#tumblr is weird in that people pay less attention to me overall but my posts are also way more public

[prismatoxic]

[rayofspades]

How to Write a Horror Story: The Magnus Archives

This post is kinda weird since most tumblr fandom content is based on the assumption that Everyone Has Seen The Thing, but since this is a transcript of a video essay, it’s more broad. 

I might link the video in a reblog since, you know, tumblr doesn’t like links.

Anyways, here’s the post:

Hello Jon, apologies for the decep-

I’ve seen a lot of mystery shows in my day, and some supernatural shows, and the common thread between them is that they kind of...fall apart as they go on. 

Obviously, this is a generalization and I haven’t seen every mystery show or every paranormal show, but it’s a pretty common problem. 

At this point in pop culture criticism, it’s basically common knowledge that these shows fall apart due to a lack of planning. If a mystery series is making shit up as it goes along while trying to surprise the audience, it’s going to stop making sense at some point. And if an episodic paranormal show is constantly trying to up the stakes, eventually it’s going to become absolutely ridiculous and stretch the audience’s suspension of disbelief past a breaking point. 

Other people have already talked about this stuff to death, but today I want to talk about a paranormal mystery show that actually succeeds at what it set out to do.  

The Magnus Archives is a podcast written by Jonny Sims and directed by Alexander J. Newall. It ran from 2016 to 2021 and it’s...really really good. It’s an episodic horror story, taking place at the fictional Magnus Institute where the head archivist reads various statements about people’s encounters with supernatural entities. It’s got it all; scary stories, mystery, an overarching plot, office comedy, office romance, office tragedy, a villain that’s making straight men everywhere question their sexuality, and an overall really solid structure. 

If you listen to the Q+As put out by the writer and director, you’ll hear them talk about how they planned the series from the beginning, setting up the layout for each season. Some things were definitely changed throughout the actual writing process; that’s just inevitable and necessary when you’re working on a long running show, but in a general sense, they knew where they were going. But, writing a good story doesn’t just involve knowing where you’re going; it’s about executing whatever plan you have effectively. And I think the execution of The Magnus Archives is pretty brilliant, so I want to talk about it. 

And for the record, I said “brilliant,” not “perfect.” I do have a lot of criticisms of this show, and I’m definitely going to talk about those too, because honestly? Even the problems with this show are interesting in their own right. 

Ok, let’s go. 

Oh, spoilers by the way. For the whole plot. Whole thing. 

Part 1: Horror and Mystery 

Ok, so The Magnus Archives has two separate plots going on: the episodic stories that can be listened to individually, and the underlying meta plot. The former is where most of the mystery storytelling takes place, and it’s a really engaging mystery. It’s starts off slow, and almost undetectable at first. The main character, Jon, also known as The Archivist, is just reading out old scary stories that people have delivered to the Magnus Institute. Stuff like; a college student sees a ghostly inhuman figure asking for a cigarette, a woman’s fiancé dies and she finds herself trapped in an empty graveyard, there’s this goth kid who apparently murdered his mother and then skinned her? But she’s kind of still alive? What the f*ck? Hope we never see that kid again. Also, this “Jurgen Lietner” guy wrote a bunch of cursed books and Jon knows about this? Are more books gonna come up? And then you’re like, wait is the goth kid who killed that burn victim the same goth kid who killed his mom like 8 episodes ago? Holy shit the family of that girl’s dead fiancé FUNDS THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE? Did this famous youtuber meet one of the missing people from episode one? The goth kid is back and he’s looking for Leitner books? The name “Michael” has come up like 6 times? Are they all the same guy? I just—who the f*ck is Jurgen Leitner? 

So yeah, as you can see, a lot of these stories connect in cool ways, and I’ve only mentioned like, 0.2 percent of all of those connections. Furthermore, these stories are told out of chronological order, and sometimes the same scenario appears in more than one statement, told from different perspectives. This asymmetrical storytelling and odd doling out of information creates a mystery that’s really interesting. It also makes for a great re-listen, since you can retroactively see what elements were set up before you even realized that they were going to come back.  

The audio format contributes to this too; you can’t just see that the table from episode three matches the pattern on the box in episode eight. You have to pick up on clues that were mentioned and pay attention to what people are describing, and it’s highly rewarding when the pieces all start to fit together. 

There is a bit of a downside to this though. Technically The Magnus Archives is a horror story first and a mystery second, and these two elements can mesh in weird ways. 

The horror is element is really strong. Each story is completely different, sometimes focusing on psychological horror, body horror, or supernatural versions of more primal fears like heights, darkness, enclosed spaces, etc. Basically, if you’re afraid of anything, there will be at least one episode of The Magnus Archives that gets under your skin. 

Jonny Sims can really sell his stories through both his writing and acting. He plays Jon, by the way, and plagiarized his own birth certificate for the character name. (For future reference, Jonny is the actor, Jon is the character). Overall, he’s really good at writing prose, and each narrator has a very distinct voice even though the large majority of the stories are being read by one character/actor.  

Obviously not every episode is a bull’s eye. Sometimes it’s due to the subjectivity when it comes to what you as an audience member are scared of, and occasionally it’s just weird writing decisions. I’m thinking specifically of episode 21 where the line “the sky ate him” is said, and it is the worst line in the entire show. The whole goddamn show. That’s it. That’s the number one worst line. 

But still, overall, the horror storytelling is incredibly solid, and some episodes even gave me brand new fears, like the unholy isolation of being in space, or the concept that someone you love could be replaced by someone completely different without you noticing.  

But here’s the thing; 

A lot of good horror is based on the absence of explanation. Most of the episodes that gave me the most visceral reactions of genuine terror come from the first two seasons, because that’s when the audience has the least amount of information. 

For example, in episode two, a really terrifying coffin is introduced. It’s creepy, it reacts very strangely to water for some reason, and appears to compel people to try opening it. By the end of the episode, the audience never finds out what’s in that coffin and that is a good thing. That is a huge part of what made that episode so unnerving.  

And then a few seasons later, we do find out what’s in the coffin, and to be fair the answer is both very creative and very scary, but it also takes a lot of the punch out of episode two. 

 No matter how f*cked up your thing is, it’s not going to compare to whatever the audience can conjure up in their own mind after such a creepy set up. This problem isn’t just stuck in this one scenario either; there are a lot of early episodes that, while still good, seem a lot less creepy in hindsight after you learn more about the scenario. 

I don’t think it’s bad writing, but I do think it’s a double-edged sword. Jonny Sims even mentions this sort of issue in the first Q+A. 

But yeah, to sum up; the narration is good, the ideas are creative, and seeing the mystery unfurl itself is deeply compelling. And for the record, the mystery elements aren’t of the Sherlock Holmes variety. It’s less about finding out who did the thing, and more about discovering how all of these individual points are intricately connected, pulling on each other as they move. Woven together like a... oh shit what’s the word? Gah, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Ah, whatever, I’m sure it’s not like a running motif or anything.  

Part 2: Stakes 

One of the main reasons I stopped watching Supernatural is that it devolves into complete f*cking nonsense. At the end of season five, the boys literally defeat the devil, and then the show...keeps going? Which would be fine. It’s also, largely, an episodic show, so if they have more creative ideas, they could definitely keep going with it. In fact, there are some post season five episodes that I thought were pretty good. But as they kept trying to outdo themselves with Bigger Bads, it got kind of difficult to suspend my disbelief. And the final nail in the coffin for me was the end of season nine, when Crowly basically points out to the audience that the main characters keep dying and coming back to life, so there are no stakes. The most-badest bad guy can always be defeated because some new Thing can just come out of left-field, and dying isn’t even on the table as a threat since people have tons of ways of coming back to life. 

The Magnus Archives, while being a show based in the supernatural, notably doesn’t bring anyone back to life, even though some very beloved characters die. I say “notably,” because in the season three Q+A, Jonny even says, “We make a point not to bring people back from the dead in Magnus, I know it sometimes feels like that, but we are very careful to never actually resurrect anyone.” 

Upon listening to this I said “oh my god, these guys are the only writers left who at least kind of know what they’re doing.”  

Also, as far as plot progression goes, The Magnus Archives is lowkey structurally perfect in the way the threats escalate in the underlying plot; both in terms of destruction and power and in terms of emotional consequences. Season one starts off with one major threat that’s dealt with by the end of the season, season two reveals the main villain, season three lays out the grander forces at play, season four ends the world, and season five is about un-ending the world. The difference between season one and season five is vast, but how we got there makes perfect sense. 

As for the emotional stakes, let’s talk about themes and characters. 

Part 3: Themes and Characters 

At the very end of season two, it’s revealed that the supernatural happenings in the Magnus universe are the result of entities far beyond our understanding. Since their existence is so fundamentally different from what we can comprehend, they interact with the world through cursed items, creatures, and humans who have dedicated themselves to an entity.  

A lot of people read this as a metaphor for late-stage capitalism, and I am one of those people. A bunch of faceless entities exploiting humans through means of dehumanization and causing people to suffer because it feeds them seems like an appropriate metaphor. 

While we’re on this topic, I do want to talk about Elias, since he’s the main villain of the entire series and also one of my favorite villains of all time. The Magnus Archives is a series that deals with a lot of moral questions and has a lot of characters who do morally questionable things, so one might assume that the villain of said series is, you know, morally ambiguous and sympathetic to some extent despite being “the bad guy.” 

Nope! No stops, full bastard. It’s great. 

He falls under what I’ve deemed the “unbeatable boss” archetype. He just doesn’t tolerate insubordination or resistance, and that combined with his lack of empathy means that anyone who crosses him is either killed or brought to heel. His power set is cool too. On the surface the ability to see out of any eye and read minds sounds useful, but not deal breaking, but the way he uses that power to manipulate people and anticipate threats...yeah, it makes him kind of impossible to beat.  

He’s just...so evil and he loves being evil and every single f*cking thing he does pisses me off and makes me want to kill him. It’s. Great. 

Anyways, I think Elias’s role as the central antagonist is what makes the capitalist reading so common. He’s the head of the institute, he’s wealthy, he’s powerful, and he dehumanizes people in ways that are both brutal and chillingly indifferent. He seems like an appropriate stand in through that lens. 

I also love how voice actor Ben Meredith plays him like’s he’s trying to seduce the audience.  

With all of that said, I wouldn’t call this the critique of capitalism a direct allegory or anything; in much looser terms, this could be a metaphor for any power structure that exploits humans. Organized religion or cults might be even more on the nose, considering there’s a lot of mentions of rituals and worship within the show. 

But if we boil it down to its barest aspects and focus on the avatar characters, The Magnus Archives is a series about people becoming monsters. Or, at the very least, becoming worse versions of themselves. That can mean a lot of things to different people in a metaphorical sense; the tense relationship between desperation and morality, the eagerness to please at the cost of one’s own mental health, the psychological traumas that lead people down dark paths, and how personal choices can still be dictated and manipulated by outside influences. It’s kind of heavy stuff, but put into a digestible package through the show’s abstractions. 

Well, for the most part.  

There’s some debate as to whether or not Daisy’s arc was handled tastefully. While her demise and Basira’s character arc were clearly meant to condemn police brutality and the deeply corrupt system that allows it to foster, it’s still a weird subject to discuss in such a fantastical context, and there is a strange sympathy for the devil angle that can get kind of uncomfortable for some listeners.  

Okay, stepping back from that for a bit, let’s talk about Jon and how he fits into this whole “people becoming corrupted” thing. 

Jon has one of my favourite brands of character arc, which is one based in deterioration alongside growth. The most obvious way this takes form is his departure from humanity as his relationship with the Eye drives him to psychologically harm others, and he finds himself sympathizing more and more with the people he was afraid of, stating in episode 152 that anyone listening to his recordings might compare him to the other avatars that have had their minds and morals twisted. 

Over the course of the series, he is repeatedly traumatized and the show makes a point that he is being both physically and emotionally scarred. These happenings are what drive his motivation for revenge in season five, and he even states that revenge is making him a worse person. As a character he’s constantly berating himself and his own monstrousness, much to Martin’s dismay.  

