#tbf this looked so much better in ps....

[itshyuka]

HUENINGKAI ✧ ‘W Korea’ Photoshoot

[bharatiya-naari-sab-pe-bhaari]

So I have been writing something on the mahabharata and thought to go through some of the popular media versions for inspiration.

[Instant regret intensifies]

I mean sometimes versions of the same thing might inspire you to do something different, I guess. I mean that was my logic but...hoooo mannn.. these are not different interpretations of the epic, these are like the Adipurush script writers had sold whatever they were smoking to the makers of all the tv versions.

I need brain bleach for atleast ninety percent of them.

I'll tell you what my opinions are (I just need to rant, please bear with me)

The StarPlus Mahabharata:

The Good:

Everyone (almost) looks good. Like casting was top notch. Eye candies walking around. The dialogues were pretty good. Some of their creative liberties hit the spot. It was the nicest version made tbf. And also, the best damned decision, SRJ as Krishna. (Say that again with me)

The Bad:

Inaccuracies galore. Also, stop simping so much on Karna. It looks pathetic. Arjun was charming alright but they managed to cut his badass skills to less than a half. My girl...Subhadra. What the hell did they do to you!!!! I hated how they showed her. The casting, the character arc... bleahhh! Duryodhan looked like a cartoonish villain and had little to no depth and Ashwatthama....whyyyyy *cries*

The RadhaKrishna Mahabharata:

The Bad:

Fucking everything. What was the casting? And why did everyone look so miniature? Except Karna and Bheem.. those dudes looked old. The story was shit. Even with their thousand and one fictional overtures. (What the hell was Krishna doing in Matsya during Virataparvam???). Kunti was a typical sasu mom villain. Arjun was a wimp.

The Good:

Sumedh is funny. And the guy playing Arjun looked like a baby. I wanted to pull his cheeks every time he came on screen (I dunno if that is good or just sweet). The only likeable scene was prolly Drau-Arjun making heart eyes at each other in that Mandir (cute couply moment and the bgscore is likable). Subhadra had some personality.

Sony's Suryaputra Karna :

:)

:)

The makers smoked weed and some combination of technicolour inducing hallucinogenic (most likely sourced from the Adipurush script writers)

:)

:)

WHAT THE EVER LOVING MIND FUCK WAS THAT?

See, I liked SP's Mahabharata's Karna (Aham Sharma.. ahem ahem) because of the creative liberties taken by the makers to make him likable. I didn't mind all of the inaccuracies. But this? THIS?

[*vomit inducing everything*]

The only two good things :- Dury was handsome (eye candy purposes) and Gautam Rode met his wife (can't help being starry eyed over meet cutes).

Karnasangini

See, at this point, I didn't go there expecting any canonical accuracy but just for creative purposes.

Good:

The sets were pretty. These dudes have money and they showed it (very cleverly copying Ek Dil ek Jaan music by changing the lyrics for Karn-Uruvi bgscore, they thought we won't notice, but we did) so everything was eye pleasing. Bhanumati was again... eye candy pretty. Karna himself (Asim Gulati meri jaan), too tragically pretty. I think this Arjun (baby but with beard, lmfao) was also the same guy as Radhakrishna MB.

Bad:

Uruvi (and I swear its not because I can't tolerate Tejaswini). The girl was the most annoying mc to have ever been written. I couldn't feel anything for her. I couldn't understand jack of what she ever did or spoke. The hypocrisy was sky high.

PS:- I would have totally enjoyed watching a version of Karna's life and the Kauravas pov of the mahabharata, had they made it properly (not whitewashing everyone on their side with fucking plaster while turning the Pandavas into cartoony villains.. sigh). Also I think, this one was adapted from the Kavita Kane book.

--------------------------------------------

One liners on the book [because, why not]

Arjun Without A Doubt (Sweety Shinde) :-

Literally ArDi fanfiction straight out of wattpad (just better writing to be completely fair) and the authot hated everyone else except Krishna.

Karna's Wife, The Outcast's Queen (Kavita Kane) :-

Could have been interesting had the writing not been so bad. Cartoony antagonist and protagonists and completely amateurish plot creation.

The Fisher Queen's Dynasty (Kavita Kane):-

I actually liked this one. It was a refreshing take on characters not usually written of.

