#w a dead by the narrative wife would be fun.

[paradisecursed]

reverse boss battle ●_●!!!! hiiii

PROMPT.

&. IN KEYED FANTASY -

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THAT’S NOT A TOY SHE’S NOT A 

(i think you’d make a wonderful father, my love.)

[euterpessi]

Romance Manhwa/Manga Recommendations:

Historical Manhwa/Manga:

Death Is The Only Ending For The Villainess

I’ve reincarnated as the reverse harem game’s villainess, the one and only adopted daughter of the ducal Eckart family.

But the difficulty just has to be the worst!

Everything I do will only lead me to death.

I must be paired with one of the main male characters from the heroine’s harem before the ‘real daughter’ of the duke family appears!

Two older brothers who always pick a fight with me on every little thing.

The insane crown prince whose route will always lead to my death.

‘I only see the heroine and no one else’s wizard, and also her loyal slave knight, too!

‘First, let’s take some of them which I see no hope in, out of the list!’

“I didn’t know my place up until now. From now on, I’ll live as quiet as a mouse so you wouldn’t care the slightest bit!

But why do their interests in me keep on rising every time I draw the line?!

The Villainess is a Marionette

Cayena, the Imperial Princess, was known as the most beautiful woman in the Empire. She was a woman who knew nothing but evil and luxury.

However, she was destined for ruin: she would be used as a chess piece by her younger brother to secure his throne and killed by her crazy husband.

“I’ll make you the Emperor.”

“… Sister, are you referring to me?”

“In exchange, give me freedom.”

She had to change things before she became that Cayena.

The Reason Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke’S Mansion

Poisoned to death by her own betrothed?! Eunha didn’t wake up in a novel’s story just to get killed off again as an unfortunate extra! To change her story she needs a cover… 6 months pretending to be the fake fiancée of the novel’s male protagonist, Duke Noah Wynknight. But will this cold-hearted, angel-faced demon of a man really help her avoid another ill-fated ending?!

Your Throne / I Want to Be You, Just For A Day

The story follows main characters Medea Solon and Psyche Callista, who become archenemies after competing for the position of crown princess of the Vasilios Empire. On the day of the Yearly Prayer, Medea and Psyche accidentally switch bodies.

The Remarried Empress

Navier was the perfect empress, however, the Emperor wanted a wife, not a colleague. And so, the Emperor abandoned Empress Navier and placed an enslaved girl beside him. That was fine until Navier heard the Emperor promise the slave the Empress’ position. After many ups and downs, Navier decided she would accept being the Queen of the neighbouring country and remarry.

Kill The Villainess

Eris Mizerian was the villainess of a novel. The only daughter of a marquis, she got executed after scheming against the pure and lovely protagonist, Helena. My only goal, after possessing her, is simply to leave this world and go home. I am prepared to face even death, but the laws of this world keep stopping me.

A changed Eris begins to draw the attention of three men who once loathed her; the Crown Prince, the High Priest, and the Knight.

"It doesn't matter. I will never be able to love this world."

Even if the only way out is death,

even if the only way out is make a deal with a witch...

I will absolutely leave this world!

This is the story of the villainess who defies fate, Eris, and her escape from this world!

The Way To Protect The Female Lead's Older Brother

I accidentally took possession of someone in a 19+ reverse harem novel.

The problem is that I became Roxana Agriche, the older sister of the sub-villain. My damn father kidnapped the heroine’s brother. Now, is the only thing left to meet a terrible end from the vengeance of the heroine?

But what if I can avoid that horrible development?

“I’m also interested in this toy.”

“I’ll protect you until you can get out of here safely.”

The heroine’s brother, Cassis Pedalian, will definitely be able to pay me back later.

Shadow Queen

“Can you be my daughter for me?”

By his offer, Elena became Duke of Franceschi’s fake daughter.

She became the queen and gave birth to Crown Prince’s son.

Then suddenly, Princess Veronica who was assumed dead came back.

She was only just a toy.

But eventually, Elena gets her son taken and is murdered.

However, she went back to the past.

“I’ll destroy all of you.”

I’ll never live as a toy again.

Elena decides to seeks revenge.

Under the Oak Tree

The daughter of a duke, the stuttering Maximilian, married a knight of lowly status at her father’s coercion.

After their first night, her husband departed for an expedition without another word.

He comes back three years later, this time as a famous knight in the whole continent.

How would Maximilian face him on his return?

"The more I think of you, the more lonely and lonely I become. I don't know why I can't quit even though it's so painful."

I'm Stanning The Prince

Angela’s fanfic became such a sensation that it even reached the Imperial Family, leading her to get arrested on charges of treason. Nevertheless, her fanfic improved the First Prince’s image, and his sister, the Princess, decides to take political advantage of this and keep Angela by their side. 