That’s why the finale destroys me in the best way. Upon seeing that Jon has betrayed him and basically given himself over to the Eye, Martin asks “how much of you is even left?” And when Jon tries to reassure him that he’s still himself, Martin’s response is “how would you even know?” This cuts through me every time. Up until this point, Martin had consistently stood up for Jon and Jon’s humanity, even in the face of Tim’s doubt, Basira’s mistrust, Elias being cryptic, and Jon’s own self-hatred. This is the ultimate breaking point, the point where even Martin, the love of Jon’s life, doesn’t really recognize him. It’s brutal. Because at the end of the day, Jon is still himself; he’s a deeply broken person trying to make the right decisions.  

We’ll come back to the finale later, but for now I want to talk about the romance. 

Jon’s emotional growth throughout the series is largely tied into Martin. Martin’s the first person that Jon really opens up to, and this later grows into trust which then turns into a genuine emotional connection.  On the flip side, Martin’s growth in season four is largely tied into Jon. Martin starts season four basically waiting to die, but Jon’s return gives him a reason to keep living, and he’s later able to recognize his own value outside of the pure utility of ‘you need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm.’ Both of them give each other reason to push onward despite everything becoming more and more hopeless.  

It’s a good romance. I wish the two had had a few more scenes together before the culmination, but it is built up over the course of four seasons and comes together in an utterly fantastic confession.  

And yeah, the scene with Martin and Jon in the Lonely is cheesy as hell, but it is the highest quality of cheese. These are some gourmet nachos.  

Umm, also kind of stating the obvious here, but it’s also pretty cool that the main character in this horror story falls in love with another man. You don’t see that a lot, and it’s cool that no one even makes a big deal out of it. It’s just a normal romance, but with two guys. It’s nice. 

So, they go to Scottland, they hang out, they’re in love, Jonalias starts the apocalypse through Jon, the world ends, and season five starts! 

...Let’s talk about season five! 

Part 4: Season 5 

At the very start of this post, I said that supernatural mysteries tend to get worse as they go along, and I am deeply sad to report that I don’t think that The Magnus Archives is an exception. It just goes downhill in a very different way than its ilk. 

And, so we’re clear, I don’t think season five totally tanks or becomes unlistenable, it’s just, in my opinion, notably worse than the rest of the show. 

As discussed earlier, it doesn’t fall apart due to a lack of planning; everything still makes sense, but the presentation has changed drastically. The episodic statements are no longer scary stories, but more like slam poems about the various hellscapes that Jon and Martin are trekking through. Honestly if these were published in a book of slam poetry, I would probably think they slapped pretty hard. I genuinely believe that Jonny Sims is a good writer, but as a podcast a lot of these statements just made me zone out. There’s at least four that I don’t even slightly remember. Myself and many others have noted that they just...aren’t scary, unless there’s a specific episode that really gets under your skin due to a certain fear or phobia. 

To quote my friend, “it’s harder to feel a solid impact when the setting is literally divorced from reality. People would either go numb or insane to the point where their fears become unrelatable.” 

And, to be honest, I think that this same surreal odyssey set up could have worked with a slight shift in narration. Two stand out episodes for me were “Strung Out” and “Wonderland.” Both of them show the tormented target actively trying to resist and interact with their tormenter, instead of just trying to escape or live through their situation. “Strung Out” is also more of character study; you learn about Francis’s life before the apocalypse through their interaction with the Web hellscape. Meanwhile “Wonderland” is just...f*cked, and you get to see Jon take the perspective of first-person Bad Guy throughout the whole thing, which is its own level of disturbing. 

But the majority of episodes feel so abstract that I kind of forget the people trapped in them are supposed to be characters and not just concepts, so it’s harder to feel their dread and pain. 

But I’m still here for the metaplot, the drama, and the romance. And when that’s good, it’s great! I think the final handful of episodes are really solid in that regard. 

Buuuuuuut... 

A decent chunk of season five is dedicated to the “kill bill” plot. Jon discovers he has the power to smite people, and while at first, he’s embarrassed about this, since he actively enjoyed killing Not!Sasha, Martin is super into it! He’s encouraging Jon to murder people.  

This is actually the set up for a really good arc. As Jon gets more and more into his own avenging angel persona, Martin could get more and more disturbed by it so by the time they get to London, Martin could be really upset that Jon is so willing to wreak his own divine justice by killing or torturing all of the avatars. 

And this does kind of happen. We do reach this end state, and it makes for a good final conflict, but the way we got here was borderline nonsense. Thematic gibberish, if you will. 

Throughout the journey, Martin is clearly motived by a sense of justice; these people are bad, and so they should die. Whereas Jon is clearly more motivated by revenge; he only goes after the avatars that hurt him personally. At one point, Jon admits that maybe all of this killing isn’t making anything better, but just making him worse. Martin apologizes for egging him on, Jon absolves him by saying he started it, and then Martin’s like “I’ll keep my apology then.” This is the second worst line in the entire series, right after “the sky ate him.” And it’s close. 

But it kind of feels like we’re back at square one. Jon is back to being ashamed of killing and Martin is still keen on his justice stance, but now just less pushy about it. The arc is basically half resolved at this point. 

But then it doesn’t matter, because Jon kills Helen anyway. So, Jon’s back on his revenge/justice thing. Then what was the point of his earlier revelation? Why have that if it’s not going to matter and the conflict that was escalating still culminates with Jon leaning into the avenging angel stuff, and Martin being disturbed by it? It just makes both of them look like huge hypocrites! I f*cking hate it when they’re in the tunnels and Martin says “you weren’t meant to enjoy it this much,” regarding Jon’s smiting. Where did this come from?! Why didn’t you say this earlier? Third worst line in the series. 

And yeah, I’ll say it; the boys fight too much in this season. I loved their romance up to season five, and their cute moments and more lowkey serious discussions are still good in this season, but God, they fight so much. And I’m not saying couples can’t have fights or tension, that’s just realistic and also stories need conflict to be interesting. Jonny Sims is on the record saying that balancing a healthy romance with the stress of a literal apocalypse was a priority, and I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s well balanced.  I’m just saying that sometimes it feels like they don’t even like each other and it really started to grate on me. 

Maybe it would have been better if the beginning of this season was dedicated to charming romance at first, so we as an audience could better appreciate how strong their love is and how it’s truly being tested. But obviously that was never on the table— 

ALEX NO. 

So, yeah, I have a lot of problems with season. I think it’s the worst one by far, even though there is a lot of it I still enjoy, including the ending. 

As I mentioned before, the moment where Martin confronts Jon in the panopticon absolutely kills me, and Jon’s reaction kills me even harder. Throughout the season, Jon had largely been motivated by revenge, martyrdom, and the subconscious call of the Eye, and all three of those factors led him to his position as the pupil. He’s getting revenge against the powers, sacrificing his humanity to get rid of the Fears, and taking his place as wearer of the watcher’s crown. But all of this gets thrown out the window when he realizes that Martin is going to die. And not only is Martin going to die, Martin is going to die specifically because he loves Jon and refuses to leave Jon alone to die horribly. Martin had always been an underlying motivation for Jon, his “reason” as stated in episode 167, but now love as a motivator has come to the forefront, and Jon can no longer go through with his plan because of it. But at this point in the series, they’re both utterly doomed, and Jon concludes that the only possible chance they have of surviving, however unlikely, would be to sever the pupil of the eye, technically killing Jon, but maybe, just maybe, allowing them to escape with the Fears. Whether that’s meant to be literal or more ethereal is left unclear. Hell, maybe Jon’s just making it up completely and creating his own potential happy ending. It’s a pretty potent ending in emotional terms; Jon has to release the Fears and Martin has to kill Jon, and those are the two things they were dead set on not doing.  

The Web, arguably the real main antagonist, basically won, and their manipulation of Jon worked. The destruction spread, and there is kind of a bleak underlying tone to that. 

But at least this ending has some semblance of hope to it. I’m not saying that releasing the Fears was objectively the correct moral decision; the entire point of the dilemma is that there was no objectively correct moral decision. But, while Jon’s solution does have merit, it was also the most hopeless. I think dramatically, any one of the choices on the table could have worked if the writing was well executed, but thematically this one seemed like the perfect combination of grim and optimistic. Like, all of the evils that plague humanity can’t just be defeated forever and things could get worse, but maybe not. Maybe everything works out... 

So yeah, The Magnus Archives...is a podcast. And it’s a really good podcast. Great, even. I can complain about season five all I want, but regardless of how that worked out, you can tell throughout the entire show that the people working on it were trying to tell a genuinely excellent story. 

It’s good. Go listen to it. Even though I spoiled the entire thing and if you’re still here, you’ve probably already listened to it. Listen to it again. 

[retphienix]

There are so many fucking games I want to play for the blog and I hypothetically have the time, but the energy, the attention span, the drive?

In more positive terms here are some various titles I plan to give a shot for the blog.

Let's do a 5am state of the blog kind of thing to clear some thoughts, eh?

Morrowind (Current Game ramble)

For the moment the blog is more or less on break with me playing Morrowind ""For the blog"" but mostly for me, because that's just a game I've wanted to explore. Not that every other game on the blog isn't that, just that I looked at Morrowind and said "That'll be a terrible game to present naturally. That's a stream game, or a condensed video, not a liveblog" and then did it anyway.

I'm loving Morrowind! Honestly the sense of mystery, fantasy, and adventure is just chef kiss levels of perfect to me.

But it's terrible in a photoset, I'm not particularly interested in doing another format for the game, and it's a game with less 'intense narrative themes!' and more 'Incredibly different game design compared to modern Bethesda' in terms of discussion material and let's all be real here:

We're all fucking tired of that conversation lol.

So there ain't much to talk on in depth, it's more of a "Here's a newbie seeing new things!" playthrough with nothing to talk about after the fact, which ain't a strong point for the blog- again- that's a stream/video kind of thing.

ANYWHO- Morrowind fun, about the only news I can offer on that series is that it might abruptly end and become a 'for me' series because I'm not particularly interested in beating the game nearly as much as I'm interested in exploring aimlessly and seeing what happens.

I'm not playing Morrowind for the end goal of beating the main quest, or beating the DLCs. I'm playing it to wander into caves and find new pants, so if I reach a point where I'm satisfied with what I've shared and my motivation has not borne a new end goal then I'll end the live blog and move on to a new game :P

Backlog

The short statement I'll make is that this blog is a hell for my backlog.

Even without infinite money on hand I've ended up with so many physical and digital games just sitting here waiting to be played either because they caught my eye or because of recommendations by various people over the years.

I keep sitting down, cataloguing my backlog, realizing it's pointless to catalog, deleting it all, and then starting over yet again.

The fact is, if anyone recommended it it's probably still sitting in a text document somewhere, or physically on my shelf, and I don't remotely know when I'll get to it.

I've yet to hit the point where I decide to turn this blog into work, so I have never sat down and gone "Well, Retphienix NEEDS to post! Sit down, 8-12 hours minimum, let's play the next game!"

And part of me wishes I'd do that, but the fact is this isn't a job. There's no money here, there's the opposite even! I don't remotely see it that way, but if you squint and tilt your head I've spent a lot of money on this blog over the years.

Capture devices (a lot of them!), consoles specifically bought for the blog, controllers out the wazoo, I've gone through multiple computers for this thing, and the games, my lord the games- so many games.

And that's fiscally, what about manpower? So many hours have gone into this blog, so many hours poured into the background of making all this work, researching shit, putting my all into formulating my opinions clearly for posts, writing, hell video shit even though it's mostly clips as my one step into edited content became an impromptu awkward hiatus from doing more lol.

What was I on about.

Despite all that nonsense, Retphienix is a passion project. Not a job.

If I lack the passion in some sense then the work doesn't get done "just for the sake of the work". And I don't mean lost passion as much as "No motivation on x day; tired on y day; interested in doing something else on z day" etc.

If things aren't clickin' I don't force it, so the blog has all this backlog and isn't put together in a way that facilitates burning through it quickly.

I do sometimes wish things were different though, I know I'd still enjoy such a playstyle, but I can't justify "faking it til you make it" in a format that literally isn't built to pay and was never intended to.

I can't work myself for nothin'.

Hypothetical "Next" games

While the backlog is a wild wasteland of titles, there are some that just kinda guarantee their spots sooner rather than later.

Yakuza 6 and 7 along with Judgment, obviously. The series is one of my all time favorites and I generally have some of my absolute most fun on the blog side of things with those games, so it's a winner on two fronts. It's just fun to react to, post out of context things for, and talk with other fans about and for whatever reason tumblr has a healthy enough fanbase for the series that my meager blog gets some attention there.