The Rise of Hastinapur, The Winds of Hastinapur, The Rise of Hastinapur (Sharath Komarraju) :-

I liked his style and his storytelling. Wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea though. The characters are very controversially written. (Also, trilogy on the women of mahabharat.. count me in)

The Palace of Illusions (Chitra Banerjee Divakurni) :-

I had high expectations from her but... it fell flat on its face. This was the worst portrayal of Draupadi I have ever come across, anywhere, across any platforms.

The Amar Chitra Katha comics :-

Some of the most authentic retellings of the epic and I truly enjoyed going through all the individual copies and also the full three set volume they had.

The Song of Draupadi (Ira Mukhoty) :-

I loved this one. Very opinionated and very open to interpretation as well. It was a good read.

PS :- I haven't read any of Devdutt Patnaik's books (tbh I dont like the guy very much, as little as I know him from interviews on the internet) and I want to read Ajaya but haven't got around to it. Any more books that I should check out?

-------------------------------------------

PPS :- All of this has been written from a creative point of view. I did not see any of them for getting to see the actual mahabharata. It was mostly for fun. But now I wish people would make more individual versions of other characters depicting their story (EXCEPT FUCKING KARNA again)

[blackbird-brewster]

hey Kit it's TBF 💜 we haven't talked in a while, but I think of you often and I love reading about your writing & stuff. Honestly it always makes me so happy seeing how excited you are about writing again & it's insane how much you've written lately. I've been going through a rough patch & things have just been... a lot. Idk sometimes things just get so overwhelming, I feel like running away from it all. I know things will get better again, but like... i really hope that happens soon.

2/2 💜 anyways listening to Be Still always makes me feel better 💜 I hope you're doing well and living you best queer life, I know traveling stressed you out, so i really hope that went well. Love you 💜

Heya TBF!!

It's always a delight to see you in my inbox, I'm listening to our song while I reply. Thank you for your kind words of support, it's definitely been a very strange year since I came back to writing (mostly in a good way!) Travelling was a Very Bad Idea for me, I've been in a bad chronic illness flare due to The Travelling, but at least I tried it, yanno? I am absolutely living my best queer life, every single day. Doom Them and I wake up every single morning and think 'How can we be overly gay today?'

Sorry things are rough for you currently, know that I'm always here to listen and to cheer you on with moral support! You're such an incredible human (I mean, I guess you could be non-human! Maybe you're just a little space creatchur out here in the blue hellscape with the rest of us! Who knows!)

I know how hard it is to to be in the bottom of the pit, when all you can do is look up at the exit and think 'I'm never going to get back out', but you know what? You will get out again, you've gotten out every other time before this, and you will get through it once again. I believe in you, just take things a day at a time right now. You might not manage to claw your way all the way out of the darkness in one go, but evenentually all of those tiny progresses will add up and you'll find yourself on the other side again.

I have known you for so, so, so many years, my love. I have never doubted you, just like you have never doubted me. We've both been through SO much, and we're still here, still listening to the same song, still anoymous friends on the hellsite, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

I believe in you. I love you. I am forever proud of you, my friend. And each and every time you hear 'Be Still', please know it's me standing there with Brandon, both of us singing you a hype theme to get you through the worst of it. You can do this!

Here my love, I've got a gift for you! It's an entire playlist made especially for you

PS. 'Rut' is my second fave song by The Killers <3

[funnymalemodels]

hi how r u there? i’m missing your lots of post of the gods lol. how’s your day in this pandemic? sorry it’s not related queston of your blog, hope you’re doing ok in this situation. pls post more gods cos im boring af on insta and i miss male models here.

....hi dear anonymous...:D!!!!....awwwwwwww!!!....*silent tears*...HUGE THANKS!!!...awww i truly apreciated this message......awwwwww....i’m doing welll.....:)....thank u for asking!!!...awwww...and i hope u are doing well too...*silent tears*!!!!.....oh this pandemic situation is a challenge for many people who are not used to be by themselfs.....idk if that is ur case.....but for me is not new......i’ve always prefer stay at home...and get my distance from ppl...XD...so i’m quite enyoing the moment ...but ofc is sad that many ppl is strugelling and so on...so i hope u being safe and sound....and u can write me anytime....XD....i want to post more work of GODS...however  the last collections in general are awful and i think this lack of creativity in fashion in general sucks coz they are just boring tbf....slry i didn’t like them...but hope this will get better ...the major problem is those instamodels....but i prefer not to say much coz u never know how the future will be....i’ll do my best to put some worthy material here...XD....hahah i got an insta account haha...but just 4 work...and insta in general is boring af...u can always take a look here...coz even i don’t post much GODS as i used to...XD...i got some interesting and funny storys....sooo...HUGE THANKS 4 this lovely question!!!!.....*tears*...and i wish u have an extraordinary day and life!!!....u deserve it!!!...:D!!..

ps:....awwwwww.....!!!!..:’)!!!