The heroine who can now fangirl to her heart’s content, and the Prince who doesn’t know how to act around her. As they bicker back and forth, they start growing closer…

Miss Not-So Sidekick

Hyejung loved to read to escape her daily stress. But that’s before she woke up inside the bizarre world of her favorite novel! Instead of the main heroine who courts three eligible men, she is now Latte Ectrie – a minor villain that everyone hates?! One way or another, it’s a chance to live out her most beloved storyline, with popcorn in hand to watch all the drama! Taking charge of the narrative takes on a whole new meaning!

Even Though I’M The Villainess, I’ll Become The Heroine!

I wasn’t able to overcome the harassment and took my life, but I was reincarnated with the perpetrator? The perpetrator is the heroine, Florre, and I am the villainess, Dahlia, who’s going to die horribly.

“They said you are a villain with neither blood nor tears, but unlike the rumors, you often shed tears.”

“Your Highness must believe all the nonsense the idiots are talking about, huh?”

Grand Duke of Cervian, the half brother of the Male lead and who will be punished for treason afterwards. He approached me. I can’t lose the man who will be my greatest ally.

“Your Highness, would you marry me?”

“Now…… what did you say?”

“And take revenge together.”

A similar situation, a fixed ending. The heroine is not the only one who knows the ending of the novel. I took a long and arduous path of revenge.

Who Made Me A Princess

The beautiful Athanasia was killed at the hands of her own biological father, Claude de Alger Obelia, the cold-blooded emperor! It’s just a silly bedtime story… until one woman wakes up to suddenly find she’s become that unfortunate princess! She needs a plan to survive her doomed fate, and time is running out. Will she go with Plan A, live as quietly as possible without being noticed by the infamous emperor? Plan B, collect enough money to escape the palace? Or will she be stuck with Plan C, sweet-talking her way into her father’s good graces?!

The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass

With the marriage of her prostitute mother to the Count, Aria’s status in society skyrocketed immediately. After leading a life of luxury, Aria unfairly meets death because of her sister Mielle’s schemes. And right before she dies, she sees an hourglass fall as if it were a fantasy. And just like that, she was miraculously brought back to the past.

“I want to become a very elegant person, just like my sister, Mielle.”

In order to face the villainess, she must become an even more wicked villainess. This was the new path Aria chose to take revenge on Mielle who murdered both her and her mother.

The Evil Lady's Hero

Junipe Magnolia, a villainess friend of the heroine in this novel called Rael Cania.

The Junipe inside the novel has always loved the male lead, Iseed. To the point where she harassed Rael out of jealousy because she's loved by Iseed.

And thus, Junipe is destinied to die in the hands of the male lead of this novel.

But one day.

"Why did I become Junipe?!"

But let's think about it, it's still one year away from the time Junipe is going to get killed by Iseed. So, I have to meet Iseed and Rael first, I'll be able to find a way out of my death if I do so.

Yeah, let's meet them first!

But, this man is just so tender-hearted and kind. Would Junipe be able to escape from this man?!

I Tamed a Tyrant and Ran Away

God gave me a chance to relive my life. Before the rebirth, I had been used for the past 400 years as the empire's sword. And so, I swore to destroy the empire. I found the young prince of the country and became his teacher. I taught him how to become a tyrant and asked for the country.

"I will do the lady's will."

He conquered the whole empire for me, and I ran away.

"I came to take you, Charlize Ronan." Dylan became a perfect tyrant and searched the entire empire for me.

"You tamed me, so why did you run away?"

Untouchable Lady

“Please, Hilise. Please die in place of Gabrielle.” My always dignified brother begged me for the first time. He wants me to die for our stepsister, whom we don't even share a drop of blood with. “For the first and last time, I ask you this.” I've always been miserable, and there is no exception this time. The seventh time that I was betrayed and killed, I was completely free of lingering feelings. “I'm glad that you're a scumbag until the end.” I won't be swayed by love anymore. It's my turn to abandon them first.

I’ll Live On As A Villainess

I reincarnated as the villainess in a book!

The one who dared to commit attempted murder on the heroine is the owner of this body?

Let's just live in a quiet place where we have fun and eat! That's what I thought for a while.

It was so, so, so cold here in the north, where I was kicked out as a punishment.

Before I froze to death, I called the Great Demon of Fire and set fire to the fireplace but...

Why isn't he going back? If you've done the job, shouldn't you go back?!

I was flustered to find out that I had signed a life contract with a demon just to start a fire but to think that I'd be responsible for relieving his desires!

The bickering romance between a big puppy demon and a small villainess lady!

It Looks Like I’Ve Fallen Into The World Of A Reverse Harem Game

When I opened my eyes, I was in a different world. I had become the game’s villainous princess who was feared by all. Not to mention… Completely naked men I didn’t even know were approaching me left and right! “Are you cold? Shall I warm you up with a hug?” “Oh? Have you not had enough yet?” Seriously, what’s up with this situation? And just how the hell am I going to get out of this freaking game?!

Father, I Don't Want to Get Married!

I’m Jubelian? The daughter of the duke and the villainess of this novel?

I managed to avoid my death with some previous knowledge about my life, as this was my second time at it. Now, I should be able to live a peaceful life!