Dragon Quest has a strangely weighted chance all things considered. DQ has many of the same advantages as Yakuza- it's a series I adore, it's fun to talk about in this format, and the fandom is big enough to occasionally spill my way making the blogging experience a bit more fun. It's also a series where I don't know what'd come next to be fair. Probably DQ4? I mean, might as well continue on from that point since I have 1-3 done. I can't exactly justify replaying the entirety of DQ11 no matter how much I want to! Turning on the games above gave me DQ goosebumps which kinda settled how likely it is to show up sooner rather than later, lol.

Jeez. I looked at one of my surviving lists and that's like all that's popping out at me.

Other series feel like giant leaps with no gas in the tank, like do I want to start playing Kingdom Hearts? Not really, not right now. Do I finally play Lisa? Eeeeeeh. Persona? Hmmmm.

I haven't the fuzziest. There are so many one off interesting titles, but if the drive ain't there they might as well be textbooks.

Perhaps instead of any major next game I'll just do some afternoons exploring random titles for a bit here and there with no intention of beating em.

The idea is enticing as hell, but the feeling of not giving the game's a "real shake" feels bad.

We'll see. The only certainties seem to be Yakuza and DQ, as much as I'd prefer far more.

Side project hypotheticals

Outside of the basic live blog stuff I'm still interested in exploring scripted stuff. Mostly to prove to myself that I can overcome some anxieties and break from the meandering pace the last effort gave- I can write! That much I know! So just gotta trick myself into writing for a video and then make the video after the fact lol.

Current thoughts are on a video exploring the monster taming sub-genre. It's a genre near and dear to my heart, and one I know some weird things about as is- but mostly it's a genre I KNOW I know very little about despite that, so I'd like to give it an overall look, or perhaps just explore some random entries, I haven't a clue lol. I'd mostly like an opportunity to talk about some interesting entries in the genre, things like explaining my adoration for DWM while explaining how the flaws make it really rough today, or the interesting mash of genres that is Lost Magic, or the more modern take that mashes idle-like mechanics with Siralim Ultimate.

Won't lie, playing the demo for Monster Hunter Stories 2 threw a wrench in that plan because it made me want to talk about it and how the genre might have a new breath of life after really grinding to a halt as pokemon became what it is today, but all to be seen or not lol.

As far as other things like streams? Not really.

The concept of writing a bit more on games is tickling the back of my head lately, but that mostly just means "more posts that aren't live-blogging" as I haven't the fuzziest where I'd share such nonsense.

Really it's all up in the air as far as retphienix content is concerned, beyond the live blogging obviously.

5am closing

It's fun to explore what games have to offer, both on the individual level, the personal level, and as a whole- as a medium.

So I like Retphienix.

And I like all I've made here.

I hope to continue for a long, long time- no matter what future formats might look like.

[just-incorrect-beastars]

Beastars Fandom Interview!

This post starts a series of interviews I want to make to artists in this fandom! I’m really sorry for the delay with this, but I had to take care of some business irl! The first interview it’s with @dooptown, talented artist and writer of Craving More Than You’re Given, Beasts in The Stars and co-author of We’re Only Animals with @nilesthewhitetaileddeerqueer! Enjoy! If you want to submit other questions feel free to do it!

How did you get into the fandom?

My friend showed me its debut cover on Shonen Champion back in like 2016? At the time I thought the art looked weird so I put it on the backburner. Fast forward to May of 2017 and the same friend started reading it and recommended that I do as well. And the rest is history.

What do you feel about Beastars? Has it improved or not with the latest volumes?

My relationship with Beastars has definitely been complicated. If you go way back on my blog you're sure to find text posts of me complaining endlessly about it because that was back when I thought the whole thing would devolve into a romance story. I saw the romance between Haru and Legosi as forced and shallow (I don't think that anymore, although I do wish it was given more focus so we can really understand it). After the Meteor Festival Arc I got really invested in it, and I believe the Murder Solution Arc is the strongest in the story. The slice of life leaning of Legosi living on his own is really good too. Melon's introduction kind of marked the descent into the Weirdness we're seeing now. I love Melon to bits but the story right now is really weird and weird things keep happening. I still enjoy a handful of the chapters coming out currently, and the last few have been really great, but it's definitely not as good as it used to be. What I crave most from Beastars is slice of life.

Do you have a favorite character?

Overall? I'm not sure. I'll just say it's Louis.

You are considered one of the first Lougosi writers/artists and one of the most looked up to. How does it feel?

While there were certainly a handful of Lougosi fics before mine as well as some art, I do remember that ship being a bit barren when the manga wasn't as popular. I'm not aware of just how influential or far reaching my work with this ship is, since this is the internet and tracking that sort of thing is kind of impossible and I tend to be a bit of an aloof hermit. Knowing I'm relatively well known in a community I care a lot about is a nice feeling, though! But at the end of the day I'm a fan just like anyone else.

How has the fandom changed since you joined, especially since the anime came out?

It has blown up, that's for sure! The tumblr tag for Beastars back in 2017 was me and maybe four other regular posters, and I was the only artist posting consistent Beastars art back then (that I remember) As time went on it definitely gained in popularity, mostly by word of mouth, but even in March of 2019 it had a virtually empty Ao3 tag. So the anime, understandably, launched Beastars into the mainstream (or at least close to it). This is awesome and I love that it's seeing so much popularity and praise! Of course that also brings with it the ugliness of general Fandom Drama. Beastars Discourse is the most unwelcome thing to come of this popularity and it's the reason I no longer track the tag here on tumblr or look it up on twitter.

Your art is very popular. Have you ever thought of making a comic?

I would like to make comics but comic layout is intimidating and so is the whole process. Maybe one day.

 3 fics that you would recommend?

serendipity by elkieistrying

  Want a Haru/Juno story with a nice helping of Lougosi on the side? Serendipity can scratch that itch. Both ships are very well written and I love the characterization so much in this story.

Ashfall by Skeptacles

This fic doesn't seem to have many hits, and I think that's because people are turned away by it being a Game of Thrones crossover. As someone who has never read, watched, or even knows anything about Game of Thrones, I can say this fic is a great read! Skeptacles presents the setting and worldbuilding in an easy to understand way and if you have no GoT knowledge like I do, it simply seems like a Beastars Fantasy story.

To one I am tied, to the other I am true by Sinpie_Senpai 

This was the first Lougosi fic I ever read, and it is the second English Lougosi fic on Ao3. It was very influential to my decision to start writing Lougosi fic, and if you haven't read it yet I think you should.

How much have you worked on merging the manga’s plot and your story for Craving More Than You’re Given?

For CMTYG the merging of the plot just happened naturally. I started it in March of 2019 so at that point Legosi just had his birthday and hadn't seen Louis in a while, so I figured a birthday party would be a good reason for them to meet again. I wrote from there while also paying attention to where the canon plot was going to see what I wanted to incorporate.

You think you're gonna include the turf war in your fic? And are there any new characters you want to include?

Since this story was conceived long before this manga plot started, I won't be including it. Things are going to go very differently. As for new characters, I don't think so.

What inspired Beasts in the Stars?

As for Beasts in the Stars, I've always been a Sci fi fan. This story is loosely based on an AU I made for my OCs back in 2015, as well as some Sci fi ideas I've had bouncing around in my head for years. I can't point to any specific inspirations, but people compare it to Cowboy Bebop, which I can see since both of a laid back hard Sci fi aesthetic. I also write Star Fox fanfic, so I’m definitely using some of my experience from that. 

Legosi in the fic is homosexual or what? What about Louis?

Their sexualities will be explained, but I usually work off my headcanon of Legosi being bi and Louis being gay.

What other characters do you want to include in Beasts in the Stars?

BITS will hopefully include virtually every character from Beastars in some capacity.

What's the difference between writing a story more anchored to the manga and one that isn't?

Writing a fic that's manga-compliant is fun because you have to take into consideration past actions in the story and make sure it lines up with what they're doing in the fic. Of course, there's less freedom there, so that's why writing an AU also has its positives. Using the characters as a base to work off of in a new setting is very exciting.

Any spoilers you would like to share for both of them?

CMTYG: Next chapter is being written, and the summer clothes Legosi pics I've been drawing definitely play a role ;) 

BITS: Next canon characters you'll be seeing are the Drama Club folks. I hope people enjoy how I adapted them for this story.

And this was it! If you are an artist in the fandom and you want to partecipate to this please feel free to write me, I’ll get back at you as soon as possible!

[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Five

Will we make it off the Citadel in this update??

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Flux is my favorite bar in all of the first game, I know there’s not many to choose from, but I like the music best, everybody’s clothed, everyone’s having a good time, there’s slots upstairs for entertainment, there’s dancing, and plenty of space to chill out in.  Also the color scheme is great.  It looks particularly great now with the graphics mod improvements.  

Doran gets a nice glamour shot here.

I’m a tattle tale who always turns this guy in.  I agree with Kaidan...

Also I really love Rita’s quest with her sister.  She loves her sister, Jenna  wants to be helpful, even Doran’s like “Hey I’d love to give her her job back.”  Everyone here is pretty wholesome.  And Jenna gets one of the best surprise appearances in ME3 if you do things right.  ME1Recalibrated fixes the bugs with her quest, too!

Speaking of bugged quests, Hello Conrad!  ME1Recalibrated fixes Conrad’s bug, and even if it doesn’t, ME2Re does.  The only bad thing about that is it makes his apology for accusing you of something you maybe didn’t do make no sense.

Everyone else was sure Conrad would turn out to be evil, too, right? Instead making him into just a big lying dummy with an advanced degree was a great move.  I was kinda hoping he’d show up in the Citadel DLC.   

Harkin is JUST the FUCKING WORST.  I’m always tempted to let Garrus cap him in ME2 because what a waste of air he is and doesn’t learn his lesson.  

This is also maybe the most overt place where FemShep experiences sexism.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s some pretty shitty sexism sprinkled throughout the games (as discussed a bit last post) but ugh this guy, if I could shoot him this game, I might.  At least on renegade playthroughs.

Speaking of Garrus...

Finally, an alien who wants to hang out with us.

As primarily a Kaidan-romancing gal, who tends to keep up with the Kaidan Alenko tag, especially back in the heyday of tumblr, for a while, loving Garrus was... difficult.

In October, when I was finishing up my latest ME3 playthrough and also cleaning up my blog, and also rewatching Doctor Who and thinking a lot about Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, I posted a long thing in a post about Kaidan and Garrus and badly behaving fanbases, which I don’t feel like typing again.  Here’s the whole thing, but I’m going to pull a part of it into here.

I love Garrus, so much.  And I was thinking with this whole parallel DW rewatch / Mass Effect replay think I’m doing right now how both Rose Tyler and Garrus Vakaraian are characters that were ruined for me for awhile due to their respective… overly enthusiastic fanbases who a small percentage of were dicks to people who loved other characters.  The Kaidan tag (and from what I understand Thane got some of this too, but not nearly as bad) was a pretty hostile place for awhile (and yeah I used to regularly check the Garrus tag too and there was a small amount of tag-invasion there but uh, like 5% of what the Kaidan tag got) which made loving the character of Garrus a lot harder for awhile.  But when actually watching seasons 1 & 2 / the end of 4 of Doctor Who, or actually playing the ME games, those characters are awesome.  

Fanbases can be amazing or terrible, and time and time again I think you start to realize that no matter how great a fandom is, there are going to be a few people who can only enjoy themselves by feeding on drama, or on lifting up what they love by stomping on other people/characters/plotlines.  

It’s not fair to characterize everyone who loves a popular thing as someone who does this.  It’s also hard to avoid completely because there will always be jerks, or young/new people who don’t realize what bad form they’re showing.  I did learn by trying to fight it for a year or two, that responding might help that one person not do it again, but it’s not going to stop overall.  

Anyway, don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like.  

It’s sad that even thirteen years past the release of ME1 and eight years past ME3 some people still need to have this fight online.   It’s basically impossible to enjoy like, any non-curated Mass Effect space online because of pissing contests or people spouting the same boring opinions.  Which they’re entitled to.  I’m just real tired of “Kaidan is boring!” “Ashley is a racist!” etc with no further depth of thought being given.

The ability to mute / block people and get away from the worst of it is one of the reasons I’m still on tumblr.  Especially always mute/block “confessions” blogs.  Yeesh.