[hoaryoldbitch]

Part 1/3: Sad Anon speaking, but not sad anymore, thanks for the answer, I'm calmer. I'm just a bit worried and anxious for the season to start but that's normal me :) . Even though there is a small chance, I still think there must be smth re Jonsa. Me and my stubborn mind, I suffer but don't give up. Analyzing some things, I wonder why Kit/Sophie have been in many pics together lately? Why does Kit insist on telling J/S relationship is just sibling rivalry or Sophie's answers always lead to...

Part 2/3: the betrayal subject matter? I get the trust issues hype (even if it’s total BS) bc they used this plot and let it open in the last season to tease fans bf S7. But, why when asked ab J/S, Kit rounds and rounds and always comes up with smth re siblings, he isn’t clueless (not the producers or Sophie are), everybody knows the meaning behind this specific question, they don’t wanna know ab the brother/sister squabble but understand the odd interaction J/S had in S6 that made people…

Part 3/3: get romantic/UST vibes. WTH happened? The million dollar question! Giving more thought to that, I think J/S scenes were filmed that way on purpose, and the producers know why. Not just shippers with their shipping googles noticed this peculiarity but many others viewers and the press saw it too. There must be smth more to it than just siblings who weren’t that close in the past and now interact weirdly bc they (specially Sansa) have power struggles. PS: Hope you don’t mind my long ask.

Hi Anon, happy to hear you’re not sad anymore! And I don’t mind the long ask, but I’m not sure I can contribute that much to what you said... No, scratch that, apparently I did have a lot to add to this :’)

I think we’re all anxious atm, especially over here in our corner of the fandom! I know I’m still worrying about the leaks. I believe at this point that they’re partially legit, but incomplete and parts of them might be complete BS. There’s definitely a lack of context and such in some of them…

But we’ll find out soon enough! Iirc there wasn’t even that much info on episode 1 and 2 in the leaks and GQ mentioned we’ll be surprised, so I’m looking forward to the first episode!

I think in hindsight we’ll be able to make sense of all the things Kit and Sophie have said in interviews so far… I don’t even know whether Kit has actually been asked about romantic Jonsa in an unmistakably explicit way?

I know Aidan Gillen implied it could happen in an interview right after season 6 and the reporter wasn’t even necessarily asking about a romantic relationship… And Sophie answered a question about Jonsa at the Emmys, which was at best ambiguous with something like: “Things could happen, they’re cousins and it is GOT!” (not an exact quote, I know…)

But now, as you’ve pointed out, they’re still getting ambiguous questions, but all they’re ever saying is “sibling rivalry!” and “tension!” and “power struggle!”.

I’m sure I could analyse these interviews and find clues in them, despite Sophie trolling and Kit’s excellent lying skills, but I honestly can’t be bothered to do that :’)

If Jonsa is never going to happen, they could just say it right? I mean, while there was a lot of media coverage on it right after season 6, the ship hasn’t exactly become mainstream, it’s still limited to a niche of the fandom…So there wouldn’t really be much damage in completely denying it imo…

But they keep distracting us with this Starkbowl narrative… And what do we even know about the Winterfell storyline? Not all that much… We haven’t even seen any pictures or footage of Jon and Sansa together? Why is that? 

(Tbf, we haven’t seen any pics or footage of Jon and D@ny either, but that’s to be expected, I believe…)

We’re being distracted with Starkbowl and J0nerys leaks and I feel as if this must all be leading somewhere.

D & D decided to change Sansa’s storyline back in season 2, when they were discussing endgame and upcoming important plot points and twists with GRRM. The only point in doing that I can see is to bring Sansa back North earlier on in the narrative and to spend more time on her relationship with Jon. 

That’s why the argument that Jonsa was deliberate, but only because it’s a red herring sounds so weak to me. If it was a red herring, they should have made it a bit more obvious, because not nearly everyone picked up on it. 

And if the only reason for Sansa to develop her relationship with Jon is to make it more of a shock when she betrays him, that would first of all be bad storytelling. It not only defies the logic of Sansa’s storyline, of returning to her roots and reclaiming her Stark identity, having learned the value of home and family. It would also be incredibly stupid for the producers to be hyping it the way they have been since the last episode of season 6 aired. If Starkbowl happens, it won’t be the shock they’d want it to be, because they’ve been pushing the narrative for a year!