“I’m not going to marry a man unless he has everything. I want the most wealthy, famous, and competent man there is.”

I dreamt of a glamorous life as the daughter of the duke, but my father tells me the Crown Prince who is known to be a lunatic is to be my husband! As an extraordinary measure, I couldn’t help but start a contract relationship. That is, with a handsome side character that looks better than the main one.

“Why are you trying to avoid being engaged to the prince?”

“He’s scary. I heard that he even kills his own entourage if he doesn’t like them.”

A few days later, the prince sent a terrible letter to me.

“I will not kill you.”

Oh no, did I set up another death trap for myself?

Like A Wind On A Dry Branch

"Hi, You."

Count Casarius fell victim to a plague and died suddenly, leaving behind a will stating that Rietta, his beautiful young widow of the manor, whom he tried to use as a concubine, be buried alive alongside him. Just before Rietta is buried, Archduke Axias, rumored to be a cruel tyrant, arrives at the funeral to collect the enormous debt Count Casarius still owes him.

“Everyone here seems to feel sorry for her, and I still have a debt to collect from Casarius… If I take her instead of debt, I think all of you here should be happy," he smiled.

"Hello, Temptress."

Everything was a Mistake

Roa Valrose reincarnated as villainess in the book. In order to avoid the fate of being burned at the stake, she approaches the hero, Nocton Edgar.

It hurts every time she gets closer to him. Nevertheless, for her survival, she does everything he wants her to do.

“Come again, Valrose.”

The mysterious Nocton unexpectedly sought her out every day.

Then one day, her friend for 10 years says something unknown to her.

“Actually, I have a dream. The Duke of Edgar is a terrible villain!”

He is not the hero, but the villain?

As soon as she realized that she had misinterpreted the role, she decided to get away from Nocton.

“Let’s not meet anymore.”

But the villain’s reaction was strange.

“Don’t go. You’ve always been special to me.”

She was suspicious of his sudden change of attitude.

Will she able to get rid of Nocton safely?

I Became the Tyrant's Secretary

I became the secretary of a tyrant in place of my clumsy brother to survive.

But I have so much potential for it. I’m so darn good at my job. Because I served the tyrant so well, ‘Everyone has a happy ending’.

Well then, shall I quit being a secretary and live a leisurely life now?

“Rosaline, tell me what you want.” He asked as he stepped down from his chair.

“I want to quit.”

His eyebrows twitched slightly.

“Do you want to die?”

Your highness, you never hold on to people who want to leave, so why’re you being like this to me?

Seduce the Villainess Father

After being in a bus crash, I woke up to the world of my favourite web novel.

Not only that, It was before the protagonists were born, to their parents’ world!

To stop the incoming multiple bad events.

I tried to prevent the kidnapping of the sister who is pregnant with the female lead!

But I got kidnapped instead?!

It's depressing to be kidnapped, but my body couldn't handle the mana and became a sunfish-like state

But... if I am next to the emperor who kidnapped me, my body becomes normal!

Right! The way to save that man from marrying a witch and getting killed by his son, and for someone who is vulnerable to mana such as myself to live, is for us to get married!

The Villains Savior

Set on a path to tragedy and misfortune from a young age, Aseph Randell is doomed to die a villain. That is, until the mysterious Elzay Tiathe appears in his life with a promise: "I can save you." After having vivid visions of him for so long, can Elzay untangle the twisted fate tied to Aseph... or will they both be dragged down together?

Contemporary Manhwa/Manga:

Night Crying Crow

This woman; who is she?

If something was action, it'd be action. If something was romance, it’d be romance. The A-list actor Cheon Woo Kang, who's great at every (genre), had his heart stolen away by an unknown woman who’d broken into his house!

“We'll meet again.~"

Woo Kang contracted an over imaginative illness as he drew the woman, whose name he didn't even know. In front of Woo Kang, she reappeared as the police officer Park Tae... Could the shadow of the crisis that appeared in front of them be a coincidence?

Raise wa Tanin ga Ii

Yoshino Somei would have been a normal high-schooler if not for the fact that she is the granddaughter of the leader of the Osaka-based Somei Group, the Kansai region's largest yakuza organization. One day, Yoshino hurries home after hearing of the news about the unification of Kansai and Kanto's biggest syndicates, the Somei and the Miyama groups. This, according to the article, will result in a marriage of the leaders' grandchildren—one of whom is Yoshino herself! Despite her best efforts to annul the arrangement, Yoshino has to go to Tokyo to visit her fiancé, Kirishima Miyama, who is unexpectedly nice and charming.

During their first meeting, Yoshino is swept up in various events and becomes unable to refuse moving to Tokyo, which is why, half a year later, she now lives with the Miyama group. At school, she soon realizes that Kirishima is very popular, so her relationship with him garners the hate of his fangirls and subsequently results in bullying. To make matters worse, Kirishima could not be further away from her prince charming since he, after all, was born to be a yakuza member.