---------

I’m glad Garrus is here, and I’m glad he’s on the team.  What’s funny though, is that people tend to forget that Garrus like, wasn’t really all THAT popular of a character before ME2.  I know I was only in the fandom for a year before ME2 but I dug in pretty deep in that time.

It wasn’t until he gets his face blown off and starts talking about Old Times that a lot of people started to REALLY like him.  He’s still great in ME1, but not like, elevated to god-tier that so many people did post ME2 release.  But in ME1 he IS neat because he’s really malleable.  Probably the companion who can have the biggest personality shift depending on your choices.

Also, I remember a time when the people who wanted to romance Garrus were like... outliers?  I remember thinking “GARRUS?  As a romance?  That’s... weird.  Who would do that!?”

OH HOW I WAS WRONG.  But that was before reach and flexibility.

Hey I even have a Shep that romanced Garrus in ME2 and ME3.  And I loved it!

Were I to replay a different Shep, she’d be my first choice.

So yeah, I love Garrus, I keep Kaidan in the squad all the time in ME1 and the other spot I try to rotate everyone else somewhat evenly, but you’ll see plenty of him.  Then ME2 he’s by my side most of the way.  And an awful lot in ME3, too.  But I’m happy for him to get crushed on by Dr. Michele and glad to see him and Tali find happiness in ME3.  SO that’s the path we’ll be going down if we get that far here.

I love the Destiny Ascension flyby moment on the Citadel, and it’s so easy to miss.  Also really hard to get good screenshots of.  Thanks Flycam.  Don’t pay attention to the untextured wall in the first pic, just look at the pretty lights!

Let’s go get another squadmate!  This time, a not-as-initially-friendly alien!

What an amazing entrance for Urdnot Wrex.

“Do you want me to arrest you?”

“I want you to try!”

Hell.  Yeah.

Here’s where the somewhat in somewhat evenly comes in.  I probably do favor Wrex and Ashely in the squad in ME1 a little because... well you know what’s coming for Ash and Wrex you get the least amount of time with by far of the other companions.  Also, he’s just... great?  A tank, with some biotics and a shotgun... okay well so am I as a vanguard, but Kaidan has just enough tech powers for us to muddle through where we need to when Wrex is in the squad and he’s so much fun to have around.  His “Fuck you, I don’t care” attitude is great, and his growth story throughout the trilogy is one of the best arcs a character gets, imho.  I just really love Urdnot Wrex.

This is a real nice flight control office you’ve got here, C-Sec.  It would be a shame if someone planted a bug in it later, since literally anyone can just walk on up here uncontested.

This entire area really is so pretty though.

I always pump points into Paragon as much as possible from as early on as possible, and saving these poor guys’ lives is one of the big reasons.  They don’t need to die.

Ash usually still stays in the party up to this point, though sometimes it’s Garrus.  Fist is still a dick in ME2 but he doesn’t need to die here, sorry Wrex.

...raise your hand if you still occasionally forget to pick up Emily Wong’s evidence and have to reload.  I remembered!  ...once I was almost out of Chora’s Den and had to turn around this time.

Kaidan?  Kaidan my love?  My darling... perhaps YOU shouldn’t be the one standing in the middle of the corridor with no barrier or protection?  (I suppose I could scooch over but then I’d look less badass for these screenshots.  Naaah.)

It’d be a shame if someone properly lit the corridor so we could see what’s going on.

But hey... TALI!  Tali Tali Tali!  The first quarian we see, and only one for... awhile?  Is there another quarian in this entire game? I’m trying to remember and seriously can’t think of one.

Anyway, I love Tali, but another character you really need to ignore their most rabid fanbase portions of.  Yikes, Talimancers were really something back in the day.  The biggest problem I have with Tali being in the squad is that normally she’s REALLY useful against Geth and... not so much against just about anything else.  She gets sidelined on my team more than I wish she would.  Especially since she doesn’t show up until very late in ME2 and late-midway through ME3.

Finally, the proof we need.  And the game continues to introduce new concepts to us with the Conduit and we hear the word Reapers for the first time.  We also get a loredump on the quarians and the geth.  

Tali’s voice doesn’t have quite as heavy of an accent in ME1 as it does in 2 and 3.  I guess we can assume she’s lost part of it while on her pilgrimage?  Picking up the local dialects a bit?  The next two times we see her she’s just spent a lot of time with her own people.

Tali’s suit and omnitool look SO GOOD with the updated textures.

I swap Ash out and Tali in at this point, and usually finish up a few more quests along the way.

Ah, Septimus.  You lovesick fool.

Honestly, the very best thing with Septimus is to bring Garrus here if you’re gonna romance him, have Garrus laugh at him for coming undone for love and then... well, ME2 and especially ME3 happen.  But still.  Septimus... always needs a kick in the pants but will get around to doing the right thing.

Hey here’s a cool thing ME1Recalibated does -- Morlan carries a Squad Iconic Armors stock, so you can always find tier-appropriate default look armor for you and all the squad.  Very cool of you, Morlan.  You are currently my favorite store on the Citadel.  Now stop sending me spam, I didn’t sign up for your mailing list.

Look, I have questions about what exactly Xeltan told the consort and how... all that... works... but... I don’t think I actually want to ask them.  Just.. let’s all shut up about all of it, it’s over now.

BTW, according to one of the novels, Councilor Anderson finds Ambassador Cayln super annoying.  I need to re-read that book.

OK fine... I’ll go talk to the Council.

Coming at ya with Actual Proof and a quarian tagging along to back up the claims, the Council is ready to listen.  And while not surprising that it’s finally time to become a Spectre, the actual ceremony is really well done.  With the swelling theme music blaring, and all three councilors stressing what a big deal this is and what will be expected of you, you really feel the weight of this moment.  People take notice.  Although apparently later, Kaidan or Ash get an entire televised event around becoming a Spectre, I guess there’s no time for that right now.

It definitely feels like the game so far has been building towards this moment, not only with POUNDING it into your brain about who Spectres are and why they’re so important and letting you know you’re being evaluated... but it feels like there’s been a shift in the game after this moment.  It’s A Big Deal.

I didn’t finish all the sidequests on the Citadel yet, they can wait, I’ve been here long enough.  Let’s go check out the new cool stuff we can buy.

ME1Recalibrated adds in this Spectre Armor.  Eeehhhhh... no thanks.  We’ll stick with Onyx.

I did cheat myself in a bunch of credits and picked up Spectre weapons though. This ain’t no tryhard playthrough.  

Well OK, we can finish ONE more quest.  Thanks, startlingly loud and triumphant music queue that’s never used again!

Man, this would be SUCH a good pic of the Normandy if... the airlock didn’t go straight through the ship.

We’ve got a ship of our own!  And most of our squadmates to put on it!

Sucks for Anderson to be sidelined, though.  We already love you, Anderson!

It’s cool to get a bit more of the Saren & Anderson backstory here for real.  Still, I enjoyed the book more.  Maybe I’ll do a re-read of all the ME books here soon.

Udina... just keep being you, I guess.  

WE HAVE A SHIP!!!

Okay, whew... we made it off the Citadel.  Now I gotta actually play some more to have more updates to post.  Might be a few days.  Have to actually go back to work tomorrow. :p

Let’s probably do like one sidequest then go get us an Asari!!

[mcrmadness]

I was tagged by @cupcakecurl a while back (thank you!) and finally I’m on the mood for doing this myself as well!

Rules: tag 9 people you’d like to get to know better!

Top 3 current ships: I actually have just one OTP, which is Bela/Farin (aka FUB) from Die Ärzte, and then multiple smaller ones here and there. I’m finding new ships way too easily and sometimes it bugs me because I meant to enjoy a thing and boom, suddenly I have a ship there to fuck up with my brain. B/F is pretty much the only ship that I can say to actually ship, the rest are more like just for fun, I enjoy seeing stuff but I don’t really do anything about it, you know?

But now as I think of it, I think of it, I could say another band ship here: Paulchard aka Paul Landers and Richard Z. Kruspe from Rammstein, about these I have also watched videos and read some fancomics too and last summer’s tour was a wild one and I was following the events quite a lot.

And then maybe I could throw one fictional ship here too as it’s pretty much current one since I just finished watching the 5th season of Gotham last week, and that is, of course Nygmobblepot aka Penguin/The Riddler aka Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma. I’ve never in my life shipped these before, even tho I’ve been a Batman fan since 1999 (I was 8) as I saw the 60s series on TV and I can remember almost shipping Batman and Robin back then, and I was only 8 years old!, and then had been watching the movies more or less during my childhood, but this was never something I’d even think of before I started watching Gotham and things started happening in the show. But it’s an interesting one. And I have to admit that while the show was still running and I couldn’t watch it because I live in Europe (and was too lazy to look for a website to watch it :D), I was still browsing the tag on Tumblr after each episode and giving myself spoilers of what happens with them. But I think the ending was a lot different than what I thought based on the Tumblr posts, and I’m actually not sure what to think of it. Imho it was not as bad as everyone else seemed to think.

I’m putting this under a read more link as this is getting way too long and I don’t know if people are interested in reading my weird thoughts about ships and other random stuff, so here you go... 

Top 3 all-time ships:  Oh my gosh, I have had so many but only like 2 actually strong ones? And I have to say Bela/Farin here as well, the reasons are found from above and I’m just so obsessed with them and idc what it is, already the friendship is like friendhip goals, you know? But yeah, I’ve been making videos about these two idiots for like last 10 years so... :D

And the next one, okay I’m usually not so talkative about ships. I can talk about them with people in private but I don’t like to go and shout about them publicly, probably the only one I talk about this way is Bela/Farin but it’s because Tumblr is a safe place for this and there’s no hate with this ship or anything (and the other one is Paulchard, every now and then I will reblog something that crosses my dash). But mainly I like to keep ships to myself and like I said in that other tag game post, ships are more like a guilty pleasure. Maybe because of my age as it was very normal at the age of 15 but now as I’m 28? Why am I still “in love with other people’s love”? I actually don’t mind it but I think many people would find it weird, especially when I don’t read fanfictions anymore and I don’t want to imagine anything, I just like seeing cute stuff, but with many ships I don’t even want to see too much, I just like seeing them being close but with many ships even seeing them kiss would be too much.

But anyway, top 3 all-time ships... I think I need to mention here a ship that I was very much obsessed when I was 15-17, that I wrote LOTS OF fanfiction and was there to make lots of fan theories and all, and that one was Frerard aka Gerard Way/Frank Iero from My Chemical Romance. I was SO obsessed it’s insane. If you know anything about MCR and Frerard, you maybe are aware of how was the year 2007 and you can probably imagine how crazy we all went when Project Revolution stuff happened. So yeah, I need to mantion that here even tho I no longer “believe in this ship”, but I guess I’d lie if I said, that I didn’t believe that there was something there back in the day. I’ve actually recently been watching some Frerard theory videos just for fun, because there’s so many things I had forgotten and so many things I still can remember, but also lots of stuff that I kinda missed because they happened in 2010-2012, and even tho I was still very much in the fandom and I was to their second gig in Finland in 2011, I still was not that much into the Danger Days album so I was not so into digging up stuff either. And I had my own identity crisis and Die Ärzte had been my favorite band for 1-2 years at that time so I was spending lots of time watching DÄ videos, so MCR was kinda at the background. And then the whole band went quiet for some time until they quit in 2013 (and now they’re back), so all that Frerard hype kinda died after each of them started to get married to other people and the kids were born, so there just... kinda was no more room for the ship, you know? But Freard was my first actual huge slash ship, I’ve had others before it (for example, my first touch to slash fiction was Harry Potter fanfiction and of course Harry/Draco stuff, but that one also later died out), but it was the first really strong one and then Bela/Farin kinda took its place as Frerard died out but B/F has been going strong and the ship has been sailing itself since the 80s, so... :D

And as the last one I think I could again mention something fictional but at the same time something that is super weird for me as it’s not slash fiction but hetship, which is something REALLY weird for me. I usually don’t like heteroships as they’re just... boring and so cliché. But I need to mention this one that I got into when I was 15: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from The X-Files. Yeah I know it was 2006 and the series had ended already in 2002, but I was a new fan! I had known about the series since I was a little kid as my dad was watching it back then, but I started watching it myself when the show had a rerun here in 2004-2005. And then I met my friend in 2006 when we were 15 and we found out that we both were very much into TXF and I remember how we somehow both started to ship Mulder and Scully (having no idea of how the series ended), and it was probably until the 6th season (there was 9 seasons at the time) when they stopped airing it altogether, so we were so furious about the fact because the last episode was such a cliffhanger and we NEEDED TO KNOW, so I had to buy them on dvd! So I remember how we would meet at school every day and after every episode, we went so crazy, discussing what had happened in the episode and if there was any Mulder/Scully activity, we were just so hyped :D And then, as we STILL hadn’t seen all the seasons, we went to see the second movie (”TXF: I want to believe”) in theaters in 2008 or so, and it’s set to happen after the events of the seasons, we were both so blown away by what was in the movie because we had no clue :D Fun fact: I actually finished watching the 9th season only last year. So now I understand the events of the second movie a lot better, and I’ve also seen the 10th and 11th seasons so now I’m finally aware of everything. But that really is a hetship that I accept and that is not like a typical movie romance type of ship. It has interesting dynamics.