Back to Jonsa’s romantic potential: I agree that it’s very hard to believe that none of the romantic/ambiguous language, non-verbal cues, settings, lighting, … was deliberate… But if it was, I think the safest course would be to deny any romantic set-up. There would still be people who’d dismiss it, but at least they would have given us a fair warning.

There are moments when I’m afraid that we have been misinterpreting all the signs and that we’ve been reading too much into it. Or that Jonsa really was only meant to be a red herring. Sometimes I tell myself I’d better get over it, because it’s never going to happen… But if that’s the way it’s going to play out, I’m telling you that I’ll experience that as a form of betrayal, because I feel as if I’ve been led to believe that Jonsa will happen. 

[spamela-hamderson]

FOR THE ASK THING: :D :D :D 1, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22. :D

(This is so long, I got carried away)

1- What is one thing you’re very proud of having done this year?

This year’s been hell, so I’m just very glad that I’ve somehow made it through. I’m very grateful to myself for taking care of my mental health because I truly would not have survived this awful year if I hadn’t. Sure, from an outsider’s perspective I’m probably still a mess but! I’m less of a mess than I was last year!! That’s pretty great, considering the additional pile of bad this year has gifted me with :’)

14- What did you enjoy working on most this year?

I’m currently working on a fic and I keep getting distracted by cute bird facts/videos, does that count?

15- What did you have the most fun doing?

Ok, this is sooo stupid but when I have to get a screenshot of scenes for the text post series I slow them down by a lot and play them back so I can capture the best moment (I take this v v seriously). But I leave the volume on sometimes and it’s literally the funniest thing. I cannot handle it. (I don’t do this every time though cos I’d never get anything else done.)

20- What do you feel is the most underrated thing you have done? Why?

UM I PHOTOSHOPPED ROBERT’S FACE ONTO THAT PIC OF VANESSA NEXT TO THE DUMPSTER FIRE, IT’S ART AND I’M DISAPPOINTED IN ALL OF YOU ACTUALLY. Thank you for appreciating it rust, I knew you would 😭 - (ok I went to find it again, it’s so Dumb

21- Name (and reblog) at least three things you’ve made this year that you’re proudest of.

This thing I made for Amanda’s birthday. I’ve decided that this will be my cheesy superhero costume if I ever make that career switch. I went into this with an idea and 1/16th of a clue of how I was gonna do it (it’s how I start most of my edits tbf). I fucked around with ps until I figured it out, so I’m really happy with how it turned out :D Same with that image where I photoshopped Andy out HA.

This gif! It was my first time experimenting with colours and I love how it turned out. I find colour a lot easier to work with when they’re outside though, because the lighting is better. I also love when actors make those barely there facial expressions, they’re wonderful. And look, I made him wear green!

Last night I made some Ellis gifs where I played with colour as well. That was a little bit more of a challenge cos the scene was very dark, but it was fun brightening the scene while trying to stay true to his skin tone. I hope I succeeded :D I’m really pleased with some of the decisions I made here. Like the extra purple on his face; I think it looks nice.

22- What are your goals for next year?

To have a little more faith in myself. I need to remember that I’m pretty capable. I just expect so much of myself sometimes that even the idea of failing can really fuck me up and make me curl up in a ball, like, can you just chill a little, self??? My god. It’s why I love that I’ve started making things for fandom, cos it’s just fun. Like yeah, I want it to be good, but I’m also not gonna freak out too much over it, you know? And I’m also a lot more forgiving of my mistakes here. I’m learning to transfer that attitude onto other life stuff though. Baby steps!

Ooh and I wanna make one of those really pretty and artsy gifsets! And write so much more fic!! (And maybe finish the ones I’ve already started, oops)

[jjvinnicombe]

Trekkin'