Raise wa Tanin ga Ii follows Yoshino and her new life in Tokyo that is filled with nothing but troubles connected to the underworld. However, though she wishes to be as far from it as possible, this isn't Yoshino's first time dealing with the world of the Yakuza...

Positively Yours

To Hee-won’s dismay, the BFF she crushed on and her other BFF are now dating! Seriously bummed, Hee-won decides to go wild just one time, and find solace with a handsome stranger. A very satisfying one night affair has now turned into more — she’s pregnant! Fate brings them together again, and now the regimented Doo-joon is determined to do the right thing and marry her. But they’re basically strangers! Except... their bodies have been very intimately acquainted. What’s this mother-to-be to do?

True Beauty

After binge-watching beauty videos online, a shy comic book fan masters the art of makeup and sees her social standing skyrocket as she becomes her school’s prettiest pretty girl overnight. But will her elite status be short-lived? How long can she keep her real self a secret? And what about that cute boy who knows her secret?

Cheese In the Trap

Hong Sul is a ordinary college student. Yoo Jung is the school's most popular upperclass man. He's good looking, rich, smart, and even nice. However, Hong Sul thinks there's more to Yoo Jung than what meets the eye…

SPY x FAMILY

The master spy codenamed has spent his days on undercover missions, all for the dream of a better world. But one day, he receives a particularly difficult new order from command. For his mission, he must form a temporary family and start a new life?! A Spy/Action/Comedy about a one-of-a-kind family!

Doppio Senso (18+)

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about a guy.”

KyungHyun stopped in the middle of a deep kiss and sighed. His lips began to form a smile, but his fierce glare said otherwise. Possessiveness and jealousy spread across his sculpted face.

“Will you tell me his name?”

His easygoing and languid voice reached her ears.

“Why?”

“So that I can shoot him down.”

[mothbug]

maggie i’ve been trying to suss out the plot of ur bug lesbians for so long please tell me abt them. somehow it got into my head that they were?? like jaeger pilots? please confirm or deny

i can’t do a read more on mobile so i’m sorry in advance (coming back here after i’ve written this: it makes no sense. it’s all rambling. sorry. and i just put things everywhere randomly so this won’t even be typed chronologically)

yeah there’s giant fun robots! most of them are normal and fine but like a few of them are very fucked up

so there’s four pov characters and at the start of the story three of them are on the same ship and the fourth is the target they’re chasing? only one of them knows they even HAVE a target and is trying her best to stall because she and the target were roommates in fucked up robot catholic school. the other two are playing crazy 8s and being romantic and also terrified all the time but also doing a lot of theorizing about things because they know SOMETHING is up they just don’t know what’s going on. Bc you know. their commander won’t give them any information. and also avoids them because she hates narrative parallelism

also the one stalling is also having her blood drunk by her giant robot. and maybe being mildly possessed by it? so it’s maybe The most fucked up robot. it’s also a giant dog and a good boy. and an heirloom of a fucked up family. which may explain some stuff but honestly i think nisa’s mom was just a bitch and it didn’t have anything to do with the robot she’s just like that.

and she’s stalling bc she Knows she won’t turn perovskia in she knows she wouldn’t let her get hurt she Knows it’ll change her life forever if she finds her and she’s just not ready to face that. but yknow she has to so it was all just very silly of her but when something will change your life dramatically it’s terrifying even if you know that things currently Suck.

somewhere in here Arkansas’s family is threatened and it’s. upsetting. and i’m not sure what direction to go in with it but it will be important because her family means a Lot to her. she has two very good kind dads and a little sister named Tinsel. basically she has the only functional biological family out of all the characters and they make me :’) I also think they eventually meet Idabel and ADORE her and since she grew up without parents it’s just a very strange and emotional experience and. h. they r Wives. and the Trust family is all very sweet and kind even if Arkansas struggles a lot w gifted kid syndrome like i think her dads did their best even if they fucked up sometimes yknow. idabel goes fucking wild at the arcade like legitimately bloodthirsty and arkansas is just like i love my furious and powerful wife

anyway there’s some (a lot of) homoerotic space fighting (which perovskia usually wins BECAUSE she remembers when she and nisa used to spar and can predict what she’ll do. nisa ALSO remembers this bc. ofc she does. but perovskia had to learn how to adapt after Events bc her physical health changed a lot and she had to learn to be more careful about overexerting herself and also now knows how to swordfight. and moves more fluidly and confidently. so what nisa expects to happen often doesn’t bc perovskia’s fighting style has changed so much while nisa hasn’t really bothered to refine hers. anyway) perovskia (the gay little target that does a gay little crime and makes fun of you to piss you off) is like hey. what if you all committed treason it’s really fun and sexy. and then her adoptive mechanic mom gives everyone spinal surgery so their bodies don’t shut down and they won’t die :) that’s a thing by the way i won’t elaborate bc uhh :( but it is why perovskia has all the. nerve damage and chronic pain. i can elaborate on the actual Pre-story perovskia stuff later bc i think about it A Lot and it has a lot of bearing on her character but it’s also. before all this. but anyway if she hadn’t been bleeding out on Slice’s front lawn specifically she Would be dead. and there’s some fun narrative foil character shifts that happen four years before the main storyline but i will not say bc i’m tired