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Last song: Tatuoituna by Tehosekoitin

Lipstick or chapstick: Chapstick, I don’t use any make-up, but chapstick I need to use daily.

Last movie: Iron Sky. I’ve seen it before tho, but we’re gonna watch the sequel soon, so we had to watch this to remember what happened :D (And it’s made partially by Finns, so..!)

Reading: Atm I have 3 books I’m reading, all of them in Finnish:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which has all the short stories in one. But I think there’s some of the newer ones missing and that’s why I bought this bit newer book with more stories, and I’m gonna read those once I’m finished with this one. And I’ve been reading this now for years lol... but I’m slowly getting there, I’m already over halfway through :D

A collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, I don’t know the name for this book and it doesn’t say any name for the original. This one I also started to read a years back, only to pause if for years and then last year I borrowed it again from my dad and tried to continue from where I was left the last time.

The Heroes of Olympus: The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan. I’ve been reading his books ever since I was a, well, teenager probably, and I have had a long pause with these books and reading overall, but now I’m back at it and trying to buy and read all of his books I still haven’t read.

I wanted to read the latter only after finishing with SH and Poe’s stories but I needed to read something and they’re bit too difficult reading at the times, and I needed something lighter but also didn’t want to start over with Harry Potter for the 5th time so I decided to go for this series instead. I really like reading SH and Poe’s stories, but like I said, they’re bit difficult at the times. You can’t just read them, you need to think and use your brains meanwhile you’re reading, and sometimes it’s just so incredibly hard to stay focused on it and I need to go back so often because I wasn’t paying attention and then had no clue what was happening and why.

And I sometimes I skip some of Poe’s stories because they’re so purely scientific about a topic that I cannot comprehend nor care about, e.g. this one story that was almost like a science essay about hot-air balloon flight in the form of a story, probably super interesting for someone who likes this kind of stuff and even more interesting for a writer interested in stuff like that, but I’m really not the target audience of that story :D But then there’s also lots of really interesting ones, I especially like the ones that have something to do with insanity. I guess people would call them as the horror stories, but idk, I just love that kind of mystery. For some reason all of my favorite stories are those where there is a dead woman/love interest :DD But probably my ultimate favorite is the one about writing an article to a magazine with horror stories, and how this guy become beheaded and all just to write a story about how it feels like and stays alive meanwhile, and I just LOVE IT when fictional works play with death and when something that is supposed to kill you, doesn’t, and I just love the idea of that story so much :D It’s just that you never know how a story will be like, as you start reading, is it a scientific essay or a mystery or a horror story or about insanity or what is it? And then when in the middle of reading and you realize this is bit boring or uninteresting, but still want to finish, but also want to skip, and that’s why I get stuck with that book, and I change to SH or something else. Often I also grab some of the comics (or non-fiction books) I own whenever I feel like reading but these books feel too heavy for that moment.

---

I should tag 9 people but I don’t even know that many people to tag lol. Okay I do know people, but I still don’t know who wants to be tagged and who doesn’t. Maybe I’ll be boring and tag @stufenlosregelbar again? :D And idk, maybe @annika-of-the-lost? Eh, I’m so bad at this whole tagging thing. I’m having a bad conscience if I don’t tag anyone/enough people in case they want to be tagged and I can’t read minds; and then I’m having bad conscience when I DO tag people in case they’re all somewhere facepalming and screaming “WHYYYYYY” into the void, as I still can’t read minds. So you can choose, do this tag game or ignore it and ban me from ever tagging you people again, I don’t mind :p

[johnny-boy-17]

STAR VS THE FORCES OF EVIL or The Art Student’s Awakening (A Review)

Oh hey, it’s another review by me that nobody asked for! Ok, this one is actually gonna mean a lot to me since this show is pretty much the reason I even started posting things on this site to begin with (thank you and curse you Tumblr), so I need to get it all off my chest. 

Short version: It’s really fuckin’ good, and y’all should check it out. The ending could have used a little more finesse, but it’s still pretty damn good.

Long version: *gasps for air*

Ok let’s start with the story. Yeah, it’s certainly a rollar-coaster. What starts out as a fun little-romp-of-the-week type of story...

...becomes this tale of power corruption, racism battle, and a tale of trust in one another and unity among the people.

Whether or not it handles that well seems to be half and half. On one hand, grace under fire this show is not. It does seem a little rushed in the last season, and you can really tell it wanted to be a bit longer, flesh out ideas, but didn’t have time for it (I blame the Mouse on that). 

I mean I dunno about you, but a show that introduces time travel right the fuck out of nowhere in a medium never seems to end well, this show is no exception.

That and they reeeeeaaaaaally try to knock you unconscious using a hammer with all the prejudice allegories.

On the other hand, good characters can make a shit story seem like high-class art. And good characters this show has in spades (no eclipsa-related pun intended).

Firstly, Star Butterfly herself. It seems stupid not to start with her. And... yeah she’s a really fun protagonist. Not only is she basically Sailor Moon hyped up on too much nose candy, but she has an incredible story of growth to go with. She starts as a fun-loving monster battler that’s too eager to run away from her problems to this teenager facing the looming shadow of adulthood head on and ready to ditch her past of monster-ism(?) for good, never to let such discrimination see the light of day again. Not to mention Eden Sher just absolutely brings this character to life, even if it’s just little things she says like “yeah totally totally totally” or “we got burger juice on the wall rug.” Something in her performance just absolutely friggin’ works wonders. I’d say she’s probably one of my favorite protagonists out there that “the big D” has come up with, but my favorte character they’ve created in a looooong time? That award... 

... goes to mother-fuckin’ Marco Ubaldo Diaz. I cannot BELIEVE how much they won me over with this guy. I think it’s because I saw so much of myself in this guy to the point where I am convinced he’s my long-lost brother. This B0I starts out as this paranoid play-it-safe ‘nother brick in the wall type who just wants to get through his teenage life without any kind of trouble, and by the end is a guy who’s ready to shrug off getting impaled by an evil unicorn being ridden by a corrupted version of Star’s half-demon ex just to get him to snap out of it (it just now dawns on me how fuckin’ batshit this show is). I just love how as he’s easing up on his paranoia, he learns to stop taking himself so seriously and let loose every now and then. Adam McAruther deserves praise for playing this guy, and I don’t know who could ever play this guy like he did. If no other takeaways for this show were to be, it’d be that Marco is in a lineup of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

Now I sense some ears (ok fine all ears) are waiting for me to talk about the two together, so I’ll touch on it once, and make an entire post on it later: It’s great. It’s pleasing to the eye, it’s wholesome for the soul, it makes them both into better beings, the opposite attracts thing is done beautifully, the chemistry could make Bill Nye proud, and I think their ending was as good as it could be for them... though I do hate how long it took to get there. 

OK LIGHTNING ROUND GO (can’t get ‘em al, so sorry):

-Tom: I like the guy, definitely a more relatable and visible character arc and his design is neat.

-Jackie: I wish my lesbian venice beach girl got more appreciation, but I luv her none the less.

-Janna: I luv my strange bisexual filipino witch-wannabee (you know what I said is true don’t deny it)

-Moon: Never really gave her full trust, but was not disappointed by her in any way, despite various actions in the end.

-River: I liked him in the beginning season, sorta trailed off by the end.

-Kelly: Not sure why she was there, but she was cool.

-Eclipsa: We stan that queen! Loved the fact that her motives were so grey, and you every could tell if she was going to turn out to be truly bad or not.

-Globgor: We stan that king! I adored how he actually was a threat back in his day, but now regrets everything he ever did then (plus him size shifting in fights is creative as hell), wish we could have had more of him, but it’s cool that we got any at all really.

-Glossaryck: I loved him, true chaotic neutral god. He was such a troll, and he has my respect (and to think all he wanted to do was die).

 -Ponyhead: I hope that sack of shit gets donated to a glue factory.

But what is a good story without good villains? Well, this show wants to have a ton of good ones, but nothing really sticks to the wall too well, though they do leave an impact.

LUDO: This is how to do  a comedic villain right. You have fun with him in the beginning, and then you make him into a legit threat the next, and by the end give him a redemption arc so as to let him go back on his old ways without soiling his actual good moments as an antagonist. He was the one who surprised me the most.

TOFFEE: Ooooohhhhhhhhh everybody loves this lawyer-lizard B0I and so do I. This guy’s plan was 1: not evil at all, 2: his methods were borderline black and grey, and 3: it was still going on in the background of the story of the entire show since his arival. His personality was cool, suave, persuasive, manipulative, downright terrifying sometimes, and he was just so good at it. While everyone certainly wishes we had more of him, what we got and how long le lasted just cements him as probably one of my all-time favorite villains ever really.

Ms. HEINOUS/METEORA: Oh shakespeare where art thou? Such a wondrous work this tragedey is. Heinous just starts out as a villain who pushes the patriarchy so you can say “fuck that shit,” tries to steal youth for herself, wants to kill Marco for ruining her perfection, y’know yahoo. But the moment you realize her name is Meteora, and what her past has been like... yeah, this is a fuckin’ shakespearian villain for certain. It gets to a point where you begin to agree with what she’s doing, and you’re glad thing turn out all right for her in the end, but god-damn she was such a captivating force to go up against. Scar can suck one compared to this.

MINA LOVEBERRY: I wanna say this was a good attempt at an Aku-type villain (humor and terror in perfect balance), but yeah she could have been handled better. For what we did get with her though, I’m content with it. It’s just funny to see hobo-usagi here just hulk out and talk with a southern accent about what is essentially senile racism n’ shit. There are hints to a tragic past that led to this, and that was nice, but overall not exactly a swan song.

In fact, that’s kinda how the whole ending was wasn’t it? It was serviceable, but nothing big to write home about. I could have definitely used a little more polish to flesh out some things, but we got left with enough to tide over I suppose, though I so wanna see more. 

I mean, look at this new world we were left with! Could you imagine a new season just exploring that? It sounds like so much fun! However, the crew have this “leave them wanting more mentality (ha! hope you were paying attention to that foreshadowing!),” not to mention I have seen the creator Madame Daron Nefcy encourage all the creative fans this show has to do all sorts of stuff (of which we seemed to have wasted no time and not even waited for the show to end to start doing *glares at the fan-made-starco kids everywhere*).

Really, at the end of it all, I’d compare this entire series to a friend doing a cannonball from a high-dive. First, you’re amazed that they decided to climb the ladder. Second, you’re in awe of the guts their showing to prepare for the jump. Third, you gawk as they actually did jump off into the water from the height. But fourth, you see them underwater and watch them un form the ball and into a weird janky zero-gravity water thing swimming up for air, not to mention you remembered they didn’t swan dive. But that doesnt mean the plunge was all that bad, you enjoyed watching all the steps to it, didn’t you?

Overall, the score I shall leave it at would be... 7.5/10, and an easy thumbs up approval. It’s ending and other aspects have a lot to be desired, but the story and characters are too good to ignore. 

Check it out if you haven’t already (probably binge it), and to Madame Nefcy (if by some stroke of a miracle you see this) thank you so much for creating this show. I am so glad I saw it despite my gripes, and I’d gladly see it again.

[elizabethrobertajones]

As a Cas-girl, I am so tired of all the Cas-related alarmism. Anyone who's worried about his place in the show needs a refresher course on what things were like late S6 early S7. We are so far from that atmosphere right now it's not even funny, no matter how many parallels there may be to that period in the story itself. Like, come on guys, give Dabb the credit he deserves here. So thank you for your reasonable words on the subject.

