off between the Centauri and the Narn and the Vorlons to remain steadfastly neutral.

Speaking of B5, in fact, you could equally argue that the early seasons of that are about building peace rather than fighting a war, but the war was still planned from the very beginning.

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 21:03 on 2009-07-12

Angel is yet another example: later seasons bear very little resemblance to the format they started out with (indeed, you may remember how vocal fans of the initial help-the-helpless-of-the-week concept were when the show moved away from it). But there are plenty of fans who joined the show at S2, or S4, or S5, who don't like seasons earlier than those points because of the ways in which they are different from the version of the show that they like.

Supernatural in S4 became a war vs. heaven and hell with the main characters in the middle story. There are fans who don't like this direction and wish they'd go back to MOTW. Others have gotten more interested tihs season.

However, I would never say this is a fundamental change of show. It's still imo a disagreement over the most enjoyable way to deal with the same characters and general idea. I liked the original premise of 2 brothers running around fighting demons. I'm more grabbed by what's going on now. But what's going on now is still dependent on the exact same brother relationship that was always at the center of the show, the family drama played out with supernatural beings is still the central idea. If I'd hated that premise the shift to angels and the apocolypse would not change that. The Wincesters are still the same family. If I like them now I can't help but also like them in S1 (and that would be true even if I hadn't cared for them as much back when S1 was first-run). I'm still expected to care about these characters and what's important to these characters is still their family.

The move from MOTW to a mytharc is pretty common since The X-Files, actually. Many mytharcs basically are MOTWs where it's personal played out over many episodes instead of just one.

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Robinson L

at 18:36 on 2009-07-14

TV series don't get better they just get better executed.

All right Dan,

now

I see what you're saying, but I think you're treading on some tricky linguistic ground, here.

Sure, it might be more accurate to say that tv shows don't get better, it's the

quality

of the shows which gets better. Just as it would be more accurate to say that the Earth revolves so that the sun is more/less in view, rather than "the sun is rising/setting." But who the hell talks like that? It's not even that good a comparison, anyway, because just saying "the earth revolves" doesn't mislead 99% percent of readers, whereas saying "good TV is good TV from the start, no exceptions" can be

very

misleading, as we've just seen ...

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Viorica

at 03:43 on 2009-07-27

The Wincesters

*sniggers*

There are people who were pissed off by

Children of Earth

, but not really because of any change in tone. They're raging because a very popular character/pairing was killed off, and this fandom has some truly deranged 'shippers. However, this is a good example of a series that fundamentally changed when the tone shifted. Torchwood's first two seasons are about a secret alien-fighting organisation that's only slightly less campy than

Xena

, where no one really has to make serious decisions beyond "Who would I rather sleep with?", and death can be reversed with a magical robotic arm.

Children of Earth

is about an alien-fighting organisation that's extremely serious and dark, where agonising choices have to be made, and death can't just be undone. Same premise, very different show.

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http://matthew.wilson.myopenid.com/

at 14:40 on 2009-08-02Buffy had a plan in season 7?

#Ferretbrain #Dollhouse #Joss Whedon #Dan H

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