after this is Vague in my mind but a lot of it is Perovskia and Nisa reconnecting and just. talking. but being weird and repressed and deflective about anything Meaningful. And I have written a Lot about this so there’s more than I can condense but it’s very fucking good and. Idk. it’s a big shift in the narrative at this point and they’re just Agonizing about their dumb little feelings and it’s good. and P doing some work to make their giant fucking spaceship more stealthy. and Idabel and Arkansas being really cute and also going THROUGH it because i mean. a lot is happening. And it’s nothing either of them ever expected to happen but they’re like. hopeful for the future or whatever don’t look at me. It’s just like. put all of these characters on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere in transit and they all Have to have conversations even if they don’t want to because it’s HARD. nisa is forced by slice to learn how to make pancakes

Slice makes stew. They’re good at stew and contraptions and having a mild new england accent somehow. also canonically back in the scrapyard they would make things like the knife wielding tentacle constantly and perovskia would just stumble upon them. slice changed the live laugh love sign to say die cry hate because perovskia made fun of it. they r her mom.

so now they do some fun fun robberies and various crimes and it’s so sexy and i don’t think N and P are like. fully caught up at this point or know where they stand, so there’s a lot of very fun banter and having to work together despite really being afraid but also yearning to get to know each other again and just connect with one another honestly and openly after four fuckin years apart. because they’re both so different now but also very much the same. horse staring out into sea MAN. the thing is there’s no direct like. reason for them to avoid each other (at first P was shocked and overwhelmed and felt a little bit betrayed when she found out who was chasing her until she found out WHY. oh i forgot to mention Nisa BEGGED to be assigned commander for this mission bc she knew anyone else wouldn’t hesitate to get Perovskia killed. Forgot to mention that it’s IMPORTANT she fucking loves her so much god DAMMIT) but it’s just. tense and there’s a lot happening and it’s just. Ghhhdhbnm and ofc I and A have picked up on it since P showed up but it’s like. ok so what is Happening here. OH AND ONCE THEY START WORKING THINGS OUT IDABEL DOES START BEHAVING LIKE NISA’S SHITTY LITTLE SIBLING AND ACTING FUCKING DISGUSTED BY THEM ITS VERY FUNNY. they’re like perovskia you’re pretty cool what’s up with this. nisa sucks and also is a bitch. and perovskia says SHE CAN GET IT. and idabel says GET WHAT? BANNED FROM OLIVE GARDEN? and perovskia fans herself and is like yeah~ and idabel was just joking around but now is debating between mercilessly making fun of her and hitting her with a cricket bat. but god when P and N just get to hold each other in silence and security and just be. it’s . they. god. fuck. man.

oh i know this is a space story but perovskia just straight up has a sword (and some knives and maybe a gun idk) don’t ask me why idk but it’s very lesbian of her and she does gay little flourishes and is just. very annoying and i like her a lot. she’s very dramatic like her alias was madame revenant when she was living in the scrapyard and just doing some petty crimes like. she embroidered that jacket herself nobody calls her that she’s just a goofball. also warrior cats exist and she makes warrior cat fan animations. that just has to be true so warriors has been preserved for centuries. also she was presumed dead for a while uhh don’t think abt it too much but she likes that aesthetic.

Idabel takes the best to this new life of crime they are fucking FOR it she gets a FLAMETHROWER and Arkansas is like. wrow honestly my favorite thing abt them is that they’re both fucking INCREDIBLE pilots. like they know what they’re doing. and nisa is really really bad at it btw she cannot pilot a mech well. but this block of text isn’t about her i’m talking about THEM. Their chemistry is so good they r just. 🥺. and they both become Fast friends with perovskia because she’s just pretty likeable?? and ofc nisa’s jealous bc a) you guys don’t even like me :( but also b) that’s MY friend. it’s very funny. honey of course they didn’t like you you were being very unpleasant to be around. but arkansas does rlly wanna be friends with her and she and idabel have so much sibling energy it’s insane. i think they’d abel and cain each other for a scooby snack but also kill for each other. because they’re tiny girls who will growl at you solidarity and also probably hang out and just destroy things with bats sometimes. they all become closer and get a rlly sweet found family dynamic it just takes a While. oh also idabel is basically the chosen one and can set things on fire with her hands but it’s barely touched on because i think that’s a really funny thing to just ignore. but i also think it does become important because it’s largely fueled by anger and emotion and. h. i think idabel has a lot of feelings ok. Arkansas and Perovskia bond over having fucking anxiety disorders and have caprisun drinking competitions. i think it’s just like. these people all have similar trauma and need people to lean on when things are hard so they stick with each other once they have the option to split apart because by then they’re friends and work well together and Care. auto tuned baby crying mp3.