Thanks, although I wish you didn’t have to say that in the first place >.>

I guess people get jumpy online and ideas spread like wildfire. One of the anons mentioned the comments section although they didn’t say where, “comments section” to me immediately conjures the worst of humanity. :P I assume in fandom contexts that’s where people voice their wildest thoughts and fears unfiltered… Though I know some people in tumblr fandom were pretty worked up about Cas because of all the anons we got after he died, and all the fears that he would be AU Cas or all sorts of things about not getting Cas back. I think people are just tuned to dread and expect the worst…

But yeah it feels like Dabb is trying for positive development so hard. I mean case in point we’d never get a grief counsellor episode if there wasn’t the thought that maybe it’s time to start working through their feelings towards a better end. And of course being a horror show soaked in tragedy a good way to get them really addressing and confronting their feelings is to kill off those closest to them because being a horror show they can come up with ways to bring back Cas or make it only look like Mary is lost. Things which make drama or physically hurt or incapacitate the characters don’t actually convey the writers’ feelings about them. 

And I mean you can tell in season 6/7 the overall feeling was not pro-Cas just from the way it was written, and that the writers who did like Cas had to do what they could to send him off and memorialise him, whereas now we’ve been working on a Cas-rehabilitation from narrative neglect in season 10 (where he was only having a single off-season after 8 and 9 focused a lot on him and gave him powerful arcs) because he got more personal arcs and the “mention Cas in every episode” initiative began a shaky start. Season 12 was better than season 11, and ended up mirroring season 8′s structure for Cas/Destiel in some ways, which is considered one of the big Destiel seasons, and then in season 13 the writing has been absolutely lavishing Cas with attention and care. 

I mean I can’t really tell people how to react but I feel like I’m fairly chill about the actual show, and all my histrionics are entirely me being OTT for comedy purposes… which, tbh, with the wide tumblr audience it’s kind of worrying that I think people don’t actually get when I’m being ridiculous for attention because who are you without some sort of nonsense people associate you with, and I’ve chosen the concept of Nonsense Itself… :P 

I’ve had some enormous misunderstandings about things I’ve said about Cas from sensitive Cas fans who don’t understand that nothing I say is real and I’m basically emotionally blogging from a large claw-footed bubble bath with a glass of champagne in one hand and maybe some macaroons or something in the other… Obviously there are a whole bunch of candles around me… Anyway it’s weird getting vagueblogged at, recognising your post from the description, but seeing someone misinterpret your raucous joy as essentially betraying a massive Cas-hating conspiracy about how we’re squawking with delight about him being written out and killed off for good just to make Destiel canon - again, I don’t think this person actually TRUSTED the show to bring Cas back even though 99.99999999999% of hiatus we KNEW he was going to be back and fine and his normal self eventually. So my post probably looked like a tasteless vulture to them instead of utter glee knowing from the moment Cas exploded into white grace out of his eyes and mouth that we were getting this incredible development for him and Destiel in season 13.

So, idk. Every side of the fandom has its own weird hangups and feeling of injustice from the show. I try and save mine for being weary about them killing off characters like Charlie, Eileen, Kevin, Billie(!) etc and less about getting very protective of a favourite character. TFW each mean an ENORMOUS amount to me on a deep personal level, but as a meta blog I try to be as rational as I can while still harpy-screeching for comic effect about them, and actually pay attention to the writing. I can see a decided quality increase in recent years, especially in paying attention to that fans want good emotional arcs, less contrived or pointlessly dragged out bro drama and better communication, more Cas or at least Cas in a central role to prove he’s well and truly an indelible part of the story… Billie back… :P (KEVIN BACK!?! WHAAAAT). In NO way is the show perfect but I can give points for effort, and for utterly pandering to me when it comes to the TFW emotional arcs :P

And I have stopped watching the show out of boredom in early season 9 and been salvaged only by a strong start to season 11 where I had the show on very bitter thin ice after season 10. So I know what it’s like to not care or to feel the show is awful garbage, but because I knew I was hooked I gave it a CHANCE to get better, and it proved itself to me, and has been on an upward path ever since. I think that shaped my expectations and feelings about the show to make me this chill, that I went right through all those horrible feelings from the end of season 10, but decided to give it another go. But some people can’t extend that hand when they’re clinging to their favourite character or dynamic or whatever, and feeling the show is ruining the one thing they love. Sometimes bitterness and complaining is a way to process having to stop watching the show. Sometimes people cling on and become vengeful ghosts powered by fear or anger :P 

I think the Cas side of fandom has a lot of these in particular who are loud and feeling justifiably hurt, who lost all love for the other characters through various things they did to Cas, and now only care about Cas at all, which is a bad place to be in when you don’t want to humour the narrative or to give the show a chance to explain itself. And the people who aren’t angry are perpetually scared something like season 6/7 will happen again and no matter what people say they just don’t trust anything, so they cling on waiting for the horrible news. I don’t think reassuring messages to anons really help all that much but I still take the time to do it in case it helps anyone who is maybe not as lost as the anon but still upset enough it catches their thoughts at the right time :/

[timelordthirteen]

How are you gifs always so nice?? Can you show me how you make them?

I recommend this tutorial from the amazing people at @itsphotoshop for how to make gifs. I use the import video method because I have the large majority of shows I gif already chopped up into scene blocks. For that I use QuickTime or Avidemux. I like Avidemux better now than I used to, and especially if I’m watching the episode and clipping at the same time, which is what I do with new episodes. QuickTime works better on large files though, like movies.

I don’t think there is anything special that I do, but here are some things to keep in mind to make sure your gifs are high as quality as possible, behind the cut because I ramble.

HD Video - Always use as high quality a video ask you can find, regardless of what gif making method you are using. HD is everything and you’ll lose less quality when you resize and be able to make gifs of any size. 

Sharpening - I use a sharpen action, but you can also just convert to a Smart Object and sharpen all frames at once. You have to have the timeline in PS to do this. My settings are 500%, radius 0,3, Remove Gaussian Blur.

Save your gifs with the same settings as this.

Use the right size gif - Tumblr’s dimensions are all fucked since they changed the post width from 500px to 540px. My gif dimensions are as follows: 260 x 150 for sets of 6, 8, 10 or 12, 268 x 268 for those 4 by 4 sets, 540 x 275 for the bigger sets of 4 or more gifs. If you do 3 across, the middle gif has a different dimension (178px wide) than the 2 on the ends (177px wide). I have some sets that are 245 x 175 which are older dimensions I was using for a while, it actually works okay if you sharpen them decently. I have a script for the dashboard that adjusts sizes so it all looks good to me, but not everyone has that. On mobile, hilariously, most gif sets look okay. But in a browser they won’t always. If you use something other than 268px it will scale and look blurry.

Make sure your gifs are all the same size if you put them next to each other. Otherwise it resizes things weird. Don’t put a 268 width gif next to one that’s 250 or it will do bad things and probably look blurry.

Don’t make gifs aren’t bigger than 3MB because they won’t work. I usually aim for 2MB these days, but I go bigger if I have to in order to get the whole scene or whatever in. If you get it right at 2.98+, Tumblr will size them up to 3MB when it’s uploaded, and they won’t work. So you need to be like 2.8MB or lower. When you go to save a gif, at the bottom of the preview screen it shows you how big it will be.

Play your gif in PS or save it to drafts on Tumblr and watch it. I always try to make the looping look smooth if I can. I don’t want big jumps in action or anything to look like it’s stuttering or skipping. If a character moves a lot, make sure that it repeats smoothly and delete frames as needed.

Delete any blurry frames or leading frames. Sometimes when a scene transitions, the first frame will have slightly different coloring than the rest or be darker or brighter. Remove one or two farmes at the start if that’s the case. If a character is moving or transitioning from distance to zoomed in, there can be some blurry frames. If they are at the start or end, remove them so they don’t make the gif look lower quality overall.

In conjunction with the above, pay attention to the timing of your gifs. Chrome and Firefox can make gifs look faster than they actually are. Since the majority of the world uses one of those browsers, I opt for making my gifs a tiny bit slower than their default frame rate so that it looks normal when you’re actually watching them on Tumblr. If the video is 0.04, I set it to 0.06.

Draft your posts. With the speed issues in web browsers, Tumblr’s sizing issues in general, and with the new “nsfw” post bullshit, put your gifs in a post and save it in Drafts. Then go look at it. Watch the looping, look to see if it’s blurry, skips, too fast, etc. Every time I don’t do this or look carefully at my gifs, I post them and notice that something’s messed up.

I hope all of this helps. Sorry for it being so long!

[psychiatric-service-dog]

So. I messed up & I take absolutely all the blame on this.... an SD handler’s worst nightmare:

Warrior pooped in Walmart today.

I feel ashamed not only as an SD handler, but a dog trainer & owner. I should have known better but I rushed it and he had an accident. I did give him time to use the bathroom outside (I /always/ do before we go into a public store.) but it was in the middle of a parking lot. I guess I never really thought he might be particular about where he poops? Maybe he doesn’t like to go out in the open. But I had kept telling him the command to go to the bathroom, but he wouldn’t, and didn’t act like it until we went into the store.

Thankfully no one saw, I always carry emergency poop bags on me, and it wasn’t that big of a mess. I had turned my back, turned around, he was already crouching down and pooping. I cleaned it up as best as I could, and high-tailed it out of there. I will NOT be going back to that Walmart ever again, and I am taking Warrior out of public access for at least 2 - 3 months.

Again, I take full blame for this. I /knew/ he had to poop. I know his pooping schedule quite well. I went against my gut instinct because he wouldn’t poop in the parking lot, but I really should have taken my time and brought him to a more sheltered area for him to poop. Though I know some of it is his marking behavior. He is not neutered, and I don’t intend on neutering him, but he has developed the behavior of marking with poop she he tends to hold it for specific areas.  I am really, really reevaluating his ability as a Service Dog. He’s not bad at what he does, but he’s NOT as good as I need him to be. And you know what, that’s not his fault. I’m not blaming him. He’s a smart boy. He can be stubborn, and yes, he’s not only a young dog (my first young dog, too.) but also my first neutered dog. I know a lot of SD handlers on Tumblr say that being fixed vs not fixed doesn’t have a huge bearing on their behavior, but I really think it does. He’s much more bull-headed than other English Labs I have met at this age.  So. Going back to the drawing board.  1.) Engagement is going to be our #1 focus. His public outings, he has been less and less engaged with me, and in general, he has been overlooking alerting me... or even paying attention. It isn’t like he is as distracted as he used to be, but he still isn’t focused on me. And I believe he pooped because he knew I wasn’t paying attention & he also didn’t care. I don’t think he would poop intentionally out of spite, but he knew that he isn’t supposed to poop indoors and waited until I wasn’t looking. And this isn’t even about him pooping, just in general, he has lost a lot of connection with me. I can’t blame him entirely, but like I said, he’s my first young and unfixed dog. I need to exercise him more, and train him more as well, and equal out both mental and physical training, as well as giving proper rest days. So I’ll be going back and looking at the Denise Fenzi post I reblogged a few days ago about engagement.

2.) I’m not going to use the choke or prong for a while. Just a flat collar. This pains me (literally) because any sudden jerks or straining he does REALLY hurts me, but idk. I’ve used a prong on him for.... 6+ months now. And I’ve noticed he seems to not love it. He does listen to me better with it, but I really know I cannot rely on it. I am just gonna have to suck it up and use a flat collar. I will only be using it in areas where I know he is less likely to pull though. I also will probably use it in conjunction with the Freedom Harness. If he can learn to walk on a loose lead on the flat collar and/or Freedom Harness, then we will adapt back to the prong. 

3.) Like I said, we are going to pull out of public access (at least in stores) until I feel better about him. Again, it isn’t just him pooping that made me realize that public access isn’t going well... he makes me MORE stressed in public lately. Usually I can rely on him, even with people acting weird (I mean, today, before he pooped, someone actually reached over and pet his head, he didn’t flip out too much so good for him, but he still started whining a little bit because he wanted more attention.) but idk. I think I really fucked up his public access training. Maybe I am overreacting to that (I probably am tbh.) but it seems like he gets really stressed when we do it-- at least walking into stores, but he probably picks up on my anxiety :/ I thought he was just being excited, but he will pull, pant, whine, etc... I am used to more energetic dogs than English Labradors so I think it was hard for me to identify it as “stressful” behavior over “oh he’s just a puppy” though it’s probably a combination of the two. I did start public access when he was 6 months old and it wasn’t anything too stressful, and some stuff he can do just fine (like self check-out, quick 10 min trips to grab a thing in Target or Walmart.) but idk. I feel bad. 