At risk of this blog going the way of all my other communications from abroad - i.e. boring - I vowed not to write again unless something awesome happened! Cool, fun, enjoyable and interesting things have been occurring but nothing I could justify writing a whole blog post about. Finally we did something to enable to me to break the silence.  Yesterday we (meaning Your Humble Narrator (I read A Clockwork Orange over Easter) and the three Leicester lads - Adam, Chris and Ollie) set off to find the waterfall. We read about it in this little handwritten guide by previous elective students and Laurent (the hospital administrator and all round great guy) agreed to take us because he'd never seen it himself. So Laurent got the rough directions off a mate and about 10ish we set off into the woods. This wasn't as easy as it sounds. Sure we started on a dirt road, which then gave way to a dirt path but this soon degraded to worn grass and then no clear path at all. Plus we were constantly having to duck down and squat walk under thick spiky bushes which ripped our clothes and skin. The good news is we saw some monkeys! The bad news is that Laurent couldn't find the right way to the waterfall and so by half eleven we were back at the house.  Hang on a tick, that's not very thrilling. Correct, I enjoyed it, but definitely not blog worthy. But wait, because we set off again. This time we started at the dam and followed the river - pretty decent way to find a waterfall tbf. And when I say we followed the river, we literally walked the length of the river to find the waterfall. This is dry season but only just so it had rained pretty heavily a couple of days ago. This left the riverbed in a particular treachous state of seeming like solid ground but infact being deceptively deep liquid sand. This caught all of us out a few times, sometimes you could run across it like some sort of mad lizard/Legolas like character but in general we soon learnt to stick to the solid river banks. However this had us fighting with the spiky bushes again and to traverse some sections we had to leap between the more solid patches of riverbed or use long sticks as a third leg to lean out into the river with our feet on the bank. Occasionally we would reach a big stretch of boulders and have to leap from stone to stone. That was super fun and sketchy (especially if you forgot to bang the slippery mud off your shoes from the previous section). At one point Chris was slightly ahead, just about to jump down a particularly high sheer stone and then he literally dropped out of sight. He had fallen over two metres but somehow his phone (which smashed against a rock) and himself were completely fine! Ollie wasn't so lucky, didn't hurt himself but still had a fall a bit later on. Basically the river pooled and we had to scramble over some rocks to either side of it to get around. Ollie was standing on a rock in the middle of the water, about to jump to one of the sides but he thought he better get rid of his walking stick first so he threw it on ahead and the momentum carried him clean off the rock and into the pool. Turned out the water was chest deep! It was hilarious but all of us held back the laughter until Ollie laughed first. Poor fella was soaked in slightly grimy water but he didn't hurt himself or damage his phone or anything.  This is where the trekkin' started to get really fun. It's incredibly hard to put into words and I don't think the photos do it justice. But basically after a while it stopped being mostly muddy riverbed and a few rocks and changed into lots and lots of progressively larger boulders. We were having to find our own path, try one way and then climb back if there was no further way down and go the other way. We were doing larger and larger controlled jumps down onto whichever rocks looked flattest below (by this I mean sitting down, legs dangling and sliding ourselves off to minimise the distance to the rock below). At one stage we had to do a controlled 5m slide down an over 45° slope; the whole time just guessing this was the best route. Eventually we climbed over some rocks and saw the Rift Valley floor peeking out ahead. We had actually trekked to the edge of the valley. The sun was glaring, we didn't have much water and this is where the route got really really really steep. But to go back would probably be impossible and take ages. So we pushed the collective thought that "a broken ankle here would take about 24 hours to make it to an orthopaedic surgeon" out of our heads and we pushed on with the trek. It soon became blinding obvious that not only had we found the waterfall, we were literally climbing down it. That's right, we were climbing down a dry waterfall. Some bits were so steep that we had to lie flat on our stomachs and feel down the rock with a foot to find a purchase and then scramble down like a ladder before directing the others to the same foothold. But slowly but surely, spending longer and longer choosing a path each time we made it carefully down the valley wall. Towards the end it ended up being a bit of a race against time as the boys started to feel fairly dehydrated and the water had dried up a while back. Once we hit the flatter end part of the trek we marched pretty quickly to the house at the bottom of the waterfall. Conveniently this was owned by Laurent's mate and he extremely kindly went off on his motorcycle to fetch cold water and soda for us. Then Laurent got the hospital ambulance to come and pick us all up so we wouldn't have to walk via the long winding road back up to the hospital.  Yesterday's experience was one of the best treks I have ever done in my life. The terrain we crossed was incredibly challenging and the views constantly breathtaking. But the biggest part for me was the fact we had to constantly choose and reevaluate our own path. Once we hit the riverbed Laurent was just as clueless as us about the route. But we worked together and made our way to the valley floor. As I said before the photos won't quite do it justice, but maybe you'll be able to imagine just how big the boulders were and how steep some of the scrambles were.  PS - we saw a baboon at the waterfall!