Alia and Agent Variety show up somewhere around here? They’re Slice’s very cool wives and Alia has a Vechicle Collection and own fucking stupid race cars and stuff and I love her. perovskia is afraid of being in vechiles so she has to take a fucking benadryl every time they have to make a getaway. Variety isn’t actually an Agent anymore and I also love HER because she’s very fucking good. they started out as just contacts slice had but it turns out they’re all in love <3 alia is also actually a sports car racer like. unprofessionally. illegally. which is just very cool of them.

Also i don’t think it has. a very BIG end, yknow? it’s like, they’re doing very good things and are up against a lot, and I don’t think they like.. singlehandedly take down the government or anything because they’re only a few people. but i think they get a happy ending and get to grow old while making positive changes to the world around them. like i don’t think they’ll be able to solve everything but they’re sure as hell gonna do what they can. But idk maybe they actually do get like. some good shit done. but again they’re not. an army. they’re a bunch of 20-somethings and their rube-goldberg-machine-creating chaperone. but i think they should get a fun climactic moment so i guess this is all to say i don’t. have an ending planned. but there should probably be one at some point.

OH AND the giant evil blood sucking dog vineyard vines robot Definitely almost kills Nisa (or at least fully destroys her in some way) and. it’s very narrowly avoided and she’s very very weak for a while because it took a lot out of her. also the dog robot does make grape vines grow and uhhhh any grapes that show up are 100% full of the pilot’s siphoned blood. also i think there’s still some remnants of that bitch in nisa’s mind afterwards bc an old mechanical god is hard to get rid of. but it’s mostly ok.

Also the bug people are just. a thing. like every person in the most recent generation in this specific society are at least a little bit genetically experimented on because. it sucks there. and i think if your parents bribe the government you can be a little Less fucked up but yknow. everyone’s a little weird. this was an excuse to put bug ppl in here they’re just the folks who were probably the most fucked with and i have many bug people here because i think bugs are cool and i want them to look like weird little bugs. This was all also an excuse to give the main characters fangs bc i’m gay. i don’t think randomly fucking with your genetics will make you a bug in real life so do not try this at home or at all PSA

SPEAKING of the society ok it’s very much obsessed with earth nostalgia and stuff and very yknow. basic cyperpunk shitty capitalism you know the drill you’ve seen space operas whatever but it’s also weirdly oligarchical? and like? it’s weird and bad and kind of a corporatocracy?? and. fuck. idk man they’re a fucked up space catgirl greeble-y amazon with catholic imagery. The Academy is also a thing but. idk how to describe it more than i already have it’s just kinda shitty boarding school. And after a certain point ppl can get sent on like. missions and stuff? in their fucking robots? but again i’m not sure what For. an option could be that there’s nearby Shit and nobody can tell if it’s safe because space is weird? also it’s only about 3200 so i’d say like. whole societies out in space is a relatively new thing and there’s some weird shit going on. so they sometimes send teenagers out in robots to see what’s up and that ends SUPER well for EVERYONE. hmm something SHOULD be going on actually there should be some weird eldritch space stuff. it should be connected to the more fucked up robots. it should also be Core’s fault somehow because uhhh capitalism and lack of foresight? anyway here’s women kissing i don’t know things. WAIT FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HOW SHADY SOME OF THE STUFF GOING ON IS LIKE THE DEATHS OF THE CREW PEROVSKIA WAS ON UHHH JUST TRUST ME DUDE like they are NOT afraid to get kids killed which was IMPLIED but also like it goes a little deeper than that and uhh i don’t know exactly what’s happening. but i’m sure it’ll all fall into place eventually. basically it’s very fatt shitty faction vibes idk how else to describe it. man it‘s like. just. there’s stuff happening they have goals and ideals and there’s probably more to it than i know so far bc stuff happens but i don’t KNOW what i’m tired and have been typing this for a year i don’t want to talk abt the bad capitalists i want to talk about tenderness and girls but unfortunately the ways in which the girls are tender are deeply informed by the environment they grew up in so i do have to think about it even if they all deserved better.

i think they all get a cat or a dog or something eventually. like they all deserve it. i think the final home they build together is actually pretty reminiscent of the scrapyard house. i think they get to live there for the rest of their lives and. just build something small and wonderful for themselves :’)

also i forgot to put men in the story they exist i just forgot about them. there’s nisa’s one ex i already forgot his name but he’s mentioned i think.

[kyliwrites]

the exit's the other way

ship: davekat (no quadrant/all quadrants; established relationship)

prompt: "you know what!? fuck you. i'm out of here."

"*name.*"

"WHAT?!"

"the exit's the other way."

setting: earth c (canon universe/post-canon, no epilogues)

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are just the absolute god damned best at riling loud, insufferable aliens up to the brink of delirious rage. Because the way their gray cheeks flush and their eyes darken is so perfectly entertaining, you take it upon yourself to annoy them into paradox space and back.

Karkat, for example. All it takes is the bare minimum of poking and prodding at his favorite romcom actor and SHABAM. Little guy's all fuming and everything; you can see the puffs of smoke coming out his ears and the attractive way his fangs slide out over his lips. He's glaring in that wide-eyed furious way of his, anger hot enough to brand you right on the asscheek like a motherfucking cow. Moo, bitch.