4.) And just in case I am gonna really go back on all our important SD tasks. Including bathroom on command. Yes, we may even have to resort back to giving him a treat when he goes where I want him to, but I think if I do it in public (or like in parking lots), it might make him poop in strange places easier.

I feel like I’m a bad trainer? But maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I know that this is my fault, I know we need to take steps back. And idk. I feel bad because I have been hard on myself and in extension, hard on Warrior. He’s almost 14 months now. He’s quite good at a lot, and could use improvement, but he is my FIRST Service Dog, my first puppy, my first unfixed dog. I am bound to make mistakes. He’s a learning experience. He’s still, overall, quite a stable, intelligent, loving dog... so that’s good. But idk. He’s still growing, he’s still learning.

Anyways.... I guess it goes to show that even with all the experience I have training dogs, and my knowledge of SD handling and laws, that doesn’t mean I have the hands-on experience. But I am going to do better and take better steps to work as a team with him.

[gemini-62-blog]

A different post

Hey babes! Thought I wouldn’t be back? So did I, but after y’all were all over my dm’s asking for a comeback, I decided to be a nice beach (wrote this way on purpose, I’m not dumb, okay?) and not only post again but also give my blog a fresh, still classy new look. Here’s the thing, it is hard to stick with my famous person’s life and all of this work. But my manager said it would be a good thing for me to share a little bit with my loyal fans, and you know what? I missed you guys! And I had my birthday less than a month ago, so yeah, for those who are interested, contact me and I’ll give you my P.O. box so you can send me jewelery (and yes, it can be written jewelry, jewellery ot jewelery I have told I ain’t dumb!).

All jokes aside, if you remember my last post I said it was hard to stick with something, and it is! But I actually ended up watching 13 Reasons Why. I really liked it, and it made me be a little less of a beach towards other people, because you really don’t know what they are going through. Just kidding, I am not that bad, I can be a massive beach, one of those next to the dead sea, because I can also be as salty as it gets, but that is usually when I am facing someone who is full of themselves. “Try me, try me.” That usually the vibe I give to those people, but don’t think I can’t attack, you know. I bite, I am not an annoying pinsher, that only barks. Anyway, even with those people I have started to calm down and understand how much they just hate themselves, which is pretty sad. The best way to win while fighting those people is to understand that no one really wins unless both of you win. Get to their heart and try to make them understand that they don’t need to have that barrier. I hate when people have barriers to make their insecurities less visible, to be honest, it will only makes them even more noticeable. If you really aren’t in the mood to make a good action, just walk away without fighting and show them how little you care. Their victory won’t taste the same. I think if you believe in karma you will end up being way happier. Feeling that whatever force you believe in, (universe, god, etc.) sooner or later will make everyone pay for what they did wrong, makes you face life with good positive energy that will help you being more successful and happy, therefore, succeed over those who do not behave in a correct way. Having morals is the most valuable thing in someone. So, if you kinda stayed away from 13 Reasons Why because of all the attention it got on the media (which I don’t blame you) I really think you should go for it and binge watch the motherfricker. Things won’t make much sense until around episode 10, but it will still be awesome. But get one thing in your mind, there are no reasons that can justify a suicide. I once heard that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but the thing is that suicide isn’t even a solution under any circumstance. I don’t think that was the message of the show, or the book that inspired the show, but I know they got a ton of backlash for representing Hannah as a hero, which I don’t think they did, but I can understand what people mean when they say that. By the way, am I the only one who doesn’t really like Tony? I think the character was annoying, and the actor absolutely sucked, but everyone seemed to love him. And Clay isn’t hot, please people! It is like when Tom Hiddleston (who? I know, right?) started “dating” (#mymanagerisbetterthanyours) Tay Tay (or should I say miss Cray Cray?) and everyone was saying he was super hot. He is a 7/10 at most. There are a bunch of people considered hot specially here on tumblr and they are just okay, in my opinion. I think what people see as beautiful is easily manipulated. I do have a image of what makes a woman pretty, and what makes the perfect woman body, but I have no idea when it comes to men. Weird, right? And it is my own preference, it isn’t something manipulated, at least I don’t think so. Whatever, I think overall everything can be attractive as long as you rock it (back to this expression since slay is so 2016). And listen, I thought personality played a big role in attraction, but only recently I realized how huge of a role it really plays. I had a very interesting conversation with someone, interesting to a level that I don’t think I had even experienced, and it made me realize that I am not weird for not falling in love, I just need someone who can be interesting to me. Basically I am super picky, but it isn’t on purpose, I guess it just happens, and I am not particularly mad about it. When it happens, it happens, no pressure. 

Before going into some things that really have no value, like discussing pop culture as usual, I wanna talk a little bit more about me. (ASTROLOGY TALK ALERT) I have already mentioned how I can be a beach. And I feel like that is one of the downsides of being a gemini. I have a ton of planets in gemini, and that makes me a bit of an unbalanced person. But hey, I think that is what makes me special. I do have my ascendent in virgo which does help me and keeps my feat on the ground, kinda balancing me, but still. Being a gemini helps me being great with words and, therefore, with people, since I know how to choose my words, and the right attitude to approach them. It also is the sign of intelligence. My greatest gift is my mind, my thoughts, my ideas. While some people have a huge will power and balance and some others have the ability to turn a plan into reality, geminis are usually behind all of that, we represent the idea, a mind that moves at the speed of light not to create an actual object but rather an idea, a plan. That is overall a characteristic of air signs (gemini, aquarius and libra) but mostly of geminis, other signs a have other “powers”. But it is not for no reason that a lot of people don’t really love geminis. It is not like we are some kind of magical creatures, well, we are, just like any other human being. There are amazing and horrible people from all zodiac signs, and don’t forget we are all a mix of signs, we have a bit of different signs, and it is kinda like different ingredients that melt into a final result. Some ingredients mix well, while some others don’t. We all have some flaws and some gifts, and it is our job to work on our flaws throughout our existence. For example, Donald Trump is a gemini. I know, it sucks.. But so is Angelina Jolie, Prince, Johnny Deep, Troye Sivan, Daniel Howell and Morgan Freeman. But if you look at some of those people, you see some common characteristics. A lot of the time they are very talented, or very good at something, but they definitely have an a*shole side to their personality. An arrogance, this sense of superiority, this beachy attitude and the characteristic I wanted to refer, they play mind games. I will give you some names so you can kind of see what I’m talking about. As I have already mentioned, Donald Trump, Angelina Jolie, Johnny Deep, but also others like Marilyn Monroe, Naomi Campbell, Emily Ratajkowski and what better example than Mr. Kanye West himself? All of this to say that people are easily manipulated, and since geminis can be quite good at this, we do have a tendency to play mind games. For what reason? Simply because it can be fun for us. Sometimes I (I am not gonna keep on talking about all geminis, because we are all different, but I do identify with these characteristics; keep in mind that you can be a gemini and not be like this at all, since your birth chart can balance this kind of behavior, or even intensify it. Same logic applies in the opposite way, even if gemini isn’t your sun sign, you may experience some of this zodiac’s characteristics) do find myself falling into this darker side of my personality. Sometimes I see people as toys I can play, and my emotions really disappear. I am a machine. An arrogant machine that plays people and so on. All of this just to say that we do have to work on ourselves and focus on trying to be better people and use our gifts in the best way possible. Usually I use my ability of getting inside people’s minds by simply trying to get people I truly like to open up to me. Not like trying to get them to tell me their darkest secrets, but rather to create a mood that makes us both very open with each other. Make them trust me, while trusting them. All of that aside, I hope you are having a great great day and let’s get into the pop bullsh*t we kinda love kinda hate, with some music mixed in, basically all of that stuff that you know I love to talk about. By the way, if you have been having some bad non productive days, try meditation, it is the best thing I have ever done o myself. A few times meditating and my life is much better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vx8iUvfyCY&t=235s here is a great channel and this is actually one of the best meditations to start off with. Try not to fall asleep, it is so relaxing! But I’ll write a full post on how to be more productive and don’t feel worthless. Now getting to our usual topics.

To be continued in a post coming soon..............

[staystrange]

your own story is the safest place you’ll ever be | chapter 2: amy

Jake and Amy die while on a case. Amy is sent to the Good Place, but she soon realizes that Jake isn’t there with her. Since the Good Place can’t ever be perfect for her without Jake, she does anything and everything she can to find him before she loses him forever. Told (mostly) from the POVs of Amy and Jake. The title comes from “Safest Place” by Echosmith. NOTE: The idea for a Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place crossover fic came from this incredible tumblr post. The storyline will not follow this at all, it just gave me the overall idea. Now I kind of want to cross every fandom over with the Good Place, but more on that another time. Enjoy : )

chapter 2: Amy pretends to want to get to know her soulmate, Jake, but it doesn’t take her long to crack and tell him the truth. Fake Jake agrees to help find real Jake, and Amy decides she might be able to like him as a friend. After all, he does love office supplies almost as much as she does.

read on: ao3 | ffnet | wattpad

Amy stood there looking blankly at Jeanette for a moment, waiting for the punchline. When it never came, she tried to force a smile onto her face, but she just couldn’t do it. Everything just felt so wrong. Jeanette noticed Amy’s frozen state and laughed, attempting to dispel the awkwardness that had arisen in the house. “Don’t worry, Jakey, she’s just nervous,” she said, but Amy could see right through her facade; the fear in her light brown eyes gave her away immediately.

Amy was very tempted to stand up to Jeanette and demand that she be allowed to see Jake, her Jake, but she felt bad for Jeanette and knew that she was simply doing her job. After all, Amy would never have gotten into the Good Place if she had ignored someone’s fear when she could do something about it. She chose instead to play along at least for now. She and Fake Jake, as she had decided to call him, would sort this all out later.

With a smile pasted on her face, it was time to get into her role of Amy Santiago, Fake Jake’s girlfriend. She’d never been good at acting, but now was as good a time as any to give it another go. “Yeah!” she began. “I am just so overwhelmed by all of this. It’s just so forking incredible and you’re so wonderful and cute and oh my gosh am I blushing?” Did she sound too fake? She definitely sounded too fake. Also, why couldn’t she curse?

Thankfully, Jeanette and Jake didn’t even bat an eye. Jeanette mostly just looked grateful. “There’s no need to be overwhelmed, babe,” Fake Jake said, and Amy bristled. “Babe” was Jake’s nickname for her, and anyone else saying it felt so wrong. But she held it together because if she didn’t, she had no idea what was going to happen and she did not want to find out. “We’re soulmates, and we have the rest of eternity to get to know each other. You don’t have to worry about impressing me; the file they sent over already has. Want to come sit in the living room with me so we can begin our afterlife together?”

Amy would rather drink eight shots and then throw up for ten hours straight with a hangover than pretend to be this guy’s soulmate. “Of course, Jakey, that sounds wonderful,” Amy replied, temporarily borrowing Charles’s nickname for her Jake that he’d always used back in the precinct. She silently begged Jeanette to leave so she could get down to business with Fake Jake. No, not like that. She would die first, that is, if she wasn’t already dead. But that wasn’t the point.

Fake Jake extended his hand to her, and Amy assumed it was an invitation for a professional handshake, so she took it, but before she knew what was happening, he pulled her into a twirl and then into his chest. Amy was dizzy for a moment, but managed to regain her senses quickly enough to slap a smile back onto her face. “Whoa, careful there!” she giggled. This was disgusting.

Jeanette narrowed her eyes, but it happened so quickly, Amy would have missed it if she’d blinked. Her perky demeanor returned, and she moved a piece of hair out of her face before she spoke again. “Well then, since you both seem to be okay, I will leave you two to it!” She winked, spinning on her heel and walking outside of the house.

As soon as she was gone, Amy carefully untangled herself from Fake Jake’s surprisingly muscular arms and brushed herself off, letting her mask fall just a little bit. “Shall we?” she asked, gesturing to the living room of her apartment, no, wait, her house. This was all just way too weird.

“Sure. Right this way,” Fake Jake replied, taking her hand and leading her through the entryway into the living room of the house. Her first instinct was to pull her hand away, but she didn’t have the heart. Holding hands with someone could be friendly, right?

They sat down together on the worn blue couch, the one that she and her Jake would sit on to watch Jeopardy together. Or, at least, she would sit on it to watch Jeopardy. Jake would sit on it to watch her, and kiss her, and occasionally pay attention to Jeopardy, but only if the question was somehow related to Die Hard. Fake Jake was still holding her hand. Amy was becoming less and less tolerant of it.

“So, want to talk about how you died?” Fake Jake asked.

Should she tell him that she doesn’t remember? Is she supposed to remember? Jeanette didn’t go over this when she gave Amy her Good Place orientation. “Um, not really,” she replied eventually, deciding to play it safe for now.

“Okay, that’s fine. How about…” Fake Jake thought for a moment. “What’s your favorite office supplies store?”

She swore her jaw almost dropped. She took a deep breath, trying to hold back her excitement, but she just couldn’t. “Oh my gosh, you can’t just have me pick one! Every single one is so different and so great and you can find so many different things at each one and I just like to explore them, you know?” She paused for a breath, the hand held in Fake Jake’s flying to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know where that came from. I swear, I’m not this much of a nerd —”

“I can’t choose one, either,” Fake Jake replied, grinning. Amy’s words died in her throat. “I just love looking at all the different options. And once a month, I let myself buy a new kind of pen or a new notebook, even if I totally don’t need it at all whatsoever!”

Amy couldn’t help but match Fake Jake’s grin. “I have no self control whenever I get near an office supply store! My husband Jake has to physically pull me away from the door so I don’t go in and blow my entire salary on office supplies. But sometimes he surprises me with something that I had mentioned really liking or something that he had noticed me looking at on the shelves. He’s the sweetest.” She stopped, realizing what she had just said. Fake Jake smiled like nothing was wrong, but she couldn’t help but notice that his left eye twitched just slightly. Amy sighed. He had a right to be annoyed at her. She just went on and on about her husband in a conversation with the guy who is literally supposed to be her soulmate. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” she said, her face falling into her hands.

“No, Amy, it’s okay.” Fake Jake pulled her hands away from her face and held them in his. All Amy could think about was how darn relieved she was that he hadn’t called her Ames. She would have broken down.

“No, it’s not.” She sighed, pulling her hands away and resting them in her lap. “I can’t do this anymore. Can you keep a secret?”

“Sure, what’s up? Do you need to talk about something? Are you feeling okay?”

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was kicked out of the Good Place for saying this to you, but you’re not my soulmate. I don’t love you.” She bit her lip. Once upon a time, when she was a younger and she had yet to meet Jake, her Jake, this guy would have been her dream. A physically attractive guy who loved office supplies as much as she did and didn’t think she was weird? Oh my God. But the thing was, it hadn’t worked out that way. Even though she and Jake were two very different people, they were also so much more alike than meets the eye, and no matter what, they were always there for each other. That’s all that mattered. Maybe this guy would have been her younger self’s soulmate, but her soulmate was, without a doubt, Jake Peralta.

Fake Jake blinked at her. “Wait, what? How can that be?”

“Were you married in life?” Amy asked.

“No. I was dating a girl, though,” he replied.

“Well, as you can probably figure out from my excited babble, I was, I am, happily married to Jake Peralta. He’s my real soulmate.”

“Oh.” Fake Jake paused. “I really don’t know how to respond to that.”

“You seem like a really great guy, though, and in another life we could have ended up together, but unfortunately I’m happily taken. I’d love to be friends, though, and I’d also really appreciate your help.”

“I mean, this is kind of disappointing for me since I’ve been waiting for my soulmate to arrive since I got here two years ago and I’ve been looking forward to meeting her, to meeting you, but I can’t stand between you and true love. I’d force myself out of the Good Place for that.” Fake Jake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let me know what I can do to help you.”

“Oh, God, thank you. And I really hope there’s some kind of way for you to find another soulmate. Actually,” she thought for a moment, “Janet, is it possible for someone to get a new soulmate once they arrive here?”

With a “bloop”, Janet appeared. “Sorry, no, everyone in the Good Place is perfectly matched up with someone else, so we don’t have a way to reassign soulmates. And we assume we shouldn’t have to because everyone is paired with their perfect match.”

Amy sighed. “Thanks, Janet.” She disappeared. Amy looked deep into Fake Jake’s eyes. “I figured it was worth a try.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Fake Jake replied, his fingers automatically reaching for Amy’s before he remembered what was happening and pulled them away. “What are we going to do?”

“I have no forking idea,” she replied. “But for now, we should definitely not let Jeanette realize what’s going on. I think she’s already onto me a little bit.”

“Do you have any idea where Jake is right now? Is he still alive?”

“I have no idea. The last thing I remember is that the two of us left our date to go to the precinct because of an emergency. We’re both cops,” she explained.

“I know. I looked at your file, remember?”

Amy’s eyes lit up with an idea. “Wait, did the file have anything about my Jake in there?”

Fake Jake frowned. “No, I don’t believe so. We can look at it later if you’d like. It’s in my, our, room.”

Amy nodded. “Okay. We need to keep this quiet, but hopefully we’ll be able to figure out what’s going on.”

Fake Jake nodded, too. Amy let out a shuddering breath, lost in thought. As much as she hated to believe there was a flaw in the system, there was no other explanation. She was going to find out who did this and do everything in her power to find Jake, no matter what it took. After all, what did she have to lose?

1. I started writing this the other day and just could not stop because ideas kept popping into my head. It was awesome. 2. I always had the idea for Amy’s soulmate to be named Jake just to mess with her, but I just automatically started calling him Fake Jake while writing this and it just stuck. 3. I got SO many crazy ideas for this fic while writing this so definitely keep checking back here for more every week if you want to know what stuff I have planned : )

Send me an ask if you’d like to request a fic or just say hi!! Enjoy : )

[canaryatlaw]

well, today was not exactly the best overall, but still had some good parts to it that I can appreciate. I woke up at like, 8:23 am and couldn't fall back asleep, so a little after 9 I got up and started making the Christmas m&m cookies I’ve been wanting to make but haven’t gotten around to doing. I also put the ham egg and cheese bread pudding thing that my mom makes every year for Christmas morning in the oven (it’s prepared the night before) because she was not feeling great. so I had two racks of cookies in the oven and one rack with the bread pudding, but yet again I run into the weird issue that if there is something on a rack above something else, the one on the lower rack will not cook as well, as the second batch of cookies I put in cooked way quicker than the first batch. no idea what’s going on there, but the breakfast turned out ok, so that was good. people started waking up and it was a little later than normal, so we ate breakfast first then went to presents (we usually take a break somewhere in between presents to eat). presents! I stopped having expectations for Christmas gifts because I found I was just always left feeling down about what I did get, so now I just don't expect to necessarily get anything I really want and just roll with it, lol. seems like a good strategy so far. so, presents. younger brother got me a coat-vest thing from “patagonia” which is apparently a thing now, and of course it’s 100% polyester, but my family was trying to say it shouldn’t bother me because I’ll be wearing stuff under it, but idk, we’ll see. did older brother’s presents last night, sister got me two Wonder Woman t-shirts (one being partially polyester but I can deal with that in shirts for the most part) which I liked because I told everyone to get me WW stuff for Christmas and she’s the only one who actually did, lol. She was very happy to receive the Louis Vuitton bag that I scoured eBay for for several days, so I was happy with that. Parents! I got new moccasins which I specifically asked for because the ones I had (I just use them as slippers and basically have them on whenever I’m in my apartment) were getting really worn out. my mom got me a ton of ornaments to add to my “ornament collection” which is a thing she’s been doing for several years now, so when I have a family and my own tree I’ll have ornaments for it? I feel like I should be put off by the assumptions made in that reasoning, but like, I do want to get married and have a family, and she knows that, so I guess I can’t really complain. They also got me a necklace that was made by women in Nairobi, Kenya that was very cute and some other things I can’t remember at the moment, but were nice. By the time we finished opening presents it was like 1, so my mom wanted to get ready to make dinner. she was going to do turkey, but my brother decided he wanted to do prime rib, except my brother can't cook, so he basically roped me into doing it for him (sigh). so I use this recipe from buzzfeed I saw a while back that that was prime rib with garlic herb butter. so to start that I’m chopping some herbs (which required much more chopping than I would’ve expected, and while I’m doing this, same brother that wanted this says something like “oh Rachel would like this...or actually she wouldn’t like this” and proceeds to come over and show me anyway because he’s a fucking jackass, and it’s a stupid joke my other brother sent to him from a picture when we were kids and someone was holding another kids hand, and captioned it with “#MeToo” and like. I fucking lost it. I was so damn angry. AND THEN he shows it to my dad, who also laughs, which made me so much more angry. At the time I had interpreted it as a direct reference to me posting my own #MeToo story on facebook and that’s what they were specifically making fun of, and like.....I can’t fucking do this. nothing I do or that happens to me will ever be taken seriously by them. they just laugh make fun of everything, no matter how serious it is. and I’m just so fucking done. and I mean, I know my brothers are assholes, that’s nothing new. but for my dad to laugh at that when he KNOWS what I posted online just really, really upset me to my core and I wanted to go to the bathroom and cry. So that put me in a really sour mood for a few hours. It eventually occurred to me that my brothers were probably not even aware of what I had posted (one of them doesn't have a facebook and the other one I don’t think pays much attention to what I post, so it probably wasn’t a direct attack on me, but for my dad to laugh at it like that when he KNEW was just fucking devastating to me. and if I bring it up to him I’m just gonna end up in a puddle of tears because that’s what always happens when I get angry, and I really don't feel like doing that any time soon, and at this point I really don’t know if it’ll make a difference, because I’ve made similar appeals to him in the past and they haven't changed anything. I mean, he voted for Trump for christ’s sake, and he still think he’s doing better than Hillary would’ve. And I’m just.....I hate knowing that something that is so, so serious to me could become nothing but a joke to them, but that’s how it is. that’s how it’s always been. I’m not a human, I’m not a person, I’m just someone for them to derive entertainment from treating like shit, I don’t know what else I can say on the matter except there’s no fucking way I’m moving back into this house under any circumstances, it absolutely will not happen. sigh. anyway. I finished with the herbs and butter and spread it on the prime rib, then stuck it in the oven to cook. While it was doing that I mostly just chilled out, and got put on the phone with one of my dad’s old friends which actually put me in a better mood because he was like “I gotta ask you something but you can’t tell your dad, okay? How on earth did he vote for Trump?????” which of course made me laugh and of course it helps to know other people find it baffling as well. He’s really nice though, we talked about my legal aspirations and such and he kept saying he was so proud of me, which I of course appreciated. Eventually the prime rib was done, and I was still kind of in a sour mood, but I figured at this point I’m only really making myself miserable, and that’s a shitty thing to do on Christmas, so I tried to be somewhat in a better mood. Dinner was...interesting, the prime rib wasn't cooked all the way through so it had to go back in the oven even after we had started plating food, so we were eating the sides while waiting for the main course, lol. but when it did arrive it was very good. after dinner finished up I started making these pavlova’s with blueberry jam (they’re basically giant meringues) that my (same) brother had wanted me to make, because they had to bake for over and hour, so I tried to get those in ASAP. I also finished prepping the Candy Cane Chocolate Cheesecake I always make that I’m obsessed with. Once they were done we had dessert, the homemade blueberry jam turned out well but I was somewhat disappointed with the pavlova’s, some of them didn’t really cook all the way through and they stuck to the parchment paper (how do you even still to parchment paper???) so they kind of fell apart, so I was kind of irritated about that, but oh well. more down time for a while, then my sister asks if I want to dye her hair, because she’s been wanting to do if for a few days now, so I said sure and went upstairs to start on that. she has like, basically platinum blond hair that’s super long and thick, so even just doing the roots is a major job, but I’ve done it for her enough times to make it work. I always get annoyed afterwards because there are always some spots that didn't take to the bleach as well and turn out darker, but they’re less visible when her hair is dry, so it’s not a big deal. after that I laid on my bed for a while going through tumblr (while my laptop was right next to me) until I took a shower and started getting ready for bed, and he we are. I might be able to see some friends tomorrow, so that I am excited about. Alright, eyelids are ready to be shut so I’ll end it here. Goodnight my loves. Hope you had a delightful Christmas.