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#need to wait for an episode where they put her in a cool one-off costume. maybe then I'll do it
bengiyo · 23 hours
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Knock Knock Boys Ep 5 Stray Thoughts
Last week, we squarely sorted our housemates into two pairs and gave Almond a proper shake to make him get over Jumper. Almond spent the first chunk of the episode following Latte, and watched him give a talk to a club about pansexuality. He and Almond had a good moment after that, and Latte found himself getting jealous of Jumper at the barbecue they hosted later. Meanwhile, Thanwa is still looking for work but had an excellent moment with Peak in a closet where Peak apologized for taking a kiss from him earlier and asking for a new one. We left at Jane reentering the picture.
I do love their cold opens that are for a later scene in the episode. It feels so assured every time. I like the anticipation of paying attention to the moments so I know what that cold open is meant to provide as payoff.
I love Latte so much. He wakes up from sleeping on Almond and only gives a pleased smile about it. These two faking sleep are ridiculous. I know Almond was gonna toss his ass when the Now Kisstm moment started
Using the shirt to provide a barrier during a pratfall kiss is novel. I’m glad the first time their lips actually touch won’t be accidental, and that Latte got injured. We’ve only seen someone bleeding after a pratfall kiss in a few instances (Love Stage!! TH comes to mind).
Fiancée? I am ready for the drama.
These boys are nosy as hell!
The energy Jane gives off is so knowing. I am compelled.
Almond, the rich kid, took his shirt off to pretend to clean the walls with it after rolling away from the door. Incredible.
She is so ready to fight this man. They do not feel like they are romantically involved.
I feel bad for Thanwa. He’s staying out of the way, and even waited a bit for answers before calling.
Finally, someone acknowledged that every goddamn mosquito would be flying in through those open doors.
Morning wood in my BL? It’s more likely than  you think.
Almond, we see you still smiling about what you saw.
I’m with Almond. I wouldn’t want to eat breakfast at this tense table. However, I am also with Latte just trying to get some food in before walking to class.
Thanwa feels so properly gay to me. He’s being so careful about being neutral in his interactions with Jane.
I don’t like Max.
I like Lukpeach taking her offense to their sexual health club and talking about how improper it is to film people’s private moments and post them for clout.
Almond, focus please!
These two have a fun dynamic. Almond is still clearly thinking about Latte’s dick, and I love Latte being upfront that he’s down to play if Almond wants.
An unfortunate t-shirt choice there, costuming department.
This framing with the bed scene is excellent. Thanwa is still willing to offer Peak shelter, but he’s made it clear that they can’t have any more closeness while this situation with Jane remains unresolved.
Yes, put on your glasses so you can see his back properly. This show is very good at communicating that the characters are feeling multiple things.
Baby’s first dildo!
I don’t think they’re talking about the job anymore, guys.
This boy is skipping home to use his new toy! I love that for him.
You’re gonna need more Vaseline than that, baby boy.
I really love that Almond is allowed to explore his body this way. He lucked out on his roommates, too. Latte was worried when he heard him scream, and I love him teasing Almond about helping. It’s so cool that Almond is made to feel like he is desirable in some way.
And now Jane is covering for Peak, and didn’t react much about Almond saying he kissed Thanwa. She knows.
Oh no. Almond, do not go check that locker room. You are gonna get your little heart broken.
Glad I called that Jumper was already with his friend.
Almond….no… You were just at a meeting about consent.
That’s interesting. I thought we would find out about Jumper and Shawn via the clip, not that Almond would have already seen them together.
Wow, that’s a difficult cliffhanger. You could see Latte pulling away from Almond.
The preview is not promising!
Wow, I was not expecting the show to go beyond the “don’t film people” PSA aside. Having Almond overstep that boundary in a moment of jealousy and be caught for it is ripe with tension. I like that it’s Latte who catches it first, because he’s been dealing with Almond overstepping boundaries with him for multiple episodes with him following him places and trying to see his dick. Even if there’s been brewing sexual tension between them, Almond has been very firm about saying no to Latte. To have him then film and post Jumper like this is egregious, but in line with his earlier behavior. I’m excited to see where we go with them. As for Thanwa, I love that he still likes Peak even if he’s holding on his own line as well. This show whips ass.
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spocks-kaathyra · 3 months
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I want to make seven's borg prosthetics so bad but I'm really not enthused abt that godforsaken catsuit
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fangirl-dot-com · 7 months
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Chapter 8 - May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor
Guys, Max was never going to be her dad (that’s gonna be reserved for Christian lol). Everyone on the grid will be a brother figure, unless stated otherwise – like Fernando is leaning towards the wise grandpa rule and Lewis will be the cool dad (I have a funny story line to go with this idea). All that to say, Max and Kelly will look after her when she needs it most. I also switched the titles. On with the show, and don’t forget to comment if you want to be added to the tag list and or if it’s somehow not tagging you! Much love <3  
Well, to Max’s dismay and according to google, you cannot adopt your 20 year old teammate that he had met hours earlier.. He had called Kelly early Thursday morning to whine. The more sensible part of his brain also knew that Christian wouldn’t let that happen either. And Kelly had to quickly remind him that he could still watch out for her. 
Max seemed to finally agree at the thought of being one of the protective adults in her life. He knew that you had your manager, who you seemed to trust. But, that didn’t help much when you spoke of how lonely you were. He was going to make it his mission to get you to move to Monaco, where he could keep an eye on you. 
“Maybe Christian could adopt her,” he muttered, staring angrily at his coffee. What that cup did to offend him, he didn’t know. But what he did know, was that he’d see you again later that night. Another festival for him to attend to. He only wished that Formula 1 went back to racing, and not putting on shows that had a strict attendance policy. 
At least you would be there. There was a change in the schedule so that you could be with him, Checo, Daniel, and Yuki on whatever thing they were being put on for the night. The buzzing of his phone ended his staring contest with his cup. 
It was a text from you. 
Little Racer : 
max, i need your help 
what are you wearing tonight??? 
i have an idea, and I think it’s stupid but i want to do it 
Big Racer : 
If it’s you, I don’t think it’ll be stupid. 
Probably what I always wear. Jeans and whatever Red Bull top they give me. 
Little Racer : 
that’s so grandpa core of you maxie 
and what is this all proper grammar for texting lollll 
you are not beating the allegations you millennial 
Max’s brows furrowed. He was not a grandpa or a millennial. He just liked to use the normal setting on his phone with proper capitalization and end marks. He would just have to ask Charles or Lando to see if they agreed with you. They wouldn’t though…would they? Your next message had him actually dying. 
Little Racer : 
do you think that Christian will be mad if i come dressed like elvis?
he said i could but i don’t know… 
Big Racer : 
You wouldn’t dare. 
Little Racer : 
oh boy ladies and gents, he doesn’t know 
*looks into the camera like an episode on the office* 
Big Racer : 
Did you seriously type all of that? 
Don’t answer. 
20 bucks says you won’t. 
The three little dots danced on his screen as he waited for you to respond. 
Little Racer : 
just you wait maxie, just you wait 
You didn’t text him anything after that. Max could only call Christian to understand what just happened. He picked up after three rings. 
“Hello, Max.” 
“Hi Christian. First off, happy birthday.” 
“Thank you son. But I know you didn’t just call me to wish me a happy birthday. You could have told me that later tonight.” In the background, it sounded like a coffee machine was running. Max hoped he didn’t wake him up. 
“Well, Y/n just texted me about wearing, uh.” Max didn’t want to say it out loud, because now it sounded stupid. 
“An Elvis costume? Max, the kid called me last night to ask. Said she didn’t want to ruin an image for us if she showed up like that. But I told her that it would be fantastic idea. Poor kid sounded scared.” 
Max let out a low hum. He didn’t like the sound of that. You were in no position to worry about such a thing. If anyone was to ruin Red Bull’s image, it would be him. He had no filter and Christian often had to tell him to reign in his thoughts. 
Max spoke, “I think I’m going to see about her moving to Monaco. She mentioned she has a flat in Nice, but that’s far away from Milton Keynes, and not close enough to anyone. Christian, she has no one.” 
It took a while for Christian to reply. Max could just imagine the older man running his hand along his forehead. It was hard to think of someone so young to be so alone. 
“Yeah, I think that would be best for her. I’ll make sure she can afford it. Hell, it could even be a property that we buy just for her to stay in when we have breaks.” 
Max listened and nodded his head along. Now it would only be to convince you to move. But suddenly, he remembered his previous conversation with you. He smacked his hand on his head. 
“Is everything alright Max?” the Brit on the phone questioned. 
“I just lost 20 bucks.” 
You however, had no idea that this conversation was happening. All you knew was that you had the go ahead from Christian to wear your beloved Elvis costume. Would you make a fool of yourself? Maybe. 
But who cares. It’s Vegas. To your chagrin, Vito had told you that there would be no walk out, but there would be dramatic paddock entrances. He still promised that you would get your song. That’s all that mattered to you. 
While you waited for the night to begin, you roamed the hotel. Because you were bored, you actually did a lot. 
You started off with breakfast. You were sad that they didn’t have the machines that made Texas-shaped waffles, because that was only in Texas, but the pancakes would do. And because you’re trainer would kill you for not eating well, you took it upon yourself to have a yogurt with some fruit as a side. 
After letting the food settle, you went to the gym for that daily grind. It had been a while since you had been able to work out, but you needed to get back on track. You would be racing tomorrow and you needed to be at your best. You lifted some weights first, starting with the smaller ones as warm ups before you got to the bigger ones. The stretch bands were very useful as you squatted the weights. 
After you were done, you hopped on the treadmill. By using the lower speeds, you were able to practice your runway walk, as if you would ever be a model. But the speeds increased and you found yourself in a full sprint by the end of the run. Five miles wasn’t bad, and you knew you could have gone farther, but you wanted to take a quick dip in the pool before getting ready. 
The water was a nice cool down for your overheated skin. Running was not your first choice of exercise. You’d rather run out of money, than run in real life. It didn’t make sense, but it did. The chlorine in the water was making your hair gross, so you decided to get out so that you could take a shower. 
Like the kid you were, you had your outfit laid out the night before, as if you were going on a fieldtrip. 
You allowed to take your time in the shower. It wasn’t every day that you made your F1 debut. That had your bones chilled. Your Formula 1 debut. You. Putting your head under the stream, you rinsed out the hair mask that you put on. There would be no nervousness. You were born for this. 
The thought of Max’s texts earlier made you giggle. You were glad that he was so welcoming. You would be much more nervous if you had met the infamous Mad Max. But this was more cat-dad Max. Kind Max. 
You only hope that you won’t screw things up. 
You turned on your playlist as you started to actually get ready. You ordered room service so that you didn’t have to go somewhere to eat. The food was amazing, well, as amazing as hotel food could get. You curled your hair as the remnants of your skin care routine dried. You mumbled the words to a song as you stuck a French fry in your mouth.
Once your moisturizer and various oils and toners dried, you started on your more pronounced makeup look. You knew you were going to be photographed throughout the night, and you needed to look good. Looking at the window, you noticed that the sun was setting. That meant that it was time for you to get dressed, and Vito would be there to pick you up shortly. 
Your outfit consisted of a sparkly white crop top and some white pants. A red scarf topped the outfit off. 
You would be arriving right behind Max and in front of Checo. You were excited to see the two men again. Moreso, you were excited to earn 20 bucks. With sunglasses on your nose, you were ready to hit the Sin City. 
Vito could hardly contain his laughter when you got in the car. 
You raised an eyebrow, “What?” 
He shook his head as to somehow rid himself of his laughter. “Nothing kid.” 
“Well Christian said I could wear it. I’ll blend right in. And besides, I’m almost immediately changing into my race suit.” 
He nodded his head at your reasoning. You had pulled off crazier things before, so he didn’t know why he was surprised. Maybe it was because he thought that you might not want to in F1. But, on the inside he was happy that you weren’t losing your child-like nature. He never wanted to see that seeming innocence to leave. He knew that you weren’t totally innocent, but he never wanted to see you hurt to an extent that you quit being happy. That was his favorite thing about you. You seemed to care about what others thought of you, but you knew how to make yourself happy. And if wearing an Elvis costume to the paddock would make you happy, then he would protect your decision. 
You could see the flashing lights even before you got out of the car. American paparazzi were on another level. You knew that Red Bull were one of the last ones to show up, and that freaked you out. Almost every single driver was already on the other side of gate. Your nerves settled when you saw Max get out, and you wanted to follow him. But, you realized that this was what you were waiting for. 
The familiar sounds of 33 Max Verstappen (the original one) could be heard through the car doors. Max’s face morphed into one of almost disgust. You let out a giant laugh and rolled down your window before you knew what you were doing. 
“Max, I love the music. Very Mad Max-esque.” 
He quickly flipped you a loving middle finger as he scanned his card to be let into the paddock. Multiple Elvis impersonators gathered around him for a picture. You hadn’t noticed, however, that the moment you rolled your window down, all of the cameras and photographers were now pointed at you. 
You buzzed with energy when you heard Life is a Highway start to fill the air. 
On the other side of the paddock, Max had stopped to talk to Lando, Oscar, Carlos, and Charles. He also was waiting for you so that you could walk with him to the Red Bull hospitality. He glanced over to see if you were out of the car at least. 
“Nice entrance mate,” Lando clapped him on the shoulder. He rolled his eyes. He’s sure that you roped Christian in to play the song. 
“Well what did they play for you?” 
Lando deflated and muttered, “Let’s go Lando.” Carlos and Charles, along with Max, laughed at his demise. 
Charles suddenly looked over Max’s shoulder. At that moment, Carlos spoke up. 
“I didn’t know Checo was a Cars fan.” The drums and guitar seemed to be turned up to the highest setting. What. An. Entrance. 
Max had a glimmer in his eyes, “He’s not.” 
And suddenly, there you were. In your Elvis costume. And you were loving it. You waved at all the people around you, quickly becoming a crowd favorite. 
From his right, Charles hums and Lando’s jaw is dropped. 
“That’s the new rookie, correct?” Suddenly, George was with them, along with Alex. 
Max only chuckled. “Yep.” He popped the “p.” 
Charles spoke up, “She’s nice. I met her at Arthur’s birthday party, but didn’t speak to her much.” 
“You all will love her. Trust me,” Max said, eyes widened as you got crowded with the other Elvises. You smile could outshine a thousand suns. 
Your eyes quickly met his and you gave him a giant wave. He beckoned you to come over. You flashed a nervous look before it melted away, replaced with bravery. If there was a time to meet some of the grid, you really hadn’t wanted to be dressed as Elvis. 
Your steps were quick and you made it over in no time. Now, most drivers are tall, but look short next to George, being the giraffe that he is. However, you were another thing. 
You’d definitely be taller than Yuki by a couple of inches. But you stood closer to five-foot-six (167.64 cm.), almost 5 inches shorter than Max, and four inches shorter than the rest. 
You gave a shy wave as you spoke, “Hi, I’m Y/n. It’s nice to meet you.” You suddenly remembered something. You turned to Max and held out your hand. 
The boys’ eyes widened as Max fished out his wallet and placed a bill in your outstretched hand. 
“Pleasure doing business with you sir.” You mocked a salute. 
Lando tsk-ed, “What did our Max loose a bet on?” 
“He said I wouldn’t come dressed like this. Little did he know, I’ve had this in my closet for years.” Lando couldn’t help but laugh at your revelation, and neither could Carlos and Charles. 
“Yeah, kid, you should have told me that Christian already gave you the go ahead.” 
“And where’s the fun in that?” You had a shit-eating smirk on your face. Lando was the first one to speak up. 
“How old are you? Max over here keeps calling you kid.” 
“I’m twenty.” 
It was an amazing recreation of that one tik-tok trend. I’m twenty, insert looks of disgust, uhg. Your heart dropped at their reactions. 
It was Carlos who surprised you. He quickly patted your head, “Aw, just a baby.” 
You looked at him in awestruck. You leaned over to Max and all but whispered, “Max?” 
“Yes kid?” he said in full voice. 
“He’s older than you right?” 
“Yes.” 
“Can I do the thing?” Max looked Carlos up and down before smiling. 
“Go right ahead.” The smile that you had was wiped off your face. You squared your shoulders and held out your hand. Carlos took it with a confused look. You gave him a firm handshake. 
“Thank you Mr. Sainz.” You swear he did a full body cringe. He was about to say something, but Christian had waved the two of you over, yelling something about time to get ready. 
You flashed a smile at the small group, “It was nice meeting you!” You all but bounced away as Max calmly walked by your side. 
“Did she just?” Lando looked to Carlos, who was frozen in his spot. He looked like someone had just told him that his car had blown up on the way here. 
He looked at his hands. “Mr.,” he gulped, “Sainz?” 
Oscar finally piped up. “Well, you are old.” Carlos looked close to a breakdown. 
Charles put a hand on his shoulder as he watched you and Max walk on the ramp. Max’s face was now stone-cold, yet yours still radiated so much warmth. “Come on mate. We got to go.” 
As they walked away, Carlos questioned, “I’m not old, am I?’ Charles could not, would not, should not, give him an answer. 
Lando and Oscar just looked at each other and then back at the disappearing duos. Laughter filled the air as they also began to walk to their respective hospitalities.
As you and Max got closer to the garage, you got a little quieter. 
“I don’t think they liked me very much. I knew the costume would be a bad idea.” The look of dejection was all over your face. Max looked over at you and huffed. 
“Kid, they just don’t know you yet. They’re also stressed about this race. No driver liked to drive on a track that was built in a month.” 
“You’re right.” 
“Kid, I’m always right.” You hit his shoulder. 
Christian was quick to get you, Checo, and Max all together for a couple of pictures. Since it was Christian’s birthday, there was cake and everything for a small celebration. After, the three of you were told to get into the racing suits for the opening celebration. 
You were with Mitch while you did so. 
“You’re telling me. That Kurt Cobain is going to perform. And I’m going to miss it! With John Legend!” Your eyes were wide as you zipped the suit up. 
“For the last time kid, you can meet them after.” You pouted as you tied your shoes. 
“Fine. But let me say, this is very Hunger Games of them. So Americanesque.” Mitch just let you talk. 
After you were ready, minus the helmet and all that, Mitch led you to the glass box. You turned to look at her. 
“Promise me that you’re not going to be dragged away to your death. This is so Katniss Everdeen coded and I cannot lose you like she lost Cinna.” Mitch was going to tell you off for worrying too much, but she could see through your eyes that you were trying to actually tell her that you were scared of the whole thing. No wonder you were rambling, you were just nervous. 
Mitch brought you into a hug and squeezed. You practically melted as you squeezed her back. Over your shoulder, Max was looking at the whole ordeal. He’ll give you a hug right before they went up. He knew how scary this world was. 
Mitch was given the signal that everything was about to start. You climbed into the box and some official closed the door. 
Mitch looked up at you, “May the odds be ever in your favor.” Your jaw dropped in appall as you were slowly being lifted. So she did know the movie! 
Max put a comforting hand on your shoulder as your face was suddenly hit with a breeze. All around you, people were cheering and lights were flashing. You suddenly wished you had brought your sunglasses with you. 
Max scoffed as he raised his hand to wave. 
“What’s wrong?” 
“This isn’t racing. We’re standing here, being observed, like a bunch of clowns.” 
“At least this won’t last long. We’ll be in the car soon Max.” You were right. If it meant anything, he would be back in the car soon, in his element. 
A beep let you three know that the machine would be going down in the next few moments. When the machine jolted down, you quickly stood up straight, hand behind your back, and put three fingers to your mouth. Your lips kissed your fingertips before you held the three fingers up. 
It was still loud as you did it, but the crowd died down as they watched you and mirrored your display. You watched in awe at the raised hands. 
The three of you lost sight of the crowds as the box was now back where it started. Max looked at you in bewilderment. 
“What was that?” 
You let out a large gasp. “You’ve never seen the Hunger Games?” You must have been loud because someone else gasped as well. Looking over, you were met with the sight of blond hair and striking blue eyes. 
“Max, you’ve never seen the Hunger Games?” Logan stomped over. 
“Dude I know. So not girl boss of him.” Max looked at the two of you in confusion. Girl? Boss? 
You and Logan were quickly swept into a conversation about American tendencies while Max just stood in between the both of you, looking like he’s in the middle of a midlife crisis. You and Logan were only pulled away when you needed to get into the car for free practice. 
As you left, you turned around and faced Logan, giving him a look of faux sympathy. “May the odds be ever in your favor.” 
“At least you didn’t volunteer,” Logan laughed as he turned away. 
 Max was still in the middle of his midlife crisis when Christian came to tell everyone that it was time to head to the garage. 
You felt your heart rate picking up as you got closer to the garage. You took a deep breath and exhaled. 
It was show time. 
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itslottiehere · 2 years
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the one that could have been — (h.s)
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hello beautiful people 🤍 welcome back! this is inspired by one on my favourite ‘friends’ episode — season 6 episodes 15 and 16 — named, as you can see from the title, “the one that could have been”. i had so much fun writing this, and i hope you all enjoy it. please, do let me know what you think! and if you have any requests, don’t be afraid of leaving them in my asks, i’ll look through them as soon as possible. if you wish to read something else from me, you can check the tag “my writing” on my blog (i still need to make a masterlist). thank you for reading! please like, reblog and let me know what you think! it really helps me a lot <3
tw: swearing, fluff, angst (?) a tiiiiny bit of smut (?)
word count: 5.1k
masterlist | let me know what you think here
he tried his best not to look so shocked, but the red on her cheeks told him he wasn’t doing a great job at hiding his surprise.
“stop looking at me like i’m some freak show! not everyone got to be the captain of the football team, someone had to be the loser in band.”
“you weren’t a loser, you were just quiet and-“
“harry, i was in band and i played the big ass drum in costume. it’s okay to say that i wasn’t the coolest person in school.”
“i thought you were cool.”
“you thought i was nice enough to let you copy my homework, which i was. but yeah, you must’ve found something in me if you stuck around even after high school.”
“hey! i talked to you because i thought you were nice, and cool and funny. and perhaps it had to do a little with the homework stuff, but mostly the other things!”
you threw him your napkin and laughed at how silly he was.
“but you can’t blame me for being a little surprised.”
and, here it was.
“i knew i shouldn’t have told you anything! now you think i’m weird and now everything between us is going to be weird and fuck, you’re a shit friend sometimes.”
“hey! i’m not! and i’m sorry for how i reacted, it’s just that i wasn’t expecting for this date to be your first... date. nothing wrong with that though! it’s perfectly fine!”
so, the thing is she was a virgin. she was 25 and hadn’t had a date yet, which isn’t something she was embarrassed about, she was waiting for the right person. but the look on harry’s face, who was staring at her with a “oh my god you have two heads” look, made her feel a little embarrassed. she knew who she was talking to, and having known him since high school meant that he told her all about his excapades, while she quietly listened to him and never said anything else. he was always so open about all his experiences, and he just figured she was more closed off, which was totally fine, and he wouldn’t pry informations about that part of her life: if she wanted to let him know, he would gladly listen, but whenever she is comfortable enough to do so.
though, if harry had to be totally honest, her not sharing that part of her life with him — until recently, that is — was maybe for the best: he doesn’t like it, but he can be of the jealous kind. and to think about anyone getting that close with his best friend, who was basically the best person walking on earth, made him feel something in his chest, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
“so, where’s this james guy taking you?”
“uhm, actually he’s coming over, i’m going to cook him dinner.”
“oh, that’s nice! your cooking is amazing, he’s going to love it.”
“yeah, i hope so.” she nibbled on her lip.
“hey, come here.” he held out his hands for her, waiting for her to take them. “if he’s not a total idiot, he will love it. and if he doesn’t, then he doesn’t deserve you. please, please don’t settle for someone who isn’t worthy of you. especially for something so important to you.”
she knew harry was a sweet person, who cared about her feelings, but it still shocked her a little bit, because he had such a serious look in his eyes.
“yeah, i know H, thank you for worrying.” she gave him a tight-lipped smile. “but now, leave.”
“excuse me? are you kicking me out?”
“yeah, i am.”
“but whyyy?” he whined like a grumpy child. all that was missing was him stomping his foot on the ground, to complete the picture.
“have you already forgotten that i have a date tonight for which i have to get ready?”
“yeah but i can still stay here a while, can’t i?” he was giving her those puppy eyes, that menace. she knew what he was doing.
“no! stop looking at me with those eyes.” she laughed. “i’m so sorry, i wish you could but i have to get dinner ready and get ready myself, and i feel like i’m already running behind.”
“alright, alright.. i’m leaving... all alone... by myself... kicked out by my own best friend... in the whole world...” he dragged every word, dragging his feet on the ground.
good god, he was such a man child at times.
“i promise i’ll text you if something weird happens and i feel uncomfortable. or else, you’ll be hearing from me tomorrow morning.” she really wished she was going to text him the following morning.
“alright angel, let me know if everything is okay. i’ll be over in a heartbeat if it isn’t. and remember: don’t overthink too much, try to enjoy your date.” he put his hands on her shoulder and looked into her eyes, because this was important and he wanted her to know she really had to enjoy tonight.
“i will, thanks H.” she ushered him towards the door, and opened it, basically shoving him out of her home.
“byeeeee. oh wait-“ he was almost out of the door. “please send me a pic of your outfit, i’m curious.” he said, raising his eyebrows in a teasing manner.
“yeah yeah, bye now.” she closed the door behind him, put her back against it, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
now it was time to get everything ready.
she decided to prepare dinner and set the table first, before getting ready herself, so she went to the kitchen and started making her famous lasagna. harry went crazy for it, he always asked her to prepare it for his birthday dinner.
“it can count as my present! i won’t ask for anything else, i promise!”
she knew it was really good, it was her nonna’s recipe, so of course it was delicious. she grew up eating it, and whenever she cooked it, it was like she was brought back into that small kitchen, in the italian countryside, her nonna and nonno smiling at her because she had sauce all over her mouth. maybe it was stupid, but cooking this for someone held a level of intimacy that for now she only shared with harry. she told him the story about her grandparents and he listened to her, giving her his undivided attention. at the end, he just told her “i wish i could taste the one your nonna used to make.”
so, preparing this for james, already set the mood for tonight, how serious it was for her. she went out with him a couple times, just simple lunch dates — both cut short because he was called back to the hospital — but he was nice, albeit a bit boring at times, and she was kinda growing tired of not being intimate, so she thought he could be “the one”.
after putting the lasagna in the oven, she set up the table and went to take a shower, that kind of showers that consist on three different hair masks, face and body creams, serums and all that. after that, she went to check in on dinner, but it still wasn’t ready, so she went back to do her makeup and dress up. she put on a simple dress, her favourite one: it was of a dark red colour, with a bit of lace on the back, long enough to keep her comfortable but still not too long.
she snapped a picture for harry, just a simple mirror selfie with her hand up in a peace sign and sent it to him. it took him no more that 4 seconds to text her back.
“you look absolutely gorgeous. he’s going to love you. x”
she smiled, put her phone away and finally went to take the lasagna out of the oven, proceeded to put it on the counter to let it cool a little.
james should have been on his way now, so she decided to tidy up the last things. then, she heard the doorbell.
game time.
she was giddy, scared and over all a bit overwhelmed. this night meant so much to her, she just wanted it to be good.
she walked to the door and greeted him with a big smile.
“hello, you.” he said, smiling as well.
“hi!”
“this is for you.” he gave her a bottle of wine, one she liked a lot as well.
“oh my, that’s so nice of you, thank you. please, come in, make yourself at home.” she said, walking further into her flat, going to the kitchen to fetch a couple of glasses for the wine.
“this is a nice place, thank you for having me over.” he said from the living room, while taking a seat on her couch.
“oh thank you! and of course, it’s my pleasure.”
she walked back into the living area with two glasses, and set on the couch with james.
he was talking about some case he had at work, and she was half listening, half pretending to.
she could do this, couldn’t she? this was going well, they were drinking wine on her couch, making a bit of small talk, dinner was waiting for them in the kitchen... all was going to be fine.
her thoughts were interrupted when james took the glass from her hands and put it on the tiny table in front of her sofa.
what was he doing?
“you look beautiful tonight.”
oh, that was what he was doing.
“oh, uhm, thank you.” she smiled shyly. “you look handsome as well.”
“well, thank you.”
he inched closer, putting a hand on her thigh, the other stroking her cheek. she felt her breath hitch, how long has it been since she had been kissed? probably years. god.
his face came closer and closer, and when he closed his eyes, she did the same, preparing herself for what was going to happen next.
and when his lips touched hers, she felt... okay. nothing weird. no fireworks, no butterflies. it was a normal kiss.
she can’t say she wasn’t a bit disappointed. wasn’t this moment meant to have her feel like she was walking on air? head and body all floaty and tingly, stomach filled with butterflies? she always thought it was going to feel like this. she daydreamed every time she read about it in her books, how even the tiniest touch could bring up the biggest spark between two lovers.
but this wasn’t it.
this was okay, really, it was a good kiss. he was touching her not too roughly, and it wasn’t making her uncomfortable. it was just not what she thought it was going to be like.
“maybe those were all just fantasies, maybe the real thing is supposed to feel like this.” she thought. so she decided to suck it up, and just let herself enjoy this moment.
she had one of her hands on his chest, the other around his neck, playing with his hair.
and when she heard a small moan from him, she thought she was doing a good job. he was enjoying it!
but soon, it got her to overthink about how she didn’t make any noises: was she supposed to? was he expecting them? was she weird for not making any?
her interior freak out was cut short by a phone ringing.
“shit.” james said, disconnecting their lips.
oh no, not again. it’s the third time this has happened; although, the other times it happened she didn’t really care all that much, because their lunch was almost over, so it wasn’t really cut all that short.
he checked his phone and sighed.
“i’m sorry, i have to take this.”
“yeah, yeah, of course.”
he gave her a tight-lipped smile, apologised again, and got up to answer the call.
she sighed and slouched on the couch. maybe it was a friend just wanting to say hi? maybe they could still have dinner and a nice night.
“i’m sorry, i really am, but i have to go back to the hospital, they need me.”
of course not.
“oh.” she stood up, straightening her dress and looking down. she was disappointed of course, but it wasn’t his fault, wasn’t it? the hospital needed him so he had to go.
“i’m sorry, maybe i can get off early and-“
“oh no, don’t worry! do what you have to do, don’t worry about me.”
“we’ll do this another time, yeah?”
“yeah, of course. let me walk you to the door.”
after bidding goodbye, she closed the door.
“yeah, this night blows.”
she decided to put some more comfortable clothes on, and also took her makeup off, so she could enjoy her — now, solo — dinner.
there was going to be so much leftovers, she thought. so, why not ask someone if they wanted some?
harry was at home, fresh out of the shower, thinking about what to do for dinner. having cereal and milk again didn’t sound too appealing.
when he heard a ding from his phone, he thought it was from the guys, asking him to go out.
but when he heard a second and then a third ding, he actually went to check who the texts were from.
and when he saw his best friend’s name pop up, his heart skipped a beat. she said she would’ve texted him only if something bad was happening, so what happened?
“hey, date finished early. pretty bummed tbh.”
“did you already have dinner?”
“because i have leftovers. want to keep me company?”
as if he could ever say no, both to her and to her home cooked meals.
“yeah of course! i’m on my way. x”
he put on the first sweatshirt he found, and he was out the door.
when the doorbell rang, she just answered with a loud “it’s open”.
harry let himself in, took off his shoes and looked around to see where she was. when he saw her in the kitchen, his heart acted all weird.
he couldn’t understand if it was from seeing her in sweats and his old fleetwood mac shirt, feeling warm at the sight of her wearing his clothes, or if it was by seeing that she wasn’t in the dress she was wearing in the picture he received before, meaning that her date didn’t go as planned, which made him a bit sad. he doesn’t know much about this james, but from what she’d told him he seemed like a nice guy. so why didn’t the date go through?
“hi, angel.”
“hey.” she answered, with a somber tone.
“is everything okay?”
“are you ready to eat? i made lasagna.”
that struck harry. she made her date one of her (and his) favourite home cooked meals, he knew how much it meant to her.
“yeah, of course. but you still have to answer my question.”
“can we eat first? then we can talk about how miserable my love life is.”
he chucked a bit. “of course, let me help you with the plates.”
they ate almost in silence, the only sounds you could hear were harry’s praises about her cooking.
“angel, you should be a chef.”
“if i pay you, can you cook me meals for dinner everyday? i’m tired of having milk and cereal five days a week.”
“harry, you can’t have milk and cereal for dinner everyday!”
“i know! that’s why i’m asking you this!”
after they finished eating, she took the plates to the sink, and he followed her.
she started washing their plates, when harry cleared his throat.
“what?”
“what are you not telling me?”
she sighed. “the date was cut short. james was called by the hospital, and he had to leave, exactly like the two times before tonight.”
“oh.” he didn’t know what to say.
“yeah.”
“i’m sorry.”
“it’s okay, it wasn’t meant to be, i guess.”
“you really liked him, huh?” he said, and why was it so hard for him to get these words out of his mouth?
“i mean, i wasn’t in love with the guy, he was okay. i don’t know, we kissed for a bit, i didn’t feel anything, and now that i think about it i probably wouldn’t even have gone all the way.” she said all in one breath.
harry listened closely to what she said, and he had one single thought.
“can i just ask you something?”
“yeah, sure, go for it.”
“why haven’t you ever asked me?”
she dropped the plate she was drying in the sink. did she heard right?
“uh- uhm, what?”
“why haven’t you asked me to help you out with.. that?”
she couldn’t bear how weird the situation was. so, naturally, she laughed it off.
“you’re so funny H, always said you should be a comedian.” she dried off her hands and made her way to the living room.
Harry followed her, gently grabbing her wrist to stop her from running away, putting his chest to her back.
“i’m not kidding. i’m genuinely asking you why, in over 10 years of being best friends, you’ve never asked me.” his hands started travelling from her wrist to her waist.
“isn’t it obvious? you’ve just said it: we’re best friends. doing that would make everything weird and complicated, and i don’t want that.”
“are you sure that that’s it?”
“yeah, of course it is.”
“angel, i can’t even see your face right now and i know you’re lying: you’re a shit liar, you know that. and i’d like to think that i know my best friend a little too well to not know when they’re lying.”
she huffed, she hated that she couldn’t lie to him, ever. but she hated more that she had to come clean now, so she tried convincing him one last time that there was nothing more.
“i’m not lying. that’s the only reason.”
he sighed, and turned her around.
“now look me in the eyes, and say that.”
the fucker. he knew for a fact that she wasn’t able to lie, especially if she looked in the eyes of the person she was trying to lie to.
“alright, fuck, you win. it’s not the only reason.”
“and do you mind telling me what is it?”
she took a deep breath, she really doesn’t want to, because she knows for a fact it’s going to make her sound like an idiot.
“it’s just.. i know that you don’t like me that way, and that you never did, back in high school or college. i’m not your type and that’s fine! i don’t blame you for it, everyone can have a preference.”
he was stunned. she took his silence as a way to tell her to go on.
“and so, i’ve never asked you any “help” because of that. i didn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, of having to tell me the ‘no’ i already knew was coming, and ruining our friendship. never in a million years i would want that, so i never did.”
she released a breath, and looked up at him.
he was looking at her with wide eyes, that held a certain softness.
“and now i’ve made it weird all the same, fucking hell, i told you i wasn’t supposed to-“
“no angel, no, it’s okay. i just.. i don’t understand. have i made you feel ugly? is that it?”
“no H, no, it’s just that i saw the girls you went out with and we aren’t the same. they were gorgeous, like drop dead gorgeous, and so sweet and just incredible. some were even wayyyy out of your league, but you charmed them all the same.” she laughed, and it made him laugh as well.
“heyyy, that’s rude.” he whined, making her roll her eyes.
“but i am sorry, if i ever made you feel this way. i‘ve never wanted to. i think you’re beautiful, breathtakingly so.”
“oh stop it, that’s not true.” she tried to leave his grasp, but it only tightened on her waist.
“no, i’m serious. i think you are probably the most beautiful person i know, and not just on the outside. you’re a beautiful person all over, you look great and your soul is beautiful. you’re sweet and caring and just amazing, and i can’t believe you think i didn’t think this about you.”
she looked up at him and couldn’t believe how sweet he was being. was he saying all this out of pity?
“i can see the wheels turning in your head, what are you thinking about?”
“i was just thinking that maybe you’re being so sweet out of pity. because my night didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”
he scoffed. “you’re just so dense sometimes. i’m telling you this because i really do think those things. why can’t you just accept that?”
“uhm, okay then.. thank you H, for saying all of this.”
“you’re welcome, angel. now... would you want to?”
“what?”
“would you want me to kiss you?”
what the actual hell was happening. was he actually asking her this? her best friend of ten years was asking her if he could kiss her. harry. her harry. her best friend harry. no way.
“we don’t have to, angel. just... if you want, i could kiss you and we can see if it feels good for you, and if you feel comfortable with that. i just want to make you feel good, and i hope you know you’re safe with me. i don’t expect anything to happen, nothing more than a kiss, if you even want that.”
“uhm. i-“ she was afraid of what was going to happen to them, but she so wanted to be selfish. just this one time. one kiss, that’s it.
“i think i’d like that. i feel safe with you.”
“yeah? you do?” he looked down at her, and a sheepish smile spread across his face.
“yeah, i really do. but do you?”
he could swear his heart was about to jump out of his chest. how cute was she? he was the one who proposed the whole ordeal, but she still wanted to make sure he felt comfortable.
“of course angel, it’s you. i always feel safe with you.”
they couldn’t lie to themselves, they both thought about this moment from time to time. 
the first time harry wanted to kiss her was at their junior prom, when he saw her in that long, beautiful dress, but didn’t because she had a date — and so did he —, especially when he saw she was having so much fun with aaron (her date), dancing around the school gym and laughing, and he thought he wanted to be the one who made her laugh like this forever. but he was late, and aaron already filled that position. so he made his peace with it, and spent prom night with his date, a lovely girl of course, but she wasn’t her.
and the first time she really, really wanted to kiss him was during a football game. it was their first year of college, and she was busy with finals, but harry begged her to come because he was the quarterback and promised her his team would win if she was there. so, when his team scored the winning touchdown, before even celebrating with his teammates, he looked for her in the bleachers and when he found her he had the biggest smile on his face, running towards her shouting “it’s because of you! it’s you!”. she never wanted to kiss someone that badly ever in her life. thankfully, when she came down from the high of his victory, she just hugged him tight, while he picked her up and spun her around. no kiss.
but now, how could she turn him down? how can she not kiss those lips? they seems so soft, like soft pink pillows.
harry couldn’t wait for it anymore. ever since he was a teen, he asked himself what it’d feel like kissing her, tasting her lips. he got close to do that too many drunken nights, but never did because either both of them were intoxicated or because he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
but now? they were both trembling with anticipation. so, he put his hands on her face, and slightly turned it upwards, looking deep into her eyes.
“are you sure?”
“yes, i am.”
“positive?”
“yes.”
“swear on your mum?”
“would you kiss me already?”
he didn’t have to be asked twice. he leaned in and softly touched her lips. the kiss started slow, like they wanted to test the water first, make sure nothing felt wrong.
‘wrong’ was the last word she would use to describe this kiss.
this is what a kiss should feel like: all the butterflies she didn’t feel before with james, here they were, batting their wings away in her stomach, making her feel like she could fly away.
harry’s hands travelled down her waist, one towards her bottom, and he broke the kiss for just a second.
“is this okay?” he asked.
she nodded, but clearly that wasn’t enough for harry.
“angel, i need words. is me touching you okay?”
“yes, harry, please.”
hearing her begging him made him groan in pleasure. he wanted to stay in this moment till the end of time.
he left his hands wandering on her waist, and a little lower, and brought his lips to hers once again, this time more purposefully. he licked her bottom lip, silently asking her to open up for him, and she happily obliged. her hands travelled up his shoulder, playing with the hair on the nape of his neck, tugging lightly on the curls, making harry moan a bit.
and fuck, was it hot to hear.
she kept playing with his hair when harry pulled his lips from hers, a small whimper leaving her mouth.
she fucking whimpered. he was going to heaven, that was the only explanation.
he brought his lips on her neck, leaving a trail of wet kisses and sucking here and there, making her unconsciously moan softly at his actions.
“does this feel nice, angel?”
“yeah.” she said in a breathy voice.
he could not get enough of her.
his lips reluctantly left her neck and he decided to sit on the couch, looking up at her.
he didn’t even have to say anything, because she gladly climbed on top of him, straddling him, and connecting their lips once again.
she wasn’t sure if a kiss ever felt like this. she didn’t know if it was because of how safe she felt with harry, or if he was just really good at kissing, but never in her life has she been kissed like this. it felt too good to be true.
his hands travelled to her hips, holding and squeezing her love handles, which made her a little uncomfortable, and she didn’t know if she made a sound or if harry could just read her mind, but he stopped kissing her.
“is everything okay?”
“yeah, yeah, everything’s good.” she went in to kiss him again, but he turned his head.
“you have to be honest with me. is it the position? does it weird you out?”
“no, no H, the position is great, it’s just... your hands squeezed my hips, and i don’t feel very comfortable with that, because i don’t like how squishy they are. it makes me a bit self conscious. i’m sorry.”
“hey, no need to apologise. if anything, i’m sorry. but angel, just know that there’s nothing wrong with them, i fucking love them. but i won’t squeeze them anymore now, alright? i want you to feel good and safe.”
“yes, thank you.”
he started kissing her again, softly at first but it soon became more heated, tongues touching and hands roaming over each other’s bodies; soft moans and the wet sounds of their lips connecting were all one could hear.
unconsciously, she started grinding her hips on him, making a deeper moan leave his mouth.
“angel, fuck.”
“i’m sorry, did i do something?”
“no no, fuck, it felt great. but are you sure?”
she didn’t answer him this time, she just kept kissing him and grinding on him, feeling him buck his hips to match her movements. she hoped this was enough of an answer for him.
“dear god, why didn’t we do this before?”
she let out a breathy laugh. “i was thinking the same thing.”
“what are you doing to me, angel?” she felt his hand on her hair, brushing them out of her face. she felt the coldness of his rings on her cheek, it all felt so real. almost, too real.
“mmh...“
“angel.” her pet name sounded a bit more distant, and she felt a stronger hand on her shoulder.
“angel.” the voice was getting closer, she thought. but how could it be closer if she was kissing the source of that voice right now?
“angel, wake up.” wake up?
she opened her eyes and the soft light from the tv burned her sleepy eyes. through her blurry vision, she could make out a figure, a curly headed man with green eyes was looking at her, smiling softly.
“hey angel, welcome back to planet earth.” he chuckled. “i woke you up because one of your favourite episodes of friends is coming up.”
“uh, what?” she was still a bit confused from her sleeping state. when did she fall asleep?
“yeah, season 6, episode 15? “the one that could have been”, i think that’s what it’s called, it’s one of your favourites. i would’ve let you sleep but i know you like it.”
oh.
oh.
“thank you, H. it’s one of my favourites, indeed.”
“no problem, angel. so, did you have a nice dream?”
boy, did she.
“yeah, it was good, i think, i can’t remember it right now.”
“mmh, i’ll try to believe that.” he looked at her as if he knew what she was just dreaming about. oh my god, she didn’t say anything out loud, did she? the embarrassment.
“so, where’s this james guy taking you?”
oh fuck.
so here it is!! i hope you all enjoyed it <3 love yaaaaaa
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moonshotsx · 1 year
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on stage - popstar anarcia au
just to get y'all ready for tonight's episode 😌 enjoy! fyi the outfit i’m picturing anetra in is this!
--
Anetra nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking at herself in the mirror, and trying not to mess with anything.
At least the stylist didn't put her in heels, she wasn't ready to make a fool of herself in front of a venue jam packed.
The dressing room door opened without a warning, Marcia entering in a slight panic.
If Anetra was nervous, she couldn't imagine how the singer was feeling, having her concert almost ruined by the lead dancer hurting himself mere hours before the show.
"Just need to fix one more this-" Marcia stopped mid-sentence, noticing the choreographer, "Oh, wow".
"That bad?" Anetra chuckled, trying to make light of the sudden tension.
"Uh? What? No! You look stunning, I mean, yeah... pretty," she fumbled her words, her signature blush coming through the makeup.
"Relax, Marsh, I was just messing with you," Anetra replied as she fixed the leather harness that was styled over her dark button-up shirt.
"They had to change the whole outfit since the shirt your dancer used wouldn't fit over the girls," she gestured over her chest, the slightly open shirt revealing the butterfly tattoo.
"I don't mind the change," Marcia whispered, just low enough for Anetra not to make out what she said.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing, just... do you want me to help you with that? I know how much of a pain it can be when your stage costume bothers you".
She walked up to Anetra, somewhat towering over her with her heels, "Can I?".
"Sure, go ahead, blondie".
Marcia carefully set her hands on Anetra's sides where the harness was digging into her. She tried not to notice her heartbeat going 80 miles an hour as she made contact with the warmth of the choreographer's skin.
Anetra, on the other hand, was also trying not to show how affected she was by the sudden closeness, how much she wanted to just lean in and taste those pretty pouty lips.
As soon as Marcia's hands were on her, they were gone.
"All done," she let out before lifting her eyes and meeting Anetra's. A detail in the latter's makeup catching her eye, "Your scar".
It wasn't hidden, but rather accentuated with a white line and integrated with a soft sunset eye look.
It was Anetra's turn to blush, "Yeah, the makeup artist thought it would be cool to emphasize it, you know, making me look cooler".
The singer's face broke into a smile, "I like that, your scar," she explained, "It's so you".
The brunette smiled back, "Maybe one day I'll tell you how I got it. It was, like, super badass, you know," she teased, prompting Marcia to chuckle.
"I bet it was, I can't wait to hear it".
Anetra's reply was cut off by one of the staff members coming in to snatch Marcia away for the last soundcheck.
"I have to go," the singer pouted, "But I'll see you soon, alright?"
The choreographer gave her a small nod before Marcia left the room.
Anetra let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Fuck, this isn't the time for that," she said to herself, "We can't afford to possibly fuck this work opportunity just because a pretty blonde smiled at us, okay?".
-
@ NewsInPop: #Marcia trends worldwide as she stuns fans during her latest concert when she reveals a female dancer as her dance partner for her latest single 'Break My Heart'. She has already earned a nickname from the singer's fandom: #butterflygirl
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castle-dominion · 1 year
Text
c3x17 countdown
Edit: haha I found it! I couldn't find my liveblog while clipping last time but this time I went into my archives for the second half of the episode!
Ok so before the episode starts, I need to talk. I’ve been in my fair share of walk-ins, I’ve read a few stories where people get stuck in freezers, what u need to do is grab a screwdriver or smth & break the cooling mechanism.
Rodeo clown, red herring. We've got to find jamal, they say, & the dramatic irony is we know jamal is here in the freezer. Dead.
Why are they covering him? For their own psychological wellbeing? Castle, do up your coat all the way. Y'all be sure to dance sometimes. Don't waste all your energy tho. Now trucks can probably get to -20f or -25c but more likely are set at 0f or -18c like most freezers. Like girl, it is definitely well below freezing. Girl lay on your back & kick with your feet, don't dislocate your shoulder. Plus, you definitely have more than a few hours. Like you would probably get frostbite within half an hour but it is also not a windy place. The real killers are wetness & ventilation. Even if the cooling mechanism is still going, if you kill the fan you would be fine. Just don't sweat too much. Move enough to keep your body temp up, don't move so much that you would sweat. Ok that is bad counting. Count better.
Oh no they r home. lmao circus accidents martha what Grinch changing scene. Yes ew.
Ricochet? Ok I thought y'all shot thru the tin box earlier. Now here: SHOOT THE DANG COOLING MECHANISMS OR BUST EM WITH THE BUTT OF YOUR GUN. Keep moving babes. At least beckett can cover her ears.
Interesting interactions here. You sound like fallon & maybe castle was right. Really really interesting characterization. Is it alexis/martha? Ok but what are their faces, they are just staring at each other & looking more & more intensely
Yeah. I had a radiation interest at some point. Super scary. YOU WEREN'T LOOKING FOR THE TARGET ALREADY??? KR, with his face the way it is: Sir, can I speak with you alone? *glances awkwardly at fallon* But ofc comes with esposito lol Lmao my first thought when they mentioned their history was not what I mentioned last episode (they did the off-grid police work recently) but actually kissing. They haven't kissed yet. Ryan & esposito are so cute & I'm so glad that alexis called even after trying to go to bed. But then again, she called ryan's cell. That's... idk what that is.
Ok put your exposed skin BACK UNDER YOUR EFFING JACKETS & SHARE YOUR CLOTHES I mean at least you're cuddling BUT BREAK THE DANG FREEZING MECHANISM & MOVE & KEEP YOUR BODY TEMP UP. The scariest part for me is the fog at the bottom. THE FIRST ALWAYS Girl it hasn't even been that long & this place shouldn't be able to get that cold y'all are fine, stop being babies. I thought new yorkers complained about the weather! Come up to canada, meet my inuit friends!
The intro is blue <3
Castle's eyes are so good in this lighting. tbh I think the frost on his cheeks is weird. Eyelashes & eyebrows yes. Cheeks? not so sure. Are those our guys or are they the killers? Wait, man's holding a gun
Yucky sound! Bro they should be fine it wasn't that bad. Motorcycleboy! Also while he has at least had one hour of sleep he still needs to go to bed. Same to ryan & esposito & well,, everyone. Alexis called <3 (oh btw what happened to karpowski? I saw her in s2 but never in s3.) K but wdym "until josh called"? We figured you were with beckett until josh called. Then we went back to thinking you were with beckett. edit: they figured he was WITH beckett ;) bc she was struggling with Josh but then josh called & they remembered that she was with josh & she is actually doing well with josh bc he came home for her; & that's why rick & josh exchange those looks. Then they figured he was with beckett as in doing smth incredibly stupid against orders. Oh & costume update: Ryan has another coat. Again, it is nice, but it is also chill, & it is the third jacket I've seen him wear this day! & Esposito has that nice coat I've seen him in before, the one with the shoulder buckles. What patrol units were available bro??? RC: I'm glad my stupidity is predictable Their little handshake <3 RC: You pulled us out of there? (KR nods) RC, probably not thinking about how he was found snugled up with beckett: thanks Beckett was standing there watching him. Apparently castle was more tired than her (even tho she should have frozen more than him) so she was up in a blankett watching him while he was still waking up. Even tho she fell asleep first. Maybe she woke up first because she fell asleep first. Then again, she wasn't standing there in the first shot when he was sitting up. Also just realized, esposito & ryan probably had this exact convo with beckett. That's the kind of deleted scene I want to see.
Oh no it is not even white anymore. So 13 hours at the start, it is now ten hours. They were in the freezer for maybe 2 hours if they've been out for an hour like josh said. Imagine being ryan & esposito, you help each other drag one person out of the freezer, then you drag the second. Then you go back in for that third person under the tarp (which caskett should have been using as a blanket) & whoops it's a dead body.
I'm also assuming they meant 4pm not 4am. Meaning dang it's 6am & nobody has slept! Also meaning alexis called at like 1am or smth. So they found the bomb at 3am actually & alexis might have evenn called that late. Crazy that she would just call ryan (on his cell too) to ask about her dad.
gtg we're watching s4 in my family watch now bai ily
Ok hai I'm back!
KB *politely requests that her & castle be reinstated* MF: Well that's not up to me. It'd be up to your doctor, wouldn't it? Which is so good & so true KB walks off MF: Yk it's funny, when I first met you two I thought you were together. RC: Oh. No, just friends. I watched When Harry Met Sally the day before watching this the first time. *sighs with my hand on my cheek* MF: Get cleaned up. We have a long day ahead of us (which is weird bc castle hasn't been cleared by his doc yet.) Also have they called alexis yet?
Wow it is bright & sunrisey! MR: You look like death warmed over XD <3 Fair has nothing to do with it Rick you might have been able to say "I sent you with grams to that spiritual retreat for a reason. I want you two to go to the hamptons & stay there for the weekend. No questions. Don't try to figure out why. Just listen." or "I just need you two out of the house for a bit"
Yay they've changed. But have they slept? IDK what time it is now. Living this every day is probably why he is the way he is. This is not the time for a special hell reference mom. Except for me. So mum went out with her friends yesterday & Tammy went out to a movie with her son. She had been watching movies at home so much, covid & all, that she would make these huge gasps whenever smth big happened. Her son was sooo embarassed. Mum looked at me & said she could never take me out to a movie. Apparently we took 1.5x the 44min episode to watch it. Ofc lil bro went upstairs to get water & another time to get food but a lot of it was me pausing it to talk (bc it's rude to talk during the movie, well u can talk as long as there is no dialogue). So yeah special hell for those tho talk at the theater.
I wish I could give an esposito outfit update bc he looks cool af but he is backlit. This reminds me of @codex-dominion my other blog. When Tavi (as rufus scippio) was made captain, he had to work a lot. One time he was super overworked & wanted to keep working but his singularé said "no, you need a sleep & a shave" & tavi/scippio said "nah bro I need to do so much I don't have time for that" & his singularé went "no. You never saw the previous captain with stubble. You need to shave & take a crowforsaken nap." Still, I like his gloves! Ah yes, the military. What did I say? Six tours is a lot. Bruh it's the effing military what do you expect?? Why would they choose kevin mcann? Identity theft in the military is surprisingly not uncommon.
You haven't done facial recognition yet? Well ig not bc you thought you knew him MF: I thought this guy was a crime novelist RC: I.. I am MF: Well then you should know *proceeds to explain identity theft lol* KB & JE: :] :]
Gal has a nice mural Pointing with a cig lol VA? They were voice actors together? Or as in veteran affairs or smth? (welcome to indian affairs, which indian would you like to have an affair with?) Support our troops: Bring Them Home. I'm FTM. Oh a trans man? Happy pride. Nonono, I'm nonbinary. I meant Fuck The Military. my post : ) Hey a cell number is good!
This man is a child I love tech geeks from csu or wherever. Old timey phones <3 I remember when canadian troops left afghanistan. I remember it because it was a thing in school. & I remember finally finally it ended in 2021. Let's roll
Casually turns around B'y don't look back. If you must, use a mirror.
Castle is the only sane one here. Yeah like esposito you need a wakeup call. Interesting how he takes beckett in there, not captain montgomery. Tbh I respect his skills. He's cool. Sitting there, quiet, keeping his mouth shut. I can respect that. I might hate it or find it annoying but on a level of skill not ideology it's really cool. Hm, that might be why lockwood & his ones chose to drown ryan instead. If they knew abt esposito & why they couldn't break him. (the cops already know everything about me & your mom) No he won't fallon. The way he talks. It's so true, so good, so calm & thoughtful & angry. Good episode. Becks, idk if holding YOUR gun at him is the best idea. Ok so you're holding him at gunpoint but you haven't even cocked it? I'm assuming it's semi-automatic, you shouldn't cock twice. This military boy would have noticed. Btw the music is slamming. Doesn't even turn on the safety? It took them that long to break down the door or did they only come in after he put it away?
At least fallon is explaining himself. He feels. He knows it will go over better if he does this. But what opening was there my dude? (note: he said he can't break him in three hours. 3h. So what, he had him for 3 hours already or it's 13.00/1pm & he has three hours left?) He is calm & talking to her in his respectful quiet voice even tho she said that to him. Fallon is actually gaining my respect for that. RC: does that guy take jackhole lessons or was he born that way? (heh) KR, who has also changed & hopefully taken a nap, now getting coffee too: Neither. I asked my buddy at DHS abt him. (Cool so we know ryan has a contact at dhs now.) Turns out his wife was killed in 9/11. She rode the second tower down. They were on the phone together when it happened. Man should have started an emo band then, not become this jackhole fellow.
Oh dang fallon's surveillance guy is down! Make ur phone call! Now I have Holy Gail (Hunters & Collecters, Cut) stuck in my head
Ok & now they say less than 2 hours left. That's the next number. It must be 14.00/2pm now or smth. So has it been one hour since the earlier thing or...? I'm still stuck on whether any of them slept. They all seem to have changed (tavi) & they are all drinking coffee, & I'm sure if they didn't go home & sleep that someone took a nap in the morgue or on the couch in the captain's office or in the break room or even on mats up in the gym. A powernap is important if you can't sleep. It at least resets your brain a little bit so you don't feel like you're dreaming. I remember when I was sick one day I either couldn't sleep or chose not to sleep bc it was painful & I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep for hours. I went thru my facebook page back until nov 2020 (it's may 2023 now) to find the day I was talking about. I was awake for 30 hours. "I fell asleep for maybe an hour but I feel like it's tomorrow morning (Thursday) or tomorrow morning but it's actually Wednesday morning which is today. But I also feel like it's 8pm and I have my violin lesson. It doesn't help that the book I'm reading has huge cases of derealization/depersonalization/confusion/etc/etc and I read it righ before falling asleep this afternoon and after I had a miniature bowl of cereal when I woke up. Who am I? What day is it? Did I hallucinate my brother walking around this morning, or was it a legitimate shadow? Have I already taken my meds today? I'm half convinced I'm still dreaming buds" wow yeah that's what it was like. That's probably how they would feel if they haven't slept.
Esposito is wearing that? I didn't realize that when I saw him earlier. Oh no, an explosives ordnance disposal? CRAWL UP THEIR WHERES WITH MICROSCOPES? You're right, they are not brainwashed kids on a student visa, they are brainwashed adults with training. Oh... the syrian consolate guy... Fallon my man! Woah he gained beckett's respect.
Bud that's such a lie. You do what we ask & everybody lives? That's literally the biggest lie bc you are trying to kill everyone!
Fallon, the guy came over for ya, shake his hand & thank him for coming! Should we be giving away our hand like this...? Mike, let the guy talk. Man just didn't do anything when he saw nazihah get abducted?? What he meant by that appointment outside the city was he doesn't believe you can succeed.
Wow they actually shot the guy. Ooh music. So dramatic bestie. our people aren't wearing vests?
If he couldn't get fake-kevin-mcann to talk then how did he get these guys to talk? Oh he lied.
Is that beckett's personal vehicle or? (ew ghost cars)
Work wife. Why would the car turn in front of them? Wouldn't they be taking the same route? Also, wouldn't they already have the sirens on? Make like a stag. (When you're driving, never let a deer that is chasing you get ahead bc as soon as it pulls ahead, it turns, not realizing it still needs to be going forward so as not to get hit. Never let a stag in front of you.) Make like a stag, get right in front of the car. Lol castle getting his face smashed against the window. Ugh finally they did it
Update: I clipped the work wife arguing about driving moment on my new chromebook, the quality might not be any better but at least now it will be easier to tag & upload to tumblr lol
YEAH YOU KNEW THE BOMB WAS THERE, unless it wasn't in which case good on castle for checking BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY RADIOED (one lincoln forty again!) & it is 15.58/3.58pm now. (unless the bomb was set to go off around 4pm not exactly 4pm.) It would take two minutes for them to park the helicopter & run in to the bomb. Remember those times both in sherlock & murdoch mysteries where they just stopped the timers? Yeah. Oh & that other time murdoch had to defuse a bomb bc pendrick was claustrophobic. (those two needed to get it on.)
Mk so continuity with timers like this can be hard. I can't tell but I think the show did a good job with this. At least she is calling fallon. My dude. You are not going to get there in time (unless he doesn't know that they only have 1m left bc beckett didn't communicate with him) so pull over the car. What advice do you have fallon? Anything? Tell them to at least look for a "stop/start" button in the hopes that there is one? Wait is he actually the guy who did this is he still driving so he can get out of town bc he planted the bomb? Ooh! Why do the tank & stuff still have the radioactive stickers all over them? I feel like they'd peel em off or smth. (what if some traffic cop pulled her over bc she was driving erratically & then checked her trunk, that would be crazy & possibly a bit of a deus ex machina.) R u 2 finally going to confess ur love 3 seconds left it was probably made poorly or a decoy bomb so it is not going to go off bc the real bomb is somewhere else & they either find it & stop it OR they end up with a crater in new york; a crater that means people are going to be displaced, & without help they have no choice but to turn to crime, & then that escalates future episodes. Possibly even some mistaked DNA stuff, they catch someone & check their dna to what they have in the database but it doesn't match bc of radiation. I think a post apocalyptic crime show would be cool, or at least a post disaster crime show. Wait castle just pulled all the wires out.
Rick just pulled all the wires out. & all at once too. Wow. Well then. I want to laugh but this is so intense. (clipping this too) Right at zero huh. During my family watch All Of Us mimicked castle's triumphant finger point at the bomb. So valid bestie. I mean heck yeah, he had to do smth. Two choices, two endings, but three paths. A: let the bomb kill you. You die. B1: Take out the wires & you die. B2: Take out the wires & you live. You're going to die either way, so might as well take the chance of living. btw why isn't beckett's radiation detector going off?
(all laughing) KB: No you should have seen his face because he stopped, (stopped what?) he looked at me, grabbed all the wires & then he just yanked them! *immitates rick yanking the wires* (her voice is kind of intense) KR: . All of them?? RC: I figured one of them had to be the right one. RM: You know, the mayor wants to give you guys a medal. I didn't have the heart to tell him you had no clue what you were doing. ... JE: Captain's right. You two don't know how lucky you are. RC: *looks at becket* KB: *looking back, seemingly out of breath* RC: Actually, I do. (Do you? I think you do. Just stared death in the face & said "f it, I'm taking a chance!" Tho it is not a risk. You risk blowing up the bomb if you yank the wires but the bomb was going to go anyway so it was not a risk. It was a chance.) RM: Hmm. *as castle & beckett look at each other*
KB: Actually I was doing my job, idk wth he was doing. RC: Hey. But that's true Fallon. I'm so happy that he is explaining. It's his way of apologizing without explicitly apologizing. RC: A codeword. "run" (won't clip but funny) Y'all need some sleep, not beers in the pigstye. Bro I want you to confess your love but josh literally just saved ur asses. Hug her! Hug her goodbye bc you love each other, even if you cannot express that love in the romantic way you want to. Also, say goodbye to all the other ppl around!
Motorcycle boy -w-
Yeah that was good! I enjoyed it.
I can't believe it's already 11.30! I haven't even watched a full episode!
(Girl now imagine it's been weeks of trying to pull s3 clips)
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daisyachain · 2 years
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Wheel of Time episode 1
River trial: cool. Where they got it from I do not know but it’s a tasty little bit of worldbuilding that both links into the women’s circle mysticism and the sort of new agey ideas that come into play later in the series.
Perrin waifu: tragic for a character so unfocused to have such a sick design. Her addition makes sense if Two Rivers kids are expected to be married at the age they are in the books. Also makes the Faile thing less of a whiplash if he’s established as that kind of uhaul heterosexual
Mat family issues: THIS one makes less sense. Abell being a decent dude is an entire plot point that seems odd to discard.
Nynaeve adopted: with the ‘anyone could be a Dragon’ change they did need to make her origins more ambiguous. Nynaeve is the most underdeveloped of the 5, I’m glad to see her get something
Moiraine and Nynaeve’s antagonism makes more sense now. It’s such a big part of Nynaeve with pretty much no justification, so it’s better to make it a whole Thing than to eliminate it or leave it be
Soundtrack as ever is the best part
Rand’s casting? What were they thinking. Hiding your accent is hard, but in a series with so many different voices it feels awkward to have him constantly mask it rather than speak naturally. Affect: flat, voice: inaudible, hair: at least it’s red. Feels like a big leap to put a guy who’s stumbling and mumbling over the lines as your lead. That said, he plays a convincing sheepherderness in his interactions with Egwene and that’s what matters
Egwene/Rand: a much more fun version of their book 1 selves, should be great to watch as they come back around into conflict
Pike is channelling the Blanchett Galadriel a little too hard to ignore
The girls are fantastically-cast, cannot wait for their plotlines, who cares about the guys anyway
As mom says, ‘they all look 30’
Trolloc costuming better than expected, looks solid, good golden lighting through Bel Tine sequence
How Did This Village Have Any People Left After That
Weaving movements are A Choice. Still, better to make a Choice then just have generic hand waving. The circular motifs rock
The Great Serpent rings are much bulkier than the simple ouroboros I was thinking
Bel Tine battle spends far too long going on for a series with limited time
Oof that’s a choice for Perrin’s character that will actually pay off
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watched s11ep1
i will provide you with a quick review before i disappear back into the ether of twd avoidance
lots of spoilers under the cut. also i wrote way too much and i worked all night and haven’t slept so i didn’t bother to reread literally any of it, so it might be completely nonsensical, tho if you don’t expect that from me by this point idk whose blog you’ve been reading
enjoy:
hokay, first off, i’ll start by saying that i enjoyed it more than i expected to. i’ve been avoiding any sort of discussion about stuff, but my google algorithm is so fucked at this point that i still get recommended articles and stuff every now and then, so i was already pretty aware of what i was walking into, and was expecting it to be eh, but actually i prob enjoyed it more than i enjoyed the finale
(don’t get too excited tho, the finale was rly boring lmfao)
anyway
episode starts off with a tense scouting mission
it takes .005 seconds into the episode for caryl to exchange a look of longing, establishing that they are still having weird conflict and are both too fucking stubborn to do anything about it even tho they hate it desperately
i imagine that will continue for a while
rosita, kelly, carol, maggie, what’s her face with the bad hair, and lydia (i think that’s everyone?) lower down to some army bunker or something, where a bunch of walkers are taking a snooze, and the girls are very respectful of walker naptime, and do their best not to wake them up
obviously they eventually wake up, but i’ll get to that in a sec
as they’re tiptoeing through the walker tulips, there’s this split second where carol spots a machine gun, and looks at maggie with a face like, “can i plzzzz, i am mad horny for that machine gun,” but maggie tells her no. (i 110% expected her to defy orders and accidentally wake up all the walkers, but she actually behaved herself for once. well. mostly)
never fear, tho, after the girl gang collects a bunch of MREs they go back to wait for the dudes waiting up top to pull them up, and bc men ruin everything, one of the ropes break, and daryl catches it before it falls, but then a slow motion drop of blood falls on a walker’s face, and just like that, walker naptime is over, and carol uses her bow and arrow for two seconds before she is like “fuck this” and whips out the machine gun
yes, she is super hot using it
yes, daryl watches her do it
anyway, all the other girls get rescued, and carol is about to be pulled up, but bc she is a #girlboss, she first makes a beeline for one more crate full of MREs. daryl covers her while she gets the loot, and when she gets back up top they have another charged moment as carol hands him back his knife
just fuck already, jfc
titles!
cut to alexandria where everything is still not smilestimes
BUT, we do get to see uncle daryl run and hug rj and judith (and dog), and FUCKING HERSHEL JR, LIGHT OF MY LIFE is also there
istg, they could not have casted a better child, i a d o r e him
oh, and some friends of maggie’s show up too, idk
cut to a staff meeting where everyone is like, whomp whomp, we’re all gonna starve to death unless we figure out something quick
cue maggie going, “oh, i know where food is, but it requires me to tell you my tragic backstory, in case anyone didn’t watch my bottle episode”
she tells her dramatic backstory about all her friends getting slaughtered by the reapers for no apparent reason, and then she’s like “anyway, let’s go back there!”
no one thinks it’s a great idea, but a group of people decide to go anyway, including daryl and gabriel. rosita is super pissed that gabriel is going, and carol doesn’t go, probably partly bc it’s a shitty fucking idea, and also bc they have to keep caryl apart bc otherwise they’ll fix their problems ahead of schedule and they won’t be able to drag out the needless angst
daryl looks kind of annoyed that carol doesn’t volunteer to go 
bitch, i thought you wanted her to stop putting herself in the line of fire! make up your damn mind!
moving on
cut to a thunderstorm, where, if you look closely, you’ll notice daryl is wearing the STUPIDEST hat i’ve ever seen. just get an umbrella, jfc
for some reason negan is with them, bc ig he knows his way around washington dc, and no one in six years has bothered to figure out how to get around the city and/or get a map, and he is like “hey guys, maybe we shouldn’t try to walk in this fucking hurricane,” and everyone is like “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” 
this will be a common occurrence 
but eventually daryl is even like “actually, it’s rly unpleasant out here, and my hat is mad stupid, can we go inside plz?”
so they go inside an old metro station, which is actually a rly cool cinematic choice. i rly like the idea, and they executed it rly well
speaking of executions
there are some fucking RULL CREEPY walkers. idk why they bothered me so badly, but they were what they at first assumed were corpses wrapped up in tarps, but turns out none of them had been properly put down, so they go through killing these rotted bodies that had supposedly been there since The Fall, and it’s very gross and cool
this entire time, btw, negan is like “hey, i know i’m a shitty person, but i have some rational arguments about why we shouldn’t be doing this right now,” and everyone is like, “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” and he’s just like “god fucking damnit”
(i forgot to mention that at one point, when they’re headed into the metro station, negan is trying to warn ppl of the potential danger, and everyone is ignoring him, and he tries to talk to daryl, and daryl is like “fuck you, you think we’re BUDDIES?” and negan is like “oh, ok, so you’re gonna be like that too? fanfreakingtastic” and it’s very funny)
anyway. a fat monster zombie escapes its tarp at one point, and tries to eat some npc, and negan saves him, again is like “hey, anyone else realize that this is a FUCKING BAD PLAN?”, and everyone is like “we don’t care, you’re still shitty and we’re not listening to you, and you don’t actually care about random npc i would literally not be able to pick out in a lineup bc his face is so generic, you’re not the boss of us!!!”
it’s at this point that negan finally is like, “why am i even here? bc i know how to get around washington dc? do none of you have a map?” and i was like, “right?! that’s what i said!” 
it’s then revealed that maggie only brought negan along to murder him under the guise of “oops, he got hurt in the line of duty, it wasn’t my fault,” and daryl has this look on his face that says, “i seriously need to stop hanging out with lethal women bent on revenge bc it’s gonna give me high blood pressure,” and maggie has a badass moment where she points a gun she has for some reason at negan and is like “i have like, one shred of human compassion left inside of me, and if you keep pushing me i will fucking kill you without a second thought, so shut the hell up”
(in her defense, negan had just dropped glenn’s name to purposely antagonize her, which was rude as hell)
(for the record, i’m completely on maggie’s side here, but negan still is right that trapping themselves in a metro station is a bad call)
anyway, moving away from that briefly
i think this jump cut happens sooner, i don’t actually remember, but whatever who cares, point is, we get to the part of the show that actually matters, and that’s anything involving my love, juanita “princess” sanchez
and also eugene, yumiko, and ezekiel
they are being asked increasingly invasive questions by commonwealth ppl, some of which i wish they actually would of answered (what do they use to wipe their asses with?? surely toilet paper has long since become extinct)
zeke, who is so much more tolerable as a character now that he’s not larping as a king, has this incredibly weird and sort of sexually charged moment with a dude in an orange stormtrooper costume, where he’s like, “i bet you were an asshole cop back before The Fall, you stupid fascist, #fuckthepolice, mb literally? idk, this moment has a lot of pent up aggression that could easily translate to hate sex, it might just be the intense eye contact, but w/e, let’s just move along,” and then he has a coughing fit to remind the audience that he’s currently dying of cancer, and orange stormtrooper is like “lolz, loser, drink some water you dumb piece of shit”
cut to the wholesome foursome sitting at a picnic table in a guarded courtyard eating gruel, and yumkio, who finally has a personality, and princess are like “hey, this place fucking sucks, can we leave?” and zeke is like, “yeah, i met this orange stormtrooper who i think might be dtf and/or murder, so we should probably bounce”
but eugene is like, “but i want some hot stephanie ass, and also some bullshit excuse about how mb commonewealth will save alexandria” which, they left before things went super downhill, right? idr. it was after hilltop fell, but they don’t know alexandria got fucked either, if i recall? w/e, not important
two seconds after he says this, they talk to some people who are like “we’ve been here for four months, or maybe it’s been nine, i don’t actually remember, i’ve stopped processing the passage of time,” and the wholesome foursome takes this as a bad sign, tho that’s just the life i’ve lived as a night worker during a pandemic, so i was like #mood
but then they watch some guy get dragged away screaming to get “reprocessed” and eugene is like “ok, nvm, let’s bounce”
(my theory on what “reprocessing” is, is that they’re stuck in a room and have to watch hours and hours of customer service training videos on vhs from the 90s)
i definitely got my jump cut scenes mixed up bc i think the negan accusing maggie of a murder plot thing happened in between this scene and then the next commonwealth scene, but w/e, i’ll just finish what happens in the commonwealth arch
the wholesome foursome are trying to hatch a plan to escape, except princess, my love, is distracted watching some stormtroopers flirt, and the other three are like “wtf, dude, how can you even tell any of them apart?” and princess then tells them every stormtroopers backstory bc she is brilliant and pays rly close attention to shit, and the other three are like, “this is useful information, thank you for being an insane person”
their plan involves yumiko and eugene dressing up as stormtroopers and leading princess and zeke out of the place, which works fine actually, except on their way out they come across the Depressing Wall of Probably Mostly Dead Missing Loved Ones
they’re about to leave, when princess is like, “wait, yumiko, you’re on here, that’s weird huh?”
sure enough, yumiko  is on the wall, with a note from ig her sister 
the scene ends with yumiko going, “guys...i can’t leave...i have tragic backstory to unveil”
tragic backstory to be continued ig
back in murder metro town, npc and some other npc have stolen all the supplies, there’s a train blocking the track, and a horde of walkers are coming towards them, so things are not going fantastic
they horde is too big to take down, so they start to climb on top of the train car to get away
but dog runs away!
and daryl, being every pet owner ever, is like “gotta go get my dog, guys, try not to get killed while i’m gone, c u soon!” and he ducks under the train and disappears
#priorities
the episode ends with maggie climbing up the train car but getting grabbed by a walker and dangling off the edge, and negan is there and they have a lion king moment where maggie is like, “scar! help me!” and negan is like “long live the king, bitch” and walks away into the shadows, leaving maggie to a potential death
which, while i know isn’t actually going to happen, would be a really fucking funny move on the writers’ part
like, “look, lauren’s back! and now she’s dead, bet you didn’t expect that!”
anyway
my assumption is negan will actually end up helping her up or something, continuing his ambiguous morality bullshit that actually isn’t ambiguous bc he BEAT GLENN TO DEATH WITH A FUCKING BAT WRAPPED IN BARBED WIRE IN FRONT OF HIS PREGNANT WIFE
the maggie/negan arch is kind of dumb, but whatevs, i’ll tolerate it, as long as my boy glenn gets justice in the end
anyway, cue credits!
final assessment: good episode. i’m much more interested in commonwealth than the reapers, tho i am hoping that daryl’s personality-less ex turns out to be a monster killing machine with no conscience, that’ll be fun. princess is a gift from god. hershel jr needs his own tv show. needs more carol (and caryl)
the end! going back into my walking dead free chamber! see you next episode!
-diz
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sserpente · 3 years
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OKAY OKAY WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE SECOND EPISODE BECAUSE I HAVE QUESTIONS AND I AM SQUEALING.
First of all, it’s bold of them to assume that we need a “previously on”. It’s not like we don’t know the first episode by heart already, hahahaha!
Alright, so first of all: LOKI USE YOUR POWERS BABY. Was he stalling? Was he trying to get more information? Is “Lady Loki” really that powerful?! It kind of looked like he didn’t really WANT to fight her, does that make sense? It makes sense to me! Also add telekinesis to Loki’s powers, YES BABY!
Speaking of "Lady Loki”--I was SCREAMING because she looks so FREAKING BADASS I LOVE IT but I still don’t buy it! YES, she’s got the Loki costume. YES, she’s got the horns even but hear me out: SHE’S BLONDE. I don’t mind Lady Loki being blonde, it looks REALLY COOL but that MUST have been a conscious decision of them then because as far as I’m concerned, Sophia is not naturally blonde, neither is Lady Loki in the comics but you know who is?! SYLVIE. And when Loki called her “Loki” she was like “ugh, don’t call me that”. EXCUSE ME, WAS THAT A HINT? Also did Loki recognise her? He didn’t have any lines after that, so I can’t tell? I have to watch it again! if he didn’t recognise her, then maybe the story will stray a little further from what we know about Loki and Sylvie in the comics (in which Loki gives Sylvie her powers so they’d have the same magical signature or whatever). Or with all the different timelines and multiverses, our Loki never met Sylvie in this one, who the fuck knows? I feel like there’s gonna be another plot twist. Don’t forget we get a “Young Sylvie” at some point, that’s gotta mean something!!! I still believe this is the Enchantress! And/or, taking up my previous theories on it being both Lady Loki and Sylvie at the same time, she might have changed her identity for whatever reason and now firmly believes she’s Sylvie or something. IDK, GEEZ.
Guys, I have to be honest with you, I have NO CLUE where this is going! I’m completely BLANK! WHAT does she want?! WHY is she doing this? Honestly, I don’t think she’s evil, I don’t think that her goal is the annihilation of everything. There’s gotta be more to it than that but we just don’t have enough information yet to put the puzzle pieces together. AND NOW THAT CLIFFHANGER HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?! Where did they go? IDK. Could be that “purple” place from the trailer. They sure are going to have a  proper conversation though in the next episode.
Now I freaking love Loki’s outift, I just RAAAWR. That TIE. That JACKET. I WANT THAT JACKET. He ALMOST got his daggers back, my poor baby, SO CLOSE! This episode made me cackle so much, it’s soooo different to see Loki like this; first of all, again, knowing his usual tricks don’t work and he doesn’t have the upper hand per se makes it really interesting to see how he acts around Mobius and the rest of the TVA. Away from Thanos and the influence of the sceptre, Loki seems so much more... blithe? Does that makes sense? It’s a completely different side of him but then again we get those darker scenes where we see the intimidating Loki we know and it’s like we’re getting to know Loki all over again? JUST IMAGINE WHAT HE’S LIKE IN A RELATIONSHIP THEN, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It just makes SOOOO MUCH SENSE that Tom said that Loki acts differently around dfiferent people.
ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HE TRIED TO HIT MISS MINUTE!!!
Now, two more things (I’m really just randomly throwing things at you here):
First of all, LOKI SPEAKING LATIN. Again, I’m not quite sure how or if the Allspeak still affects him (since the Mongolian thing in the first episode made us wonder about it already) but I’m just gonna go ahead and say that Loki is fluent in Latin because he FREAKING COULD.
Second of all, I thought it was very suspicious of Mobius to say “I don’t care what makes you tick” because in the first episode he wanted Loki to explain to him just that. Was he lying? I still don’t trust him. NOTHING IS REAL, honestly! That conversation they had in the cafeteria really proved to me that the TVA isn’t to be trusted. When Ravonna and Mobius talked I even thought maybe the Time Keepers don’t even exist at some point.
AND LOKI IS NOT LETTING ANYONE GET TO HIM ANYMORE. Did you see him read of the destruction of Asgard?! He was TEARING UP, you could see the grief on his face and then when he told Mobius (RIP Mobius’ salad) and he went like “I’m sorry” Loki was just like “Yes, very sad,” in a nonchalant way and moved on to tell him what he’d found out rather excitedly. This is the PERFECT example of Loki continuing to do what he does so much, just concealing his feelings and his vulnerability behind mischief and I STILL WANNA HUG HIM.
All the different Loki Variants they should the team, I freaking loved this but it does raise the question at what point in the “sacred timeline” these Lokis hopped off the timeline to cause mischief? Which in turn raises the question if we’re right not to trust the TVA and the sacred timeline is a bunch of bullshit? Also, you know what would have been hilarious too, if they had included a Norse Mythology version of Loki. You know, ginger hair and all. I feel like Loki would have approved of that cameo, hahaha!
Speaking of the Norse Myths, it’s funny how Loki freed those goats in Pompeii because in the myths, he once tied a goat’s beard to his testicles to make Skadi laugh. Thought that was a fun little connection!
It’s now canon, by the way, that there’s no candy on Asgard. Not even chocolate?! We know that Loki looooves chocolate, don’t we? Awww, baby! Now I feel like writing an Imagine where you take Loki to a candy store and he gets to try everything and then gets a sugar rush, hahaha!
And, last but not least, “PROFESSOR LOKI” HIT DIFFERENT. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. He’s such a smart cookie I LOVE IT.
I might add some more stuff and reblog this post once I’ve watched the episode again, I’m still processing everything, hahaha!!!
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cocosstories · 3 years
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Chris Evans One Shot
Can you do either a Steve Rogers one shot where all the Avengers are doing like a Lip-Sync battle sort of thing and everyone is doing theirs then the reader goes up at surprises everyone by doing Star Spangled Man with a Plan with the whole outfit and everything just everyone's reactions to it or basically the same thing but Chris Evans and the reader is a famous actor doing the Lip-Sync battle(I just thought of this and think it is a great idea and I LOVE your work your writing is AMAZING)
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When you and your Marvel costar and boyfriend, Chris Evans had been asked to do an episode of Lip Sync Battle, you were on board right away but Chris took some convincing.
It took a while but you finally talked him into doing it after showing him Tom Holland, Zoe Saldana and Anthony Mackie's episodes.
The week of the competition was spent picking songs, costumes, rehearsals and interviews for the show.
Both you and Chris made sure to keep everything each of you were doing a secret.
On the day of the show, it was obvious that Chris was more nervous than you were and you thought it was really cute.
"It's going to be fun babe. I swear."
You say giving him a quick kiss as you both are ushered off to get ready for the opening scene.
As LL Cool J talks to Chrissy and then announces the two of you, the excitement builds inside you and you can't wait to show Chris what you have planned.
"Alright, Chris, you are up first this round so what are you going to do for us?"
LL asks Chris as you sit back at the bar to watch.
"One of Y/N's favorite songs actually."
He replies and the crowd fills with 'awws'.
After the commercial break, Chris comes out and syncs 'Crazy Beautiful' by Luke Combs as you watch happily, singing along with him.
"That was the sweetest thing. We all know you guys are together and for you to do that song just for her during a competition, is just the best thing. You are a smart man, Chris Evans."
Chrissy says after he finishes.
Another commercial break and you are out on the stage lip syncing to one of Chris' favorite songs from The Little Mermaid, 'Under The Sea'.
"This is turning out to be a very sweet episode. Having a couple go against each other is adorable."
Chrissy tells LL who completely agrees.
Next, you run off stage to get ready for your big second number as the stage is redressed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Y/F/N Y/L/N."
As the music begins, you, dressed as 1940's Captain  America, make your way out with half a dozen dancers, dressed as chorus girls as you lip sync to 'Star Spangled Man With A Plan' and the crowd goes wild.
"Chris, I think, Y/N is gonna give you a run for your money as the new Captain America!"
LL says once your performance was over.
"I agree. That was amazing!"
Chris says still smiling ear to ear.
Soon, you were sitting back on the bar stool as Chris' second number was about to begin and you wonder what he could possibly have planned.
The song begins and Chris comes out dressed in a very nice tux with a bouquet of roses and begins singing to 'Marry You' by Bruno Mars.
All the girls in the audience go crazy as he throws the roses one by one out into the crowd until finally, only one was left and he takes it to you.
As the last bit of the song comes, Chris reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box and gets down on one knee in front of you.
The whole room gasps as they watch him open the box to reveal a very real diamond ring.
LL hands him a working microphone.
"I know this is crazy to do on national TV but I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you so, Y/N, will you marry me?"
He says and you stare at him in shock for just a second before nearly jumping into his arms and screaming yes.
The crowd cheers as he puts the ring on your finger and the two of you kiss.
"Well, I don't think we need to pick a winner for this episode. Congratulations to Y/N and Chris! Thanks for watching!"
LL closes out the show as Chrissy comes down to Congratulate you two and look at your ring.
"I can't believe you did that!"
You say as you and Chris leave the show to head home.
"I've actually been wanting to do it for a while now, I just couldn't figure out how and when you practically begged me to do the show, I just thought maybe it wouldn't be a terrible idea. Are you mad?"
He asks after explaining his thinking.
"Not at all. That was amazing. I love you so much."
You reply cuddling up to him while looking at your ring again.
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jq37 · 3 years
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The Report Card – Fantasy High: The Seven Ep 6
Bitches Be Shopping
What is up y’all. A little late but let’s jump in with episode six of The Seven where our girls have just received a LOT of information, Sam most of all who got put into a little vision coma that she’s just now waking up from.
She explains the vision to her friends (as she interprets it, the other Eidolons didn’t die, just became part of the natural forces of the world) and then the bear that Penny made on a whim last episode (who is Russian, named Koda, and somehow a trained circus bear) gets into a fight with Katja with their friends buffing the two to make things more interesting because these are still idiot teens, life or death situation or no. Yelle decides to be the adult and tells them to knock it off and get back on mission.
That means Katja needs to call her dad since he’s knows the guy who’s the best lead to getting to TK ( Talcidimir Tallbreeze who I’ll call Tal). She actually manages to get her dad this time who is inside a giant snake on his hell mission. Katja asks what he knows about TK and he says she’s a sorcerer but also has a spell book so maybe she’s multiclassed. Sam and Ant desperately want to know if they boned and Katja absolutely is not interested in that knowledge. Yelle decides to just ask which makes her dad a little annoyed since he’s kind of in the middle of something (literally) and that annoys Ant, Ost, and Sam who--respectively, accuse him of gaslighting Kat, cast Command on him, and cast Bane on him to aid the Command spell. 
Mr. Cleaver fails the save and Ost commands him to tell Katja the truth. He admits that he did hook up with TK and he regrets it (note: it wasn’t like he cheated. It was just a casual hookup that wasn’t fulfilling it seems). Ost demands he apologize for not being there for Kat and Sam berates him for being at the top of the world and not lifting up his daughter too. For his part, Kat’s dad seems genuinely apologetic and promises to do better. 
“You don’t need to be the best father, you just need to be there,” Katja says, making her dad break down crying. 
Yelle, who has no daddy issues, is a bit less aggro and says that everyone makes mistakes and he can start making it up right now by helping with the Tal situation. She also gives them the tip that a cold spell will probably get them out of the snake lickety split.  She is on the money with the snake tip and Mr. Cleaver gets them all invites to a masquerade ball Tal is hosting. It’s being held on the Rumbosa which is this city-sized leisure ship. Mr. Cleaver says he’ll be back as soon as he can and, in the meantime, she should take care of her friends, “even the first 2 that were terrifying to me.”
The girls give Katja the axe they took as a birthday present (it was apparently her birthday the day before which Rekha just decided and Ost/Izzy refuses to accept without a fight because she *knows* Kat’s bday) which is identified as the Axe of Sundering (it can shatter objects, people, and sometimes concepts like halving movement). The two unnamed potions Yelle found are also ID’d as a Potion of Fly and a Potion of Gaseous Form. She distributes the Heath Potions to people without heals. Ant’s new arrows bypass some resistances and let her treat whatever she hits with the first one like it’s her favored enemy. 
According to their invites, the ship they need is docking in the city of Gravalvia soon (a very old city in the Baronies) so they need to figure out a plan. They have some downtime, during which:
Zelda tries to hype up the team.
Zelda tries to see if Ost is OK wrt dad stuff and Ost has a Full Breakdown after badly pretending she’s fine. 
While Zelda, Ost, and Penny are being Emotional and Sam is trying to literally cool them down with her powers, Ant and Yelle keep watch and experience emotional stability as the Adults Of The Party 
Anyway, after a night of rest, they head to the golden city of Gravalvia which is this very cool, very pretty city with mosaics and fountains and I assume columns. They get there and there’s a dramatic fight happening in the square which is halted when one of the fighters realizes that the country he’s fighting for doesn’t exist anymore. And now, it’s time for what we’ve all been waiting for. Shopping Montage! Let’s go girl by girl.
Katja and Ost
Kat asks for help from Ost with getting fancy for this gala since she’s never really done anything dressy before (and she had no mom to help--Kaaaat) and Ost is happy to oblige, dressing them both like “Jersey trash”. Kat, of course, still wears her Khakis underneath.
Antiope
Ant decides to get a vibe for what people here wear and picks something that will blend in but be forgettable so she can be stealthy. Classy blue dress and mask.
Penny
Penny...OK, I absolutely cannot describe what happens here in any way that will do justice to the scene. I am going to tell you what matters to the plot. You have to watch this yourself if you want to see the entire table have a collective breakdown. 
While looking for a costume, Penny runs into a halfling who is a member of the Society of Shadows--Laertes. He wants to know why she hasn’t responded to their invitation yet. She says she’s really eager to join, she just wasn’t sure how to respond (and also, she’s kind of in the middle of something). He says she can join by just messaging back and then her loved ones just have to sign waivers to have their memories wiped of her and she’s good to go. Say what now? asks Penny. She didn’t realize this was like a full Men in Black situation. 
He says it’s ultimately her decision and leaves.
Of course, I left out the parts where he ate a handful of Candy Heart’s remains, became violently ill, almost projectile vomited into Penny’s mouth, and she tried to kiss him despite him being a full adult. It’s A Lot, ok?
Also, we don’t find out until later but Penny picks a sexy duck costume for reasons that make more sense if you watch the scene but not *much* more sense. She also burns one of the healing potions on this dude as he is bar
Danielle
Danielle tries to get some info on the guests at the party and gets the names Lawrence LaDuc, Princess Autumn, and Duston who is the playboy cousin of Tal. She also hears some dude saying some colonize and plunder the earth BS and casts Heat Metal on him, fully mercing the dude. Ice cold. 
She tries to play it off like it’s the Curse of the Forest and when that doesn’t work and people start coming for her, she wildshapes into a dragon wyrmling and starts roasting people, killing 1 and dropping 2 to zero. 
Unfortunately, one of her party members is a known dragon hater and uses her new arrows to snipe her right out of the sky. Ant is horrified once she realizes what she’s done but Yelle says it’s all good. It’s NOT all good, says Ant, I STABBED YOU. You’re allowed to be mad! Yelle says she’s just really good at compartmentalizing but what Ant’s getting here is that Yelle doesn’t really believe that her feelings matter which echo the fears of her moms. 
Sam
Sam uses a combination of Mantle of Inspiration, glamour magic, performance, and good old flirting to get herself some killer clothes and also start a spontaneous musical number Giselle style.  
Brennan says she looks resplendent and, honestly, when does she not?
They reconvene, Zelda in a classic hoop skirt. Yelle realizes she never got a costume and just whips out a Met Gala level, autumn themed, Queen Mab-esque costume with Druidcraft which she could have done this whole time so I guess that’s why she was cool spending her shopping time getting gossip and playing Poison Ivy. 
They get to the ship and the way this works, everyone has to make an entrance and the really rich people (including Tal) are on a dais up top watching everyone come in. They all have to give fake names for the night since it’s a masquerade and they have to do Performance or Persuasion checks to see how impressive they look going in. 
Before they go in, they plan a little. Penny wants to look for TK. Sam wants to find Dunston. Ost wants to talk to the bouncers. Yelle wants to see if there are plants she can manipulate (there are btw) and for any exits. 
A quick rundown of how these all go:
Katja aka Mere (which means both mom and horse): 16 
Ant aka Midnight Huntress: 18 
Penny aka Penny Duckstone: 13
Zelda aka Madame Goodparty: 2 (Poor Zelda)
Sam aka Songbird: 22 (but she takes a hit to entrance save Zelda from totally flaming out)
Ost aka Stanley Gucci: 13
And Danielle, who never hogs the spotlight and is embarrassed to admit that maybe she does want to be the center of attention for once in her life with a Natural 20, gets a 29, absolutely bringing down the house as Empress Anima. As she walks forward she feels a voice say to her, “You got this. I love the name. You wear it well.”
Tal seems very impressed by her and a lady in a rabbit mask (Coeliabranca who I’ll call Coel if she comes up more) comes down to bring her up to the top with the high rollers. As she leaves, Sam casts Fly on her, just in case and holds the Concentration. 
Ost and Kat go talk to the bouncers and Kat decides to pretend to be her mom to get access to the area Yelle is. She rolls low and is told, “Hey, aren’t you already up there?” Kat is like, fuck and Ost saves her by using her charm earrings to get an entourage of guards who will let them through and do what she says. Once up there, Kat doesn’t see her mom which I can imagine she has mixed feelings about. 
Sam finds Dunston who is talking about Fantasy Bitcoin and seems like a real “Step on me mommy” type you know? Like, I feel like he’s into findom. Anyway, Sam charms him and his hangers on and learns about a procedure called a Phlebectomy that involves something going into their nose and then they feel better. Sam is rightfully horrified because, as I said, she is Most Likely To Survive A Horror Movie and can sense BS when she sees is. It’s apparently all the rage with the rich people here which is, como de dice, concerning seeing as they’re surrounded by them but we’ll get to that. Sam takes advantage of Dunston’s proclivities and gets him alone, knocks him out, steals him clothes, and pretends to be him (a *very* good scene by Sephie). 
Penny sees a gnome gnome boy (Lysander Higgins) shining shoes and finds out from him that there is a copper earth genasi woman here. In a very Cinderella move, she asks what shoes she was wearing. Then, she makes out with him which like, sure. At least it’s not a grown adult man this time. Before she gets her kisses in, she does tell the group what she learned. 
Up with the rich people, Yelle is introduced to Tal’s friend who is into Eidolons because of the name she chose. Between the shoes and her knowledge, they confirm that it’s TK! Yelle asks what she knows about Eidolons and she says that 7 is a very powerful number.
We cut to Ant who is patrolling the room as the sun sets and she suddenly hears a little beeping. It’s coming from a small crystal that was in Preston’s shirt (which she still has on her because???). Guests start dripping goo from their noses and transforming into monsters. Ant realizes that some kind of spell is happening triggered by midnight and this beeping. Hope these costumes are battle ready cause it’s fight time baybee!
Superlatives 
Danielle: Most Likely to Be on The News for Murdering Fantasy Jeff Bezos
I cannot imagine what was running through Yelle’s head when she decided that, having just rolled into a foreign country, her next move was to start using lethal force on anti-environmentalist colonizing capitalists. Like, she’s not *wrong* per se but she is wild--in all senses of the word.  
Random Thoughts
Kat keeps saying yesterday was her birthday which Ost/Izzy (and the rest of the group to a less vocal degree) are simply not having because maybe her dad would forget her birthday but her girls absolutely would not.
“You’re great because you stayed,” is the other killshot Kat line to her dad.
At a certain point Sam says, “This is so unhealthy,” to I think Yelle and like, if SAM is telling you your coping mechanisms are unhealthy, get thee to therapy.
OK, so someone, presumably Anima’s spirit, talks to Yelle as she makes her grand entrance which seems like info they should get to Talura ASAP, right? Cause that’s evidence they’re not dead-dead, just changed in form. But also Anima, girl. Don’t talk to Yelle. Talk to your rampaging sister!
"That's my secret, I stay in initiative."
Just a process note, notes are taken for the next ep and I am working on getting that recap up ASAP. As a battle ep, it will be in the abbreviated style that I did for last battle ep. 
In this episode, Penny rolls a Nat 1 (which she rerolls) and one of Brennan’s NPCs rolls a Nat 1. Ant rolls 2 Nat 20s, Yelle rolls 1, and Brennan says that one of his NPCs gets a 20 which sweeps him entirely into Sam’s dance number. 
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Not to be your stereotypical second semester senior but EJ Caswell is a bit too busy to be thinking about sports metaphors...
(Alternative title- overcommitted..sounds like a Caswell)
Senior year was insanely busy. Being so overwhelmed EJ had been slowing down over the last couple weeks, but he was brushing it off just fine.
EJ has arrived late that day, which was unusual in itself, as he prides himself on being on time. Holding a half eaten packet of Oreos he shuffled into the rehearsal room slumping on the bleachers away from his chattering cast mates.
“EJ honey great you could join us, you’d think a senior couldn’t get lost in the halls!” Miss Jenn giggled at her own joke as the cast were suddenly alerted to the older boys presence. EJ absentmindedly nodded and grabbed out his script.
“Yeah...sorry..um...where are we at?”
“Page 63” “Cool... thanks”
Flipping to that part in the script, he looks up to take in the scene. Kourtney, Gina, Seb and Carlos are clearly half way through blocking a castle scene- Carlos complaining his arms are tired from ‘staying in character’, Kourtney and Seb working out where they are going to come in from and how to negotiate Sebs big box costume (although it’s proving very difficult considering the rehearsal room is about a quarter of the size of the stage) and Gina is animatedly discussing the scene choices with Miss Jenn.
Within an instant, EJ is startled from the scene as Natalie is beside him rambling something about ‘needing a fill in for cogworth’ ‘went home sick’. Sauntering up with his script, EJ’s vision goes spotted as he gets up from the bleachers. But as soon as it comes it’s gone.
He just needs to get through this rehearsal, then he can; go home, finish his debate speech, go over the plays for Friday’s waterpolo match, study for tomorrow’s maths assessment, start his exam notes, memorise his lines, work on his college applications, and maybe even get some sleep.
Joining the cast he tries to hide in the back corner. Following the basic blocking directions seemed harder than usual, his head had began to pound and fatigue hit him like a wave.
However he continued on, sluggish but present helping them to finish blocking the scene.
Walking back to his place on the bleachers EJ trips over his own feet. Catching himself before a big splat on the floor he is able to avoid the attention of his cast mates. Well mostly.
“EJ are you ok?”
EJ didn’t need to look up to know that his cousin had definitely seen his little trip.
“Yep fine”
“Ok try again but this time make it the truth”
Ashlyn was caring but firm, she definitely wasn’t going to brush it off. EJ could feel his facade fading under her concerned gaze. His voice drops low.
“I-i just don’t know... Ash, I’m trying-“
“ON TO THE NEXT SCENE Gaston and Le Fou, I need you boys to start down stage right”
EJ got up slowly, subtly steadying himself against a chair not to lose balance.
“Nevermind it’ll be fine”
EJ walks off, with that any vulnerablity on face vanishing, leaving Ashlyn’s stomach to churn in a pool of worry.
Being an after school rehearsal, most of the cast heads off after they start rehearsing the next scene as it only has Gaston and Le Fou. Leaving the rehearsal room with just Miss Jenn, Big Red, EJ, Ashlyn and Gina (the latter two who were waiting on the senior for a ride home).
EJ and Big Red slowly work through the dialogue, the scene is about as smooth as a clunky old railway track. After running it twice EJ feels like his words are melding into one. But pushing through, based off his poor entrenched habits, EJ made it through another run through of the scene.
“Um can we take a five?”
Miss Jenn looks at the senior perplexed, he’s never asked for a five. Ever.
“EJ honey is everything ok?”
“Hm, yeah just need a sec”
EJ’s exhausation catches up with him, the light seems to highlight the bags under his eyes. He drops onto the bleachers, resting his head in his hands he closes his eyes for a second.
“Miss Jenn, EJ doesn’t look so good maybe you guys should wrap this up for today-”
“Ash I’m-“
“No. You look exhausted! You barely have the energy to stand up for 10 minutes”
Ashlyn moves to grab him his drink bottle but runs into his iced coffee and Oreo packet first. She flinches. Her cousin never drinks coffee unless he purely needs the caffeine.
EJ freezes she moment he realises she’s seen it.
“When was the last time you slept?!”
All eyes are on him.
“James” His head snapped up. But he couldn’t look his cousin in the eye. Because then she’d see his eyes are glassy with unshed tears. His overwhelmed thoughts race through his mind.
“Ok I think we’ll pick this up next rehearsal, please be safe getting home and get some rest”
The four students start to pack up their bags, Ashlyn asking her boyfriend to give them all a lift. Turning to her cousin, helps him finish packing his stuff.
“You can stay in the guest room, we’re having lasagna tonight”
EJ too tired to protest, walks past his Jeep in the parking lot to get in a smaller orange bug car. He’ll have to come back for it tomorrow because there’s no way he could drive safely in his tired state.
The car ride home was eerily quiet, Ashlyn day in the passenger seat next to Big Red. He drove to Ashlyn’s house like a routine he knew by heart. Gina keep flicking worried glances at EJ but the senior didn’t even notice, having closed his eyes and resting against the window the moment he entered the car.
“Thanks for the ride Biggie”
Gina gentley nudged EJ and his eyes were open in an instant.
“Thanks Red” He mumbled as he got out of the car.
“No worries, take care guys”
As the orange car was disappearing into the distance, Ashlyn unlocked the front door. Gina and EJ follow her into the house.
“James lets go the living room”
EJ follows Ashlyn to the couch, and Gina continues past to grab a drink of water from the kitchen.
“What’s going on?”
Ashlyn puts a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezes it, grounding him and reminding him that she’s here to listen. He looks at the faded colourful rug and his words begin to vomit out softly.
“I’m just trying to get it all done ...and um.. for weeks I just never seem to have enough time, and I still have to do my study notes and finish my assessment and college apps tonight... but I’m just so tired...”
His voice cracks and the wall behind his eyes begin to break.
“I have to stay up so late, to get everything I have to all done...and then polo practice at the crack of dawn... i don’t know.. I just can’t... let anyone down..”
Ashlyn pulls EJ in tightly. His body wracked with sobs, her heart breaks as she hasn’t seen him like this in a long time. Gina initially freezes entering the room just as the senior had begun to cry but soon shifts over beside them engulfing them both in a hug.
Grabbing some tissues and a sip of water he’s able to stop his crying but his tense shoulders give away his overwhelmed mind.
“it will be ok, we’ll work this out. Everyone else will understand if everything is not done right now. You’ve got to take better care of yourself, what matters is if you are ok”
Gina nods in agreeance with Ashlyn as she comforts EJ.
“But for now you need to take a break, just have a quick nap before dinner in the guest room-“
“But I have to-“
“No James you need a rest, all this stuff can come later”
He sluggishly gets up heading for the guest room mumbling a “thanks Ash” as he retreats to his long awaited rest.
After he closes the door, Ashlyn lets out the breath she had been holding. She was convinced they would have to put up more of a fight to get him to go to sleep, but the fact that they didn’t was almost more concerning.
“He did seem a little bit off earlier in the week but yeah I had no idea that this was under the surface”
Gina says to break the silence created by her and Ashlyn’s shocked worry.
“Yeah he’s always been pretty good at bottling this stuff up, definitely a Caswell skill”
Ashlyn starts to pick up the tissues heading to the bin in the kitchen. Both the girls enter the kitchen to finish heating up the leftover lasagna they made yesterday.
While cooking the veggies the girls trade stories of earlier in the day and discuss the spotting of Miss Jenn and Mr Mazzarra at Sliced on Valentine’s. Just as they’re plating up, EJ reappears. He looks somewhat disheveled, wearing sweats and his usually spiked hair is messy like a 2012 Bieber hairstyle. His contacts are long gone being traded for his wide framed glasses.
“Feeling any better?”
Bringing the plates to the table they all sit in their usual seats.
“Yeah a little...thanks guys this looks amazing”
As if on cue his stomach grumbles with excitement and they dig into the food. The three teens continue to tell stories of their day. Although exhausted, a goofy smile makes its way onto EJ’s face while telling the girls about his classmate in English that tried justify his argument quoting spark notes, instead of the actual book.
Once they’re finished, EJ stacks and clears away the plates. Grabbing her laptop, Ashlyn creates a new copy of one of her old timetables modified with all EJ’s stuff. After cleaning the dishes, EJ plops down beside her and together they start to work out.
Half an hour and a warm hot chocolate later, they manage to finish a schedule that looks like it fit a bit of time for everything while keeping a heathy amount of rest time.
“Thank you so much Ash... I really appreciate it”
Ashlyn smiles back at her cousin.
“Just promise me you’ll take care of yourself, or at least you’ll let me know if you need help”
EJ engulfs her in a hug.
“Yeah I will, thanks”
As they both move to join Gina in the lounge room, EJ grabs his laptop to start completing his speech. Flopping down onto the couch, the tv is turned onto a Brooklyn Nine Nine halloween heist episode.
Taking EJs laptop at 9:30, the older boy fell asleep within an instant. Keeping to his promise, he followed the schedule he made with Ashlyn (most of the time at least) and finally learnt how to ask for help when he realised he couldn’t do it alone. And when he asked for help, Ashlyn and Gina were always there with an extra mug of hot chocolate.
Thanks for reading! I’m open to write prompts or suggestions
(...Also if anyone can think of any better names for this please comment because all my thoughts were low key trash😂)
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icecreamkink · 3 years
Text
watched all of the untamed / cql in two weeks after my friend 1 told me abt mdzs a hundred years ago and my friends 2 and 3 tried to get me into cql for like two whole years and there are.
feelings.
very first scene is a very dramatic death in the middle of nightmare battle on sith planet land . i will forget abt it in the next tenish episodes and then will be very surprised when it becomes Extremely Painful
anyway magic flying gays and possession and human sacrifice! we are off to a great start
in retrospect, chaos goblin wei wuxian must have had a blast pretending to be so cRaZy and be as disruptive as he could as mo xuanyu lbr
listen. why is fire always evil coded. cant a magic clan wear red, black and orange and have flame motif while being wholesome?
For Legal Reasons These Are Not Zombies
i wish the politics of the sect were a bit clearer, especially at the beggining when the wen clan had sm power, was wen ruohan the chief cultivator? is that why they were so slow in responding to the attacks? im v confused by the pre yiling patriarch politics
fighting in the roof by the moonlight as way of flirtiiiiiiing. as i understand this is a wuxia/xianxia trope and honestly...... thank u for ur service
slight bullying and being a nuisance in general, as a way of flirting we love to see it
wwx: if i drink on the rooftop, thats not inside the cloud recesses! hmmm check and mate :D lwj: i will fuck u up so help me god   wwx: :0
i lov them
through hell or high water (quite literally) wei wuxian rem ains a trashfire gremlin till the end and i love him with my whole heart
in the pt subs wei wuxian calls jiang cheng a stubborn duck and i dearly wish that had come back
my opinions on almost every character goes from love to hate u - Hmm Me Like U - BABY. ILY. and i am Very Pleased w that. its been a while since i loved such a complete cast so much i think
no really. i WONT go into a detailed rant abt what i love about each of these characters and each of their relationships to each other. but i COULD. 
some lan disciples in the loudest whisper ever: YEAH THATS THE JIN BASTARD MENG YAO HEARD THE GOT SUPER HUMILIATED BY HIS DAD LOL SURE HOPE HE DOESNT TAKE SLIGHTS TO HIS CHARACTER TO HEART
lan xichen, immediately: i must Love him 
being into problematic ppl is in the Lan genetics, we come to realize
wen qing deserves so many awards for so many things but not snapping and just stabbing wen chao is at the top 
that scene at lan qirens class where wwx talks about using resentful energy to fight a violent spirit. exquisite.
 It establishes Good Student lan wangji, wei wuxian as curious and questioning and not afraid of taboo,  lwj sees that wwx is not, in fact, a dumb ass hes just a Dumbass,  shows us the audience (esp. a western audience) how shocking the idea of disrupting the dead/dying and controlling resentful energy actually is,  the theoretical foreshadow arguing, everyone else like ‘shUT UP’,  “and how could you ensure that the resentful energy would obey you and not hurt other?” “well i havent thought that far” and of course, lan qiren just straight up lobbing a hard object at wwx head,. chefs kiss
fellas is it gay to bother the hot rule obessessed nerd from ur school and make drawings of him with flowers in his hair and then hide gay porn in his book to antagonize him and ask him to hold ur hand and be ur friend and talk to him all the time and get him drunk and give him bunnies bc you know he likes them and give him a lantern and always want his attention and dedicate yourself to getting him to smile-
and after all of that wwx rly said oh i Admire him, aksd like yeah we all were there in high school buddy
i have Learned. caves = gay.
 accidental marriage +beint physically tied together with the sacred married ribbon+ gay panic+foreshadowing+bunnies! in the cave (1)
the story abt lan yi and baoshan sanren tho. i would like to see it
early days wen bros pull my heart strings like a guqin 
EVERYTHING about the lantern scene; disaster hets jiang yanli and jin zixuan; how wwx made lwj a bunny lantern. how soft and touched lwj was. wwx gleefully pointing out he was smiling and lwj IMMEDIATELY PULLING HIW SWORD ON HIM LMAO. tragically foreshadowy promises to do right by pepople, living without regrets. lwjs 'oh no do i love him??' face. just. all of it. 
i have it on good acc that in the novel lwj is explicitly Repressed Gay Panicked Big Horny which is delightful and rly Adds to the performance
 baby lwj is really just conceal dont feel dont let them know u have EMOTIONS (derogatory)
jiang cheng rly went "why dont.u go play with HIM if u like him so much"
jc and wwx have big BIG annoying sibling energy dont think too hard abt it or youll cry
lotus pier is soo pretty :((((((((((((((((
up until episode 13 you could think this could be a magical ancient chinese gays pride n prejudice w swords and shenanigans ................youre just not prepared for the game of thrones of it all
seriously ha ha ha i cried so much w this show my eyes genuinely swelled up . like. physically. fun timez fun timez
that being said, its hilarious that wen xu goes to cloud recesses like 'come out or ill kill all these hostages' and then DOESNT WAIT FOR AN ASWER AND KILLS THEM ALL IMMEDIATELY. do u know how blackmail works sir
 would like to make it recorded that from day one i was like 'CALL A GODDAMN CULTIVATION G20 THIS ASSHOLE SECT IS LITERALLY MASSACRING YALL!!' and it took them like 3 or 4 massacres to do anything and they STILL sent their heirs into their territory  LIKE
when wwx cites the gusu lan rules to wen chao tho. that rebel/attention whore/cutie pie 'look lan zhan i DID memorize the rules after all' ‘also a big fuck you to the wen sect :D :D’ sweet spot that scene achieves . delicious
all the cultivator young masters being petty af even though they are practically prisoners at the cave is hilarious and i love them
hurt and comfort + gay mistunderstandings + watsonian gay declaration music + accidental evil acquisition! at the cave (2)
its like where do i start? the fact theyre both trapped and kind of heavily injured inside an isolated cave with a murder turtle? wwx gay panicking lwj into coughing up bad blood? lwj being jealous as wwx babbles abt mianmian? telling him he shouldnt play with people and wwx saying he never played him? wwx going Oh. I See what is happening. YOU like mianmian, and lwj absolute done face ??? (iconic) wwx touching the sacred married ribbon Again? the telepathic communication? the sword? WEI WUXIAN ASKING LAN WANGJI TO SING TO HIM AS HE IS PASSING OUT AND LWJ SINGING HIM. THE SONG. HE WROTE. FOR WWX. AND THAT HE CALLED. THEIR SHIP NAME????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
they are SO insufferable pleeeeease
in the words of my friend 1 : “CQL is so gay we were all amazed how it got past the censors Ofc unfortunately it can't be novel level gay But they did their best And we love them for it”
in the theme of songs THIS OST. WUJI HAS BEEN LIVING IN MY MIND RENT FREE SINCE I FIRST HEARD IT the whole ost is so so sO beautiful.
 the costuming in this is also soooo exquisite. the embroidery? the fabrics? the details? how every sect and clan has a distinct style and architecture? (also ik they based each off of dif periods in chinese history which is REALLY fucking cool) just chefs kiss
the direction too!. i enjoy the unusual camera movements and i think they give it that Vibe, also their composition is PARTICULARLY good when it comes to telling the subtext through position of camera/position of character (like nhs off to the side in scenes he at first glance doesnt need to be/ how lwj is often centered when hes Jealous Yearning at wwx being affectionate w other ppl, wwx return from burial mounds etc)
ik madam yu is like Badass Milf Check and shes not getting any mom of the year awards but im delighted at how messy she is. IMAGINE that woman on tiktok
you better have enjoyed gay cave (2) bc its Just Pain from here on out! 
jiang fengmian and madame yu win the Most Dramatic Way to show they do care about each other, actually ..... ever :)
i thought jiang yanli jiang cheng and wei wuxian forcing themselves to escape yunmeng barely holding on after their parents are killed was going to be the height of pain in this show. ha. 
the family dynamics in general on this showwwww, both blood/ adopted/ found families, brotherly bonds and lifelong friendships just. rly. truly. fucked me up. theyre all so important and complicated and well rounded and beautiful and tragic
and beyond being a Win For the Gays im so glad the relationships w wwx and jiang yanli/ wen qing were NOT changed from platonic bc they are so much better like that imo. like maybe if we didnt Live In A Society it wouldnt be so, but the fact wwx and others can love and value them so much and theres nothing romantic or sexual abt it is like. so refreshing. especially @ jyl, with the way he and jc are overprotective of her and shes such a nurturing/care taker figure for them, it would just not vibe as well if they made it romantic
i love that this is a story abt Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch aka Actual Satan/Boogey Man/Village With/Public Enemy Number One , my dude is literally a necromancer who only dresses in black and has evil smokey black tendrils wafting out of him, but the really edgy one is still jiang cheng, pastel purple fashion icon
and speaking of best/worst siblings wei wuxian and jiang cheng *immediately starts crying* 
The Golden Core Transfer i just. no thots only tears 
wen qing and wen ning putting themselves in so much danger just.... to help them. wn saving jc from wen chao. wq finding a way to get wwx to transfer his core. like thinking about the monumental work these two did to help wwx and jyl and jc... jyl trying so fucking hard to be strong and keep on moving and giver her little brothers comfort after losing everything... jiang cheng. losing his parents and his home and his ability to do anything abt it and his complete desperation and lack of self worth and turning on them with agression  when he didnt realize all that they did for him ... hhhhhhhhhhhhh
me, pointing at the whole cast “i just LOVE them mom!!!”
its sad tho, that BARELY ANY of the women have like.... actual important conversations let alone relationships with each other at all in the story. and like wq and jyl have stayed at the same place for extended periods of time, where wq actively took care of her TWICE,  and still! not one measly convo, nothing! ................ .𝓌ₕᵧ
everyone in this show need a good sip of Self Worth and Stop Sacrificing Yourself juice 
ngl the sword flying looks very dumb 
“a-cheng, please bring a-xian back.” “i will, i promise.” ;-;
the whole calling each other by the More Intimate Version of the name, first as teasing and later as true intimacy. mmmhmmm yes
untamed where everythings the same but wwx evil flute song is eoeo
related that scene when wwx comes back from the burial mounds for the first time w demonic cultivation and he acts all formal and calls lwj hanguang-jun and keeps being evasive and distant and mean and soooooo................. facetious 
and how hes kind of desperately trying to keep intense lwj at bay (A FIRST) and avoiding actually talking to either of them and its all tension ughhh and then he MOCKS his and lwjs relationship, he jokes w him in this like... mean echo of their usual ~banter~ oof 
 and like!!! uncertain but so relieved jc who just HUGS him w no reservations for once and its not like he isnt just as worried as lwj abt wwx and what hes doing, but he chooses in that moment to enjoy getting him back first and mmhmMMMmMm yes (maybe my favorite scene in the whole show? MAYBE SO. ) 
highkey hurt me but also. i might be into mean wwx. i will take no criticism.
lan zhans sad eyes tho :((((((((( 
on one hand i wish we could have seen what happened at the burial mounds but on the other the timeskip adds so much flair to his return so im hnnn
also i love that hes been missing for 3 months reappears kinda melancholic and bloodthirsty and knowing malign tricks and jc is like 'so. are u sad bc of lan wangji'
when ur bae survived the war but he thinks ur evil/ might be evil so you cant kiss :///
hmmm talking at the rooftop under the moonlight not mentioning everything that stands between usssss
they are the two jades of lan and we’ll be the two heroes of yunmeng is the type of line u dont even need to know whats gonna happen to know thats gonna be sad
when they fight wen ruoshan at the nightless city i thought that was the battle we see at the first ep and its not and its so easy and theyre all like ‘yayy we won go wwx!’ i was just. SCREAMS WHAT is gonna HAPPEN
so like. post burial mounds/sunshot campaign pre yiling patriarch wwx is like. ultra arrogant, ultra mocking, peak lil shit and it gave me e v e r y t h i n g i wanted
even tho having the wen prisoners at the targets at phoenix mountain and still having wwx and jzx shooting the arrows was???? so.... tone deaf 
wwx: fucking w demonic energy   jyl: he has never done anything wrong in his life, ever <3 <3 (mood)
the parallels between meng yao/wei wuxian (and even xue yang a bit?) are Seen and they are Valid
wwx post burial mounds: can yall SHUT UP abt the goddamn sword (suibian left the chat)
LIKE truly, we talk abt the angst and yearning with wangxian. but what abt wwx and suibian. xianbian / xianqing angst and comfort 100k
take a shot everytime someone coughs up blood
zidian is simply the coolest spiritual weapon rip to suibian and chenqing and bichen and sendou and baixa........ but tis the truth 
cons: everyones families died in a nightmare war! everyones homes burned to the ground! everyone is traumatized! pros: everyone gets cooler clothes and weapons!!
wen ning and a-yuan and yanli bestest babes squad dont touch me rn
everyone: brooding and fighting                                                                wq and jyl: why dont you try some acupunture/drinking some soup and calm down huh? how abt that bitch?? 
showing the battle/massacre at the nightless city first was genius actually bc then everytime we have a cute scene w yunmeng bros and theyre like 'we'll be together forever! uwu' youre like oh. oh no. oh no no no. 
justice vs lawfulness vs means and ends 👁
jc: stay in the right path and practice the art of the sword                        wx: yeah thats not gonna happen chief
my reaction to wwx renouncing to the sect politics to help the wens was just that elmo burning gif in succession
the dramatic rain. wen qing desperately calling out to wen ning. the ghosts/puppets killing the guards. how terrifying wn actually was while wwx was controlling him :( lwj goeing after him to try and stop him and then he just; he Sees him and understands him even if he cant actually do anything about it other than let them go. 
“there must be somewhere in this earth we can go to :(((((((((”
"IF I HAVE TO FIGHT THEM, I'D RATHER IT BE YOU. DYING BY YOUR HANDS WOULD AT LEAST BE WORTH IT." oh my god oh my god oh my goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddd
also lwjs umbrella is white w black smoke.. .  . nice
yiling patriarch / demonic farming burial mounds settlement is like one of my favorite concepts. they an "EVIL" FARMING COMMUNITY LED BY THE VILLAGE WITCH COME ON
they planted TURNIPS and LOTUS FLOWERS and ONE (1) baby and made lanterns and a common hall :(((((((
wen qing and wei wuxian, baddest bitches and genius science best friends i absolutely LOVED to see it. they rly went ‘is anyone gonna sibling/project partner that’ and didnt wait for an answer
both wwx and jyl getting lotus ponds at the burial mounds and in lanling bc they miss lotus pier ;;;;;;;w
;;;;; wish jyl had actually gone into the burial mounds. we were robbed of jyl and wq meeting again and jyl meeting a-yuan and seeing the settlement and the homes and all ;w; at least jc did go, stab wounds and broken arms and all
wwx like... having thrown his whole life away to help the wens (yeah the sect leaders and jin guangshan in particular wanting his stygian tiger amulet was an Element but still) and not.... necessarily regretting it, but grappling with all of the consequences of it... becoming moody and drepressed at times, missing his family and lotus pier and his friends and probably simply missing being around people and causing trouble, extrovert that he is, lashing out at the wens and at a-yuan, just in general the whole messiness of that experience
the way the resentful energy does affect his temperament is rly nice bc its not too in your face,(i mean outside of the Shaky Hands of Rage) but like he clearly has a much lesser control on his anger and impulsivity (tall order) than both before bm and after hes ressurected
on that note A-YUAN BABIEST BABY BOY BEST BOY
lan zhan being like oh hey there wei ying fancy meeting u and our son here. just passing by u know how it is hmmmmMm and then PLOT TWIST having defied orders to go see him and being punished for it. oof;;
 they habent seen each other in like? a year? and now theyre tgt 10 seconds and are already parenting a child together
also lwj rly kneels down in the snow way too much to be healthy
wwx: calm down guyssss i wont lose control of demonic cultivation omgggg  .   spoiler alert: he loses control of demonic cultivation
did u enjoy cute children? good bc now the Real Pain Begins
jiang yanli and jin zixuan rly out there APROPRIATING both disaster gays AND bury ur gays huh ;w;
i KNEW jin lings birthday was gonna fuck something up but the GASP that left my body when wwx lost control of wn and killed jin zixuan .. . . 
im sorry and thank you aaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAaAAAAA 
when wen ning and wen qing were telling wwx their plan i was saying NO NO NO NO NO NO out loud in despair 
also can we talk abt how wq is definetely talking about only the both of them surrending themselves but then? everyone else just surrenders w them? IT MAKES NO SENSE LIKE WHY WOULD THEY what would be the Point
 sometimes there are some pretty gaping jumps in logic and continuity that are just like                     ?          ?
wwx: oh so when you try to murder me its justified but when i survive through dark magic and murder all of you its a "war crime"
unsurprisingly, his most feral, most spiraling moment talking to the sect leaders on the roof and attacking them and even fighting lan zhan is among my favorite scenes... its like, so painful to watch but also   so       thrilling   (and maybe my wen bbs dying arose some resentful energy in me what can i say) 
and its JUST, all they ever wanted was to do good but then... war. and trauma. and hubris. 
jiang cheng on the ground clearly thorn between what to do and feel is a Mood, lets just say
i was already crying when jyl showed up, but if i wasnt-
 i suffered SO MUCH through this series trying to figure out WHY jc would kill wwx. and when i understood. its somehow not as bad as i thought and also MUCH MUCH WORSE
a look into my group chat during the last flashback episodes:
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
SO ANYWAY. after the BLOOD BATH and RIPPING YOUR HEART OUT and FEEDING IT TO YOU  the untamed goes ‘ayy back to the present!! tu du dud ud du’ 
literally it ends a quarter into an episode and then KEEPS GOING i had to pause and stare blankly at the ceiling for an hour
babie cultivators and detective soulmates . i do need some cute after All of That 
(not that the pain is over LOL)
lwj is significantly less emotionally repressed in the present and its delightful. hes just ALL IN with wwx. and not just in the ‘i would and have killed various men and risked my reputation for you’ but also ‘ur tired here have a drink i brought it up cause i know u like it and it want you to be happy, always’
“when everyone praised me and wanted my power, you were the only one that challenged me. now that everyone hates me and wants me dead, youre the only one that stands by my side.” hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 
and just filling in the blanks how lan zhan searched for him. for all of those 16 years he searched for him and was punished for it and raised a-yuan, the only survivor of the burial mounds settlement, as his own in gusu......
and jiang cheng.  being the tough love uncle . having raised the yunmeng jiang clan from the rubble all alone, his whole family dead, some of it on the blame of his own brother, his siblings, his closest friends gone.......and only jin ling there needing his guidance. 
THE PARALLEL BETWEEN JIN LING BEING A LIFELINE FOR JIANG CHENG AND A-YUAN FOR LAN WANGJI AFTER THE BATTLE AT THE NIGHTLESS CITY  
great now i made myself sad
and like . the fact! that lwj and jc dislike each other!!. jc projects blame onto him for wwx both “leaving” him and indirectly causing their families deaths and when hes so consumed by it he makes wwx an enemy, lwj is there now? trying to protect him?? and lwj, who can never understand the pain that wwx , indirectly or not put jc through, but who was right there when jc tried to kill him and will never allow him to hurt wwx again. and how they like. in a way project blame of their tragedies onto each other while dealing with some type of survivor guilt and in their own way still loving wwx through it all???  amd in way its kind of fundamentally selfish but also tragically understandable? and like when u put it against the fact that after he disappears during the sunshot campaign they were looking for him together and fought together??
JUST. THE CHARACTERS. AND THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THIS. MAN. UGH. GOD. 
and like i think thats what makes it so good? its such a sad and painful and violent story, edgy even, but its compelling bc at the center of it there are all of these relationships and different types of love and hope and. :( i love it
enough crying lets talk abt wwx sleeping at the jingshi with lwj and wearing his under garment for a minute 🙏
 jin ling just has that Was Raised by JC energy tho lmao i love him
babie cultivator squad is the perfect ammount of cute and comedic relief while still bearing the weight? of the narrative in a way, both from sizhui and jin lings existences, and also. like. how do i put this. they feel hopeful? they were born after a war, they came of age at a time of relative peace, they dont hold on so closely to the resentments of their parents/father figures, they are specifically shown as more accepting and open minded. and its like.... Hope for the future  
one of the ?? things  i love the most is the fact that the main cast are often in situations where theyre hunted/running but they like. never wear disguises... just going around in their gorgeous expensive clan clothes and hair ornaments and distinctive spiritual weapons.... maybe w a straw hat on, just for kicks
wwx teacher 🥺🥺🥺
so this is why its called Yi City Misery huh
a-qing is such. an icon. im so sad. my girl even knew to leave xys dumb self rotting by the road but no one listens to her thats why theyre all dead or sad 
her and xue yang measuring each other up was so entertaining lmao
 its the funniest thing when hes like. HERES MY SAD STORY. FOR WHY IM A SADISTIC MURDERER. I BROKE MY HAND ONCE. 
like ok someone broke his hand in a horrible way, and like Poverty, i get it but also like.......... that lost the brunt of a proper sob story like, 50 sadistic murders ago bby
and i love that xingchen does not entertain that for a second hes like ‘not ?????? good enough???’ and the best thing is he wasnt even like 'u hadto be the bigger person' or sth but ' well then break that dudes hand back, rip his arm off for i care, what do the rest of us have to do w anything???” 
anjo sensato :(
xue yang is like..... the sexy sadistic evil version of a himbo..... a meanbo...
the fucked upness of xy’s feelings for xxc/ xxc and sl feelings for each other... like my dude literally gave his bf HIS EYES. and xy getting so attached to xxc .... the fucked up fake domesticity.... having him hurt sl..... then desperately trying to bring him back ...................... oof
song lan........... literally had his eyes AND tongue removed, his bfs eyes put in place, was almost killed, turned into a puppet by his bf unknowingly, manipulated by xy, sees his bf killing himself in despair.... and STILL finds the strenght to get up from there, and keep on traveling and helping people and attempting to fix xxcs soul.......... like, my man. damn. 
wangxian looking at songxiao and seeing an Actually more painful parallel for themselves. ft. that Color Coding. 
THE A-YUAN/SIZHUI REVEAL PUNCHED ME IN THE HEART but in a good way for a change
should have know that he would be the Best Boy the cute one w all the braincells
the butterfly AND the bunny lantern. i see how it is
u know is very convenient that no one can see the stark black veins on wen nings neck, ever 
BAT WEN NING 
wns face when lwj comes into wwx room like ‘:0 omg did u two finally get your shit together? good for you master wei good for u’ 
(they didnt) (yet)
DISASTER DRUNK LWJ. JUST. THRUST SOME CHICKENS TO SHOW UR RESSURECTED BAE THAT U LOVE THEM.
i have absolutely no idea WHY they gave lwj the same punishment for fighting his own sect/allies to protect the burial mounds as when they got drunk on cloud recess class days.... like? its such a ... emotional continuity error again
also is lwj gonna get an actual friend besides wwx , ever
mianmian marrying and having a family and a cute life after saying FUCK U AND UR SYSTEM TOO in a much less unhinged and dramatic way than wwx......... fills me w joy
also lol the idea that like. her husband not knowing that shes friends w satan/the boogey man/the village witch is hilarious
i love nie mingjue bc hes the resident Though Guy but also the most dramatic bitch in this show and thats Saying Something
jin ling cant have one uneventful relative can he
the fact that everyone present already knew “mo xuanyu” was wwx at the stairs is so funny, their faces are like ‘oh............ wow. that. sure is a development. shock” 
in the tradition of extremely loud whispers wwx tells lwj with twelve guards standing like one meter away from them: HEY PSH LAN ZHAN PRETEND IM FORCING YOU TO STAY W ME DO IT
oh my god oh my god
the absolute Yearning on his face when he leaves wwx and a-yuan at the burial mounds and refuses to stay for dinner was already Enough but the fact?? they brought it back?? to this declaration of love?? their expressions??????? strike me dead right now just go ahead
lFor Legal Reasons We Cant Kiss but we will have a very sappy declaration of love and trust and look at each other in way that is the actualization of 💞💘💗💖💓💘💞💗💖💘💗💖💕💞
also icb all the sect leaders and guards are standing there watching them say they like like each other with a dozen swords pointing at their neck
i enjoyed the depiction of the fickle public perception and how easily it can be used to scapegoat people. when the sect leaders turn on jgy and wwx knows thats its more for convenience than anything else...
poor lxc is literally like 'oh so when YOUR problematic boyfriend gets called evil its a misunderstanding but when its MY problematic bf-'
ok like i cant get over nmj let jgy play a song that messed with his temperament at all, like maN u KNEW he might be shady wth
wwx: “hey dont say anything bad abt lan zhan hes not an arrogant dick, thats just his face. 
ME ON THE OTHER HAND"
the cultivators as wwx is poking holes in their narrative is literally *nazaré meme*
"wei wuxian-!" "what did i break your leg, too?" not to be problematic but i laughed so hard
not as hard as "you dont have the rank to talk to me " tho
i Enjoy that, over the course of story, wwx sees that... theres nothing truly to Do, but move on. he saw how his arrogance and his mistakes hurt others, and hes trying to fix what he can, but he already did die for his mistakes and there are things he cant fix and that's. just how it is. even towards jgy, the narrative doesn't go gleefully and completely with "lets make THEM pay bc theyre the big bad" bc its not that simple, and it wouldn't lead anywhere but more pain...
re him and jiang cheng and the wens and kinda. isnt that what nhs did? scheming to displace jgy out of revenge more than any justice and doing so in the most painful way?
idk if that actually makes sense im truly just babbling
i thought the scene at the lotus pond would be CUTE but the context was PAIN again
jiang cheng finding out about his golden core and his conflict with wwx at the guanyin temple .... destroyed me but in a nice way kinda.... same way it destroys him look at his face oh god
and. the fact??? he sacrificed himself for wwx?? first?? and he'll probably never tell anyone much less wwx???? keeps me up at night
i havent decided if the neckbreak transition between jgy does sth super Evil or does he he does OR Does He yes he does O R does heeeee is sth i dislike or not
jin guangyao and wei wuxians most interesting parallel is that... theyve both seen 'hmm hey this system is fucked up' and wwx went 'so fuck it all i will renounce it and challenge it' and jgy went 'so fuck it i will use all of it to my advantage and manipulate it to my goals and whims'
the fact jgys mom was actually great and he loved her and his whole issue w it was more than simply being ashamed of being a bastard kinda got me ngl
never trust a dude with a fan.
nhs and jgy: the first rule to a convoluted and decades spanning violent revenge plot is to have fun and be yourself! 
when a-yuan finally FINALLY remembers ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;-;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; wen ning has someone in his family back and a-yuan has someone to talk abt his wen family and wwx has him back bc he survived and lwj raised him anD HES THEIR SON. THEYRE MARRIED AND HAVE A SON. UGH.
and theyre allowed to heal. everyone is allowed to try and recover and be happy
netflix put all of the 3 endings on top of each other and it looks kinda weird actually BUT I DONT EVEN MIND :’’’’’’’’’)
the gasp that left me when lwj says ‘wei ying’ and wwx turns.........
there was also a screen with ‘thank you mxtx for creating these characters, we hope their wishes come true’ and i might. have cried then too. maybe. 
that was . a ride. as is proven by this behemot of a ramble clearly i just really needed and Outlet. i am currently trying to convince dumb monkey brain to not consume the other medias of mdzs immediately bc i REALLY need to like. live. a life. and take care of real responsibilities.  *longest oh boi ever*
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ghostyosisreal · 2 years
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Give Me Something Good to Eat
Chucky Series: Episode 2
Hello my little Spirits...i’m back. For episode 2 of The Chucky series!
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Let’s just jump right in because I can’t wait to share what I thought if episode 2! Also can I just say the soundtrack for this series has been amazing. 
So we get another flashback into young Charles Lee Ray’s life on halloween no less. He pulls some freaky shit by bitting into an apple he CLEARLY saw a razor sticking out of but, I mean he’s Charles Lee Ray so... yeah. The scene then cuts to Hackensack present day Halloween with a full moon and crime at an all time high. It’s about a week since Jake’s dad died and he’s on his way back to school where, much to Lexy’s dismay (gods I really hate Lexy), he gets invited to the popular kids party. (I mean red flag much) At home Chucky is doing what Chucky does best, scheming and plotting. We get kill number 2 when Chucky pushes the housekeeper into a dishwasher filled with EVERY SINGLE knife in the house pointed up. I mean come on lady, not saying she deserved it but who does that? Anyway the hole seen was honestly really cool to watch. We get just the right amount shock factor that really goes hand and hand with the Chucky franchise. Not to mention an amazing shot of Chucky’s reflection in one of the knifes poking out of her neck. Jake and Junior come home from school and have a little argument before anyone realizes the dead housekeeper. After the police come Detective Evans (yes our lovely Devon Evans mom) has a suspicion that Jake knows more than he’s letting on. But it’s the same case with every Chucky movie, who’s going to believe him? Jake then confronts Chucky who denies his envelopment (yeah okay buddy) to which Jake replies “Get fucked with that shit” which is definitely my FAVORITE line out of the entire episode. Next we get Lexy (oh great.) on her couch while her parents fawn over her little sister who drew and amazingly creepy but accurate photo of Chucky from the talent show. Lexy of course gets mad when her parents suggest she can get the doll for her little sister from Jake. To which her mom absolutely destroys her by say her sister is better at drawing then she has been at anything ever (LMAO). Finally its time for the Halloween party at Olivers house ( Lexy’s side piece) which is nothing like any middle school party I have ever seen (mine consisted of pizza, 3 friends, and a collection of barbie movies). Jake realizes Chucky is missing and is probably going to go kill Lexi so he makes his way to the party as well. We get another great scene where Chucky sporting a Hello Kitty mask goes trick or treating for the location of the party (YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT). What I love about this is that It pulls us into the story even more. Chucky doesn’t just know where the party is out of no where he needs to find out. Once he gets his information he hands the lady an apple we can only assume has a razor blade in it. Finally all the characters are at the party and Chucky (after playing some video games with Lexy’s little sister) finds his target. We get a hilarious moment where Chucky is under the bed stabbing into the mattress as Lexy and Junior roll around unintentionally avoiding Chucky’s knife. Sadly Lexy manages to avoid it, and apparently it is showtime because she finally puts on her Halloween costume. Thats when Jake and Devon walk in on Lexy PRETENDING TO BE JAKE’S DEAD DAD GETTING ELECTROCUTED! Are you kidding me? Like ma’am I can’t hate you anymore than I already do. 
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That’s what sets Jake off because he finds Chucky and runs home. There Chucky offers him an idea about how to deal with Lexy (wink wink) Jake grabs the offered knife and we get a chilling scene of Jake’s reflection in the knife (this ones my episode favorite). That’s it for episode two! I am genuinely invested! There are definitely a lot of that original Child’s play feel to the series but I am getting mostly Curse and Cult vibes. Which I don’t think is bad, many of the comments towards the series seems to mention that a lot. My final thought's are that Lexy is a raging bitch and I think everyone is wishing on her death. Also we love Devon and I hope he’s not secretly nefarious. Jake needs to be protected because clearly no one else is gonna do it. I’ll see you guys next week... and remember keep it Rated R for excessive gore and nudity.🔪 ❤️
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sanstropfremir · 3 years
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would love to hear ur thoughts re. these street woman fighter's performances and who you would personally vote as the "better dance crew" in how they interpreted each other choreos and the song.
this was for their first elimination round (ep4) and it was interesting to hear from the judges + why they gave the points they did. (i'm not entirely sure if you're watching the show's episodes. they are roughly 2 hours long. so if you would like more context, pls let me know! i wrote brief comments underneath each one as well as the winners [spoilers ahead!]. assuming you are not: for this mission, each crew is paired with another crew and they have to choreograph one of the soloist songs. songs were "split" into two parts: part one [would be one song] and part two [another song]; one crew would choreograph one part and follow the other's crew choreograph for the other part.)
1. boa - eat you up (want choreo) + better (ygx choreo). dance crews: ygx vs want
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfK_qWAhM0&ab_channel=MnetTV
winner: ygx. boa gave 151 pts to ygx and 49 pts to want (the biggest gap in points between crews), sharing that although want choreographed eat you up, ygx was more cohesive (pointing to how want wore hats and it was messy). additionally, ygx had better stage presence and was able to capture the camera more. also, because ygx is the only crew to have a b-girl and use it in their routine, the judges applauded want for doing the best they can.
2. cl - doctor pepper (wayb) + hello bitches (prowdmon). dance crews: prowdmon vs wayb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEEpZ9SrvaE&ab_channel=MnetTV
winner: prowdmon. judges shared that doctor pepper's routine is a trademark of wayb and that they should have been the standout. however, they felt like prowdmon did it better.
3. hyuna - crazy (4minute) (coca n butter) + i'm not cool (hook) + lip and hip (hook). dance crews: hook vs coca n butter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ikpPKEA30&ab_channel=MnetTV
winner: hook. the two dance crews are VERY different in terms of style. coca n butter is described to be more hip-hop while hook is definitely more reflective of the current/newer trends. (when hook was first introduced in the show, they were known as the crew who was famous only for tiktok dances.) the judges shared that hook was more fun and interesting, given their stylistic choice of wearing the pink wigs. whereas it seemed for coca n butter, they felt like something was lacking (they showed something but it didn't feel they did.)
4. jessi - what type of xx (lachica) + nununa (holybang) + gucci (holybang). dance crews: holybang vs lachica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtZzI11oyqc&ab_channel=MnetTV
winner: lachica. (this was the only battle where both crews came in v close pts. whereas for the other crews, there were huge point-gaps.) judges had a hard time choosing, sharing that for lachica they were more detail-oriented while holybang had better teamwork.
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imo, i agree with the judges' choices. though i would have to say i think wayb did their routine (doctor pepper) better than prowdmon. they stood out to me then, but when it came to the second part (hello bitches), prowdmon was better. i loved lachica's performance - it was v clean + reminded me of something a kpop group would do (which like, the crew largely works with kpop acts like chungha, boa's better, etc. so it makes sense).
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this was LONG. thank u if u do read it and post! i miss the kingdom "era" when u would post weekly reviews. the two are v different but this new mnet competition show is the only one i'm invested in. i'm not sure if it's big internationally? i know it is v popular in korea right now. while i've only seen i-fans talk about the show as it relates to chaeyeon (want) because she's an idol. - swf (streetwomanfighter) anon :]
omg this is so long and well organized, forget me writing reviews anon you should do it!! i'm not currently watching the full episodes but i've been catching the few clips that pop up in my youtube recommended occasionally, so i definitely don't have all the context but i'll take a crack at it!
ok so my assumption/from what i can tell, they have a bit of leeway to alter the competing group's choreo as needed to better suit numbers and formations. i also went and found the individual versions of these because why did they make them so small on the split screen, don't they know i'm old and wear glasses. also: MNET FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY STOP MOVING THE FUCKING CAMERA. WE DO NOT NEED SCROLLING VERTICAL BOOM SHOTS OF THIS. just keep the same lens at eye level it's really not that hard. this is like, one of the worst possible ways to shoot dance it is SO annoying. ok i'm done bitching about that let's go.
1. boa - ygx vs want i agree with the big point gap on this one, and i think want made a couple of choices that were not cohesive enough, and obviously they also got set up to fail by ygx. actually i think both groups made choices that were not particularly good, but ygx had more of the skills to back up what they were doing than want did. breaking is very difficult and requires a lot of upper body strength and a higher centre of gravity, which are two physical traits that are less common in women. personally i wouldn't have tried to break to better because although boa songs do have more of a beat than other idol music, it's still not at all the right type of music for breaking. it's gotta be fast, breakers rely on speed, because it's all about momentum; they're literally throwing themselves around the stage. here's the final from battle pro 2019 for example. the music is basically beats only; heavily lyric based music, like idol music, is bad for battling in general because there isn't a lot of consistency. i have more to say about this but i'm getting off track. basically by choosing to handicap the other team (because they don't have a bgirl at all) they shot their own bgirl in the foot because the song is too slow to properly show off her skills. i applaud want for making bold choices, like the hatwork and attempting the breaking, but ultimately when combined with their styling the performance looks disjointed. also they have some formation cohesion issues that make it look a bit like they'e struggling to keep up, even with their own choreo.
2. cl - prowdmon vs wayb i agree with the judges, i think prowdmon bodied the wayb choreo. i actually thought that was their choreo at first. they have the best presence that i've seen of all the groups and the performative "hard bitch" attitude fit in with their genre setting. wayb had several mistakes and synchronization issues that in my opinion made them look sloppy in comparision to prowdmon, who were sharper and had two more people to put into formations. 3. hyuna - hook vs coca n butter ok personally i don't like either of these choreos, but i'm agreeing with the judges here, i think hook's was the mildly more engaging. i can tell that they're very young and do mostly short form tiktok content because i see a lot of eye catching moves, but i don't see a lot of strong connective tissue between those moves. they have good ideas but they also really struggle with putting people into formation and balancing it out well. it doesn't help that they're a seven member crew going up against a four member one, so they have three extra people to figure out what to do with. there's a lot of empty space where there are members waiting in position for a group formation. it also doesn't help at all that they (mnet) appear to just be rawdogging the songs together without any kind of mixing, which is a huge detriment to groups that have to choreograph for two in their section. i'm not cool and lip and hip have two totally different feels and kudos to hook for at least trying to get them to at least visually be cohesive when mnet is go girl giving us nothing sonically. coca n butter has much more of an old school hip hop style, so putting these two up against each other was (probably a random lot draw) an interesting choice. personally i would have been more interested to see hook against want with the boa tracks and ygx against coca n butter with the hyuna tracks. however, i think the reason why coca n butter's stage felt like it was lacking is because they tried to emulate hyuna, without having the stage presence or the weirdness of hyuna. it feels like they're trying too hard and there isn't really any personal character in the piece, versus with hook, who embodied hyuna's weirdness a little more authentically and took a completely different direction. 4. jessi - lachica vs holybang lachica took this one easily, although their formations were a bit wonky for nununana, they covered it fairly well and i think they managed the best transition between songs (between nununana and gucci). they were sharper with good stage pictures and had a good gimmick with the double fringe on the gloves and hats. holy bang had some issues fitting their extra person into the what type of x choreo, but they did well with their own choreo. however, like with coca n butter and hook, because lachica took a new visual spin, this felt too derivative of jessi, so it wasn't that interesting for me to watch. i do think they are one of the groups on the stronger end of skills and presence. --- as far as visually what performances i liked the best, since would this even be a writeup by me if i didn't talk about design, here's a quick breakdown:
prowdmon - got some rudimentary setpieces, got a theme, got some fun variations on a uniform look; excellent for what i assume was limited budget capacity and also it's a dance crew show.
lachica - great continuity of effect in costuming with the fringe, and using the gloves as a mouth/lip effect was one of the most interesting choices of these routines.
hook - the pink wigs and the black latex on the checkered floor was a nice gimmick that was a bit of a nod to hyuna's weird without being too derivative. i'm not expecting a whole lot because these are dance crews but i think this was a decent amount of styling effort.
want - they made a bold choice with the hats and even though it didn't quite pay off for them i still respect it.
coca n butter/ygx/holybang/wayb - ygx and wayb did basic hip hop type styling and while it's absolutely fine, it's just boring. holybang went for a directly inspired jessi look, and although yes bodysuits, overall it wasn't that interesting either. coca n butter get props for doing a costume change and actually incorporating that into the choreo but it feels too much like it's trying to be hyuna weird with the caution tape strapped over their tits and asses.
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as a final note/question to you, my lovely invested swf anon, what's the format of the show? are there stages like this every episode to review? if these were from the fourth one only, is there anything worth me reviewing in the first three? i'm not particularly interested in the aggressive competitive nature of the show and editing so i don't particularly want to watch the full two hour episodes, but if you think it's worthwhile for me to review stuff then i will. otherwise if there's a set structure (like with kingdom) i can seek out the stages specifically and review them if i know what i'm looking for.
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popculturebuffet · 3 years
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Amphibia Weekly Reviews: Bessie and Mircroangelo/The Third Temple “The Things We’ve Set into Motion Cannot Be Stopped”
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Hello all you happy people. It’s been a long road, with an even longer road trip, but the season’s almost over: just two more weeks of Amphibia.. and with all the build up weighing down on our heroes two things are clear: this cannot end well for Anne or anyone involved, and this is going to hurt. It’s going to hurt a LOT. it’s going to be some...
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... how have I not used more MST3K gifs. Questions for later. Point is with emotional pain immient, a revolution on the way this episode only ratchets up the tension.. while also sparing some time for makeover jokes and a breather episode about snail mentorships, fashion montages and giant crabs. I do love me some giant crabs. And i’ll tell you allllll about it under the cut. 
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Bessie and MicroAngelo:
This episode finds our heroes preparing for the third and final temple, loading up the wagon and preparing weapons, maps, potions, all that good stuff. 
We end up getting two plots out of this. The first is the titular one: so Polly can help prepare, Hop Pop gives Bessie the task of watchin gher snail and certified cutie MicroAngelo, that tiny Snail who I assumed would disappear forever after his intitial apperance because that’s usually what cartoons does. But much like One Piece, Al Ewing and that owl what watches me while I sleeps, Amphibia never forgets. 
It’s some Looney Tunes style shenanigans.. not the bugs or daffy, more on him later today, kind more the “Bigger more responsible party protects the smaller more vunerable or reckless one” kind you’d see eveyr so often. Tom and Jerry also really loved this. And Amphibia wears it well, with some good gags and really cute bonding and some really excellent animation on Bessie, giving the old girl plenty of life and animation. The only part I genuinely do not like is Hop Pop  blaming Bessie for.. running after micro angelo afte rhe ran off. Aka doing the job you assigned her. 
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Someone i’m looking at. Regardless otherwise it’s just some fun, adorable slapstick with a downright precious ending. And hop pop DOES apologize.. and wish he was a cute snail. I do not have time to unpack all the implications there nor ponder what Hop Pop would look like in a snail costume. This week’s given my brain enough nightmares. 
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So anyway, our subplot has Marcy trying to give Anne a Makeover... and her past attempts with Sasha have been objectively horrifying so Anne is rightly scared, though the armorer who comes to help with it has a blue crab so tha’ts where all my attention. I fucking love crabs.. they just look so neat. Some see the fact a spider crab being out and about in animal crossing as horrifying. I see it as oh look at my cool terrifying crab friend. About the only crab I don’t like is this asshole. 
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And even then he can be VERY funny. .he’s just also an exploitative douchebag and having worked in food service, let me tell you I.. I get why Squidward is the way he is. That said Krabbyland is a masterpiece entirely because he’s such a terrible person, so it ballances out when the show’s doing it’s best. 
Point is I like crabs and I like this subplot.. though mostly because it says a LOT about who Anne and Marcy are and where there at. Part of why Marcy is so gung ho about helping Anne is she figures this is her last shot to be whoever she wants to be. But really she’s just projecting: it’s been obvious since we properly met her that Marcy.. likes living HERE more than earth. On earth she’s an outcast: her hyperfixations, her tendency to babble about things she likes, her smartness... alll things that just make people turn away from her or pick on her on earth, with only two people relaly understanding and appricating her.. maybe more but we don’t know the situation with her parents yet. As someone who is a lot of those things, I get where she’s coming from. 
So ending up in a world straight out of an rpg... she florished. Everything that made her life difficult at home suddenly made her florish: her skill with RPG’s meant she could blend in easily with the courtly high class of Newtopia, gave her a love of taking on missions, and allowed her to put her hyperfixation, knowledge and enthusasim to real world use, creating massive improvments in an already ritzy city. Everything that made her an outcast in our world made her a hero there. It’s why I worry about what’s to come: to both Grime and Andrias.. she’s the perfectly made pawn: too desperate to have Sasha back to see the kinfe he wants her to plant in Marcy’s, and too happy to be accepted to see the rpg convention, the benevolent ruler turning out ot be a puppet for the big bad, starring her in the face. Amphibia’s given her her freedom.. but it’s also left her very vunerable and may leave her alone. 
As for Anne.. she realizes how far she’s come: from selfish and kind of distructive to selfless and self reliant.. and still kind of destructive but hey, you can’t cahnge eveyrthing about yourself. It’s why when given heavy armor.. all she needs is the core of it.. something simple to guard her but nothing too complex. She’s fine with who she is.. and it’s why she’s in the best place of the three girls. And why she’s left smack in the middle of the war to come. A war she can’t stop and that will leave her having to choose one... or do the right , hard thing and choose neither and try and free them from the bad influences they’ve embded themselves in. Either way this is going to hurt both her and the audience. 
Final Thoughts: Bessie and Mircoangelo is good classic cartoon fun with a suprisingly deep subplot. Simple, but a nice pallete clensar, especially since the next episode is pretty tense and given it’s ending and eveyrthing that’s been building this season, it’s likely only going to get worse from here, so it’s nice to have a quick and breezy break before hell comes to frogtown. 
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The Third Temple:
Before we get to the final temple we get a flashback showing how Sasha met Anne and Marcy. The other two were playing on the swings when two big dillholes pushed them off and Sasha selflessly and fearlessly stood up to them. And promptly beat herself up more than the bullies who dodged her and eventually got so freaked out by whatever the hell this was they ran and a friendship was born. But noticably she’s a lot diffrent 7 years ago, aproximately, than she is at 13: she’s every bit as fearless and willfull.. but the compassion she once had got buried under a need for control. It’s easy to see now WHY Marcy and Anne loved her so much: she was their friend, their protector, she cared about them.. and while she never STOPPED somewhere along the way it became less about doing the right thing for the women she loves and more about getting her way. 
And now the two have had time to heal from what their friend girlfriend became.. it’s time to rip that wound wide open as finally, after almost a season of waiting, Sasha reunites with Marcy for the first time and Anne for the second. 
Naturally her return is in time for her gem to be charged, though our heroes unware of that didn’t seek her out before going in. This time Frobo’s riding claw though weirdly dosen’t come inside. Which is a problem with Frobo’s addition to the cast as the whole: they’ve kept him out of any episode since his induction into the family and only properly explained it once. It just dosen’t make a lot of sense to me; Yes he is massively powerful but his childlike thought process counters that. He’s easy enough to write in but is left out becasue the writers don’t want to deal with an extra character. And I had more than enough of that shit when watching Ducktales. I don’t need it when your main cast isn’t NEARLY as large or hard to juggle. It’s just galling to have spent an entire season showing he was following them, give him a whole episode.. and then just forget about him because i’ts convient. Hopefully he’ll play a bigger role as things progress and we find out where he came from because his misuse is a dark spot on an otherwise great second half of the season. 
Frobo does get to prove himself useful though and open s the temple door he just weirdly dosen’t come along. But this does leave the door open for Sasha to come in as our heroes struggle with the first puzzle: Turns out this dungeon was built by a bro, seriously the temple languge is very broey and VERY hilarious contrasted with how normal for a fantasy setting the others were, as is fitting the strength gem, so our heroes have to compete feats of strength. Unfortunately this does not mean wrestling the ghost of Jerry Stiller to the ground but instead fighting some Lava Worms, and fighting just ONE of them and lifting the provided warhammers is a challenge for Anne.. and she’s the only one who can with Marcy not having enough upper body stregnth and the plantars all de-hydrated spongebob style. 
So naturally Sasha ends up being their savor, easily dispatching them and getting some help from grime who while also dehydrated, is still phsycially strong enough to be of some help. Marcy is overjoyed to see her.. and is the only one. Given Marcy hasn’t been on the wrong end of Sasha and Grime like they have, it’s understandable: while Marcy’s grappled with Sasha’s actions and grip on her and Anne, it’s been clear it hasn’t hit her as hard as it has for Anne and she likely dosen’t get the full scope of it like Anne does. To her Sasha just made a mistake and she’s back now and tha’ts what matters. To Anne and the Plantars... sasha and grime tried to kill them and Sasha then tried commiting suciide to save them. The scars of that haven’t really healed for them, nor should they. 
And given Sasha has spent the season clearly blamiing everything on Anne defying her and has been raising an army based on her resentment, and given she flew into a jealous blinding rage at finding her exes were fine and dandy without her she.. wholheartdly apologizes. 
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Yeah she apologizes.. but tellingly while she talks about her and Grime being left homeless following the battle.. she leaves out everything after: The fight with Yuan, the growing rebellion, driving her friends away, the horrifying army Grime now commands. Something’s off. 
Anne naturally dosen’t trust her to do this herself and insists on coming along sitll. The next task is juts.. asking how much you lift bro, which Sasha easily passes by lifting, bro. 
The final test in Jim Crunch’s Temple of Fitness, I mean who else could’ve wrote this, is of course a big fight with a giant statue of a toad, fitting how each temple so far was built by one of the civlizations: there were frog statues and symbols in the first temple, the second was guarded by a newt and the last now has a toad guard.Though curiously.. the test itself is wholly designed for a human. Before it wasn’t 100% clear even with the hyroglyps if the chosen ones had to be human or not.. but now it’s impossible to argue otherwise. There were hints : The fact the guardian pegged her as a possible chosen one on sight , the ruins in the background of the title cards which also depict the watcher with a thousand eyes (which is what i’ll be calling him till we get his, her , they or it’s actually name. ).. but here the chamber includes a gravity increase dbz style, meaning our heroines are the only ones who can stand as the Plantars and Grimes frog and toad bodies respectively aren’t strong enough to stand anymore. And while Marcy tries it ends up falling on Anne and Sasha with Sasha being Angry Anne doesn’t trust her.. and Anne not refuting it, pointing out she has EVERY REASON not to. As she puts it “it’s not just toad tower”. For most of their lives Sasha has been controlling, caring about what she wants and not what the people she loves wants. It wasn’t just the fight there... it was simply the wakeup call to how bad a person Sasha had been. 
And for the first time in the episode.. Sasha is geniune, apologizing for what she did, and genuinely admitting how she treated Anne wasn’t wrong. it was something she coudln’t admit to herself episodes ago.. but faced with both loosing two more people due to her behavior, and having plenty of time to reflect on said behavhior.. she finally relaizes it’s her. Fuck man.. what else is there to say. 
Oh right the giant monster thing, which Anne trusts Sasha to finish.. and we get anothe rDBZ homage as Sasha removes part of her armor, which creates a CRATER, which lowers her weight enough to fight the thing. She gets a thumbs up and the honor of recharging it. 
Anne suggests opening the box.. but Marcy is VERY quick to shoot that down and suggest talking to the king. And while her reason SOUNDS good,, they don’t want to get warped somewhere ELSE at random.. it’s very clear from her actions and how quick she tried to stop it that she needs them to get to Andrias for whatever he’s talked her into. And I emphasis talked her into: Marcy trusts the king, and was in a very emotional place when he was about to talk to her at the end of season 2a... and he knew it. He knew she was at her most vunerable, most malable and trusted him completely.. and knew right then and there was his shot at getting vengance.. for him and his master. Whatever he has planned.. it’s not good. The mechancial lovecraftian horror he keeps in his creepy basement full of lost souls is a dead giveaway from that. But I don’t.. fault Marcy for it. It’s not just because I sympahtize.. to her Andrias is a good noble king trying to help her. He’s the kindly mentor she always wanted, a person who enjoys her skills dosen’t care how much she talks and has complete faith in her, something even Anne struggles with. 
But it’s VERY clear, to me at least he’s been likely using her from the moment they met: to her sh’es just an optomistic pawn, someone gullible enough to do whatever he says. I’ve always felt that her “missions” probably had some darker purpose she wasn’t aware of: getting Andrias things he needs for his army, an army she has no idea is opressing people. She’s insulated from that and instead surronded by adoring people who accept her for once. Even going to wartwood, she hasn’t yet made the connection between the toad towers and what their purpose is. I think deep down she might suspect this stuff.. but she can’t ACCEPT that the one person who every had nothing but faith in her.. is a horrible person who opresses others and somehow has even WORSE plans in store. 
Sasha likewise is facing the pressure of her parental figure.. while her patching it up with Anne was legitmate... her and Grime’s own plans rely on getting in there and Grime simply sees the other two as pawns , and just like the king he wants he wants to overthrow, their use expires once his plans in motion. 
But the thing is.. it’s clear despite assuring Grime she’s still all in.. her face in the last shot, as seen above.. says otherwise. Her apology was legitmate, not just an attempt to get close to the one thing in her way of power, but what she’s come to realize: she’s gone from blaming Anne for it.. to realizing it was her. But she’s also stuck: while Marcy is unaware of the strings her pupeteer is pulling her towards.. Sasha is all too aware of what her mentor is planning. And the thing was she was all too willing to go for it. She blamed Anne for what happened at the tower, blamed Anne for turning marcy against her and blamed the plantars and co for turning anne against her. But in the harsh light of day... none of that’s true. Marcy dosen’t hate her, neither does anne, they didn’t turn against her.. they were just tired of her shitty behavior and wanted the friend they found that day on the playground back, the woman they loved who’d go to hell and back for someone and not the bitter, manipultive person she became. She’s once again realized it was her fault.. the question is if that’s enough for her to do the right thing or not. And the hardest question of all is IF not reblling isn’t the right thing. Wfhile the Toad’s probably shoudln’t be in charge either, Andrias REALLY shouldn’t. There’s NO easy answers here, no happy outcome that makes everyone live’s better. There’s no easy way out, no shortcut home.. just the louder and louder drumbeats of war and one girl’s decision of whose side she’s going to take.
Final Thoughts on the Third Temple: As with the other four sasha episodes thus far, this was frogging brilliant. Shoudln’t be a suprise and it makes me both look forward and dread the war to come
Next Week: The plantars try to bury the hatchet with Sasha and Grime, the girls enter a battle of the bands, and the finale comes ever closer.
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