You hardly insulted him, but Karkat's like that: hypersensitive, petty, an asshole, totally adorable when he's mad. He's got his flaws (who doesn't?), but with you, he doesn't try so hard to cover them up. You love him all the more for that.

Presently, he's ranting about the flaws and inaccuracies of some human film you alchemized into existence for him, and he's been doing so for approximately four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. You haven't been paying much attention, if you're being honest, because you've been too busy mentally recounting everything else about those four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Why? Narrative reasons, yo.

You tune in at the last second and catch his metaphorical hands instead of the hilariously unironic picking apart of whichever movie you picked for him (you can't even remember at this point; you've spent all three years since the game ended finding progressively shittier films, if only so you can experience the pleasure that is Karkat's ranting).

"-and are you even FUCKING listening, douchenozzle!?" Comes Karkat's infuriated, raspy interjection. It throws you bodily from your thoughts, and you blink from behind your shades in an effort to clear your head.

"Nah," you answer honestly once you've regained your bearing. "Shit got more boring than watching American football with the boys on a rainy Saturday night. Dude goes in for a tackle and skids across the field tragically. Eight jocks in a row go flying and it's like a god damn bowling alley up in this bitch. The boys start swearing like some motherfuckers, but you, a renowned Football Connoisseur, shake your head solemnly rather than go batshit insane over the slip-n-slide conga line like, you know, a normal person. Football people, bro. No humor. No sense of irony."

"I understood approximately FUCKALL OF THAT, asshole. Speak English or Alternian, thanks a whole fucking lot. What gog damn language was that!?" Karkat looks you up and down with a scrunched up expression, as if deciding where to maim you first. You straighten involuntarily underneath his gaze.

"...S'called Texan, m'dude."

He recoils melodramatically. "Texan!? Is that a joke or some bullshit? Some kind of dead language you somehow learned? Where the fuck is the TEXAN and who came up with a name that hideous and disgusting?"

"No, Karks," you wheeze. "Texas. The people from Texas are Texans."

"Why do I care about your overcomplicated alien linguistics!? Answer my question, Strider," he demands, crossing his arms. His nails, bitten down yet still sharp and threatening, dig into his sweater.

"I'm from Texas, dude. You know how there were, like, different dialects on y'all's murderplanet? English is kind of like that. Texans have huge accents and are famous for being racists, people from Jersey are famous for being the shittiest people, Alabamians marry their relatives, etcetera etcetera."

After a moment of thought, Karkat nods seriously and says, "That explains why you're such a xenophobe."

You choke. Of all the things you'd been expecting him to say, it definitely wasn't that. You reply eloquently:

"W-what!?"

"You heard me. You fucking space racist."

"Oh my jesus shit, rude," you protest vehemently. "I am not space racist." Not anymore, at least.

Karkat flashes a rare fanged grin at you, his eyebrows lifted, and you realize he's only joking. The smile is gone as soon as it came, one of those blink-and-you-miss-it gifts. "Space racist." He nudges you with one elbow. You nudge him back.

"Dude," you say, "don't make this a thing."

He pushes you forcefully, hard enough for you to have to grip the arm of the sofa you're sitting atop to remain seated, in response. Oh, it is on.

You tackle him and he lets out a paralyzed squawk when you roll off the couch and into the floor. He lands on his back with an "oof," and you pin him down by the shoulders. He bares his teeth, but the smile breaking out over his face ruins the effect.

"Get off me, asshat, I'll fucking kneecap you," he barks, still grinning like an idiot.

"You won't." You're grinning like an idiot, too, to be fair, except yours is more fond than shit-eating. Dave Strider, maximum sap. Whod've thunk.

He surges forward suddenly, without warning, and uses his legs to flip you onto your back; it knocks all the air out of you, but you manage a cackle and a "fuck you" anyway. He pins your arms above your head and sits on your chest.

"Say fucking uncle, Strider."

"That's not how that game works!" You wheeze. "You don't even know what an uncle is!" He smirks—the sight makes your heart flutter like the cat getting showered in affection meme. The thought distracts you and you briefly ponder making a Karkat version, but you aren't given the reins to think very long because he flicks your nose.

"Ow! Dickhead, that hurt—"

"Dickhead yourself! Your fucking bony ribs are digging into my ass!" He wrinkles his nose and shifts, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit.

"What ass?" You demand in jest, which is the worst thing someone pinned beneath the person they are making fun of could possibly say. He narrows his eyes and you manage a "shit wait no" before he snatches his hands away.

You've lived together for all of three years, four months, and seventeen days. He knows your weaknesses as well as he knows his own, your fears, your discomforts. He knows what you like, love, and hate. He knows when to push and when not to push. He gets you better than anyone, even your own psychoanalytic twin sister (you'll have to blame that one on the fact that she and her wife don't leave their house unless they're going to the alien procreation cave).

So, that's why he decides to tickle you. Because he knows you throw an absolute shitfit when it comes to being tickled.

You hunch your shoulders when his hands descend upon you and try to roll yourself into a tight, impenetrable ball to escape his fingers, but he's fucking relentless. He knows how sensitive you are; it's the perfect revenge.

In between your wheezing laughs, you can barely manage words, but you cough out a "dude," "bro," and "dudebro," then, finally, "Karkat," before he pauses, rasps, "You did this to yourself," and raises his hands threateningly again.

You blurt, "Uncle! I'll say uncle just don't do it please dude I have never done anything wrong ever you know this right? I—"

He leans forward, silencing you. "Take that bullshit you said first back, Strider, or your plea to your human familial figure is null."

"Fine! Fine, I take it back. Listen, bro. You definitely don't not have an ass. Like, in fact, that ass is so ripe I can't believe anyone would ever accuse you of not having one. That's so fucking disrespectful. How dare those blind motherfuckers? I'm waving my fists at them right now. I will singlehandedly smite all Karkat's assphobes, my man. I'll raise my assphobe smiting trident and pulverize all these thotass sons of bitches right here, right now. I'll do it, I will. I'm no coward. I'll protect that magnificent rear with everything I have, dude. Those glorious buns. The assnihilator—"

"Shut the fuck up oh my gog I can't believe I fucking brought this upon myself." Karkat rolls off of you and clutches said glorious buns. Apparently your ribs really did hurt his ass. Huh.

"You did bring it upon yourself," you agree. And then, because you still aren't done pushing his buttons and want to be an insufferable piece of shit, "So, you didn't say what you thought of the movie."

He opens his mouth, clamps it shut hard enough for his teeth to clank together, repeats the motion a couple of times. "I—Dave—You fucking—No. You know what? Fuck you. I'm out of here."

You burst into the horrid laughter of a hyena when he scrambles to his feet in one furious motion; he's back to grumpy scowling and cussing you out in the amount of time it takes for the underpaid McDonald's employee working the back of the store to flip a shitty one hundred percent not-beef burger patty.

He stomps heavily away—in the direction of the kitchen, you note, which only makes you cackle harder when you realize he didn't do it on purpose.

"Oh my fucking jesus god. Karkat!"

"WHAT!?" He yells without facing you.

"The exit's the other way."

He comes to an abrupt halt, slowly turns around, and begins marching back, in the right direction this time.

You're too busy flailing on the couch (you can't even remember pulling yourself back onto it) to give a shit when he throws himself down beside you. You do, however, give tons of shits when he pulls you into a very exasperated smooch that simply screams "shut the FUCK up you absolute godless heathen of a space monkey."

You are not opposed to "shut the FUCK up you absolute godless heathen of a space monkey" smooches.

He draws back and rolls his eyes. "Are you done yet, bulgemuncher?"

You are, as established many times, an insufferable piece of shit, so you say, "Dunno. Do I get to kiss you again?"

"Not with that attitude you don't."

You kiss him anyway, because god dammit he's your boyfriend and you demand kissing rights. He doesn't protest; instead, he wraps his arms around your neck and relaxes, just a little.

You could stay in his arms forever, you think.

[2ofswords]

001 pathologic

Even if it says “Pathologic” I’ll mostly be talking about Pathologic 2 and specify if it’s not the case. It’s just where most of my experience lies since I’m not done with Pathologic Classic HD yet. ^^

Also I’m putting this one under a cut because… man. That got long! Like way too long, I thought I could do this one very quick and now two hours have passed and I’m still writing it! Dear god, these are a lot of questions!

 Favorite character: ... It’s Dankovsky. We all know it. I mean I went into the game being like “I’m pretty sure the tragic asshole character is gonna be my favorite...” Credit where credit is due, I persevered until the day 11 conversation. But we all would have known that Marble Nest would have gotten me anyways so.. Yeah. I especially love his dynamic relationship with Artemy in Patho 2 and he is just a fun and complex character, that I really love to think about and who has made some terrible decisions while still staying sympathetic for me. Also the mix of science and dreams is just something that I find interesting and also can kind of relate too. Love that stuff! 

 Least Favorite character: In Patho 2 it’s Oyun. The way he talks about the Kin makes me really uncomfortable. The animalistic portrayal is for me one of the biggest flaws in the game and he is the worst offender. And yeah since he is one of the Kin, I’m probably not the one who should judge... But I don’t know... from what I’ve heard that seems to be considered a problem by the fanbase in general... Outside of that I also think he’s just structurally very badly included in the game? He appears very late and is hostile in a way that doesn’t really make you engage with him. And I was way to stressed and didn’t get enough opportunities to actually talk with him to really make a connection (though one reason was, that I didn’t give him my house in the first run. Didn’t want to, so I had the pleasure to walk to Shekhen every time to meet him.) Even without the very questionable undertones his constant ranting about strength and leadership didn’t really appeal to me in a game, where leadership just far has only proven to fail everyone in a time of crisis. The way he is revealed as the murderer is kind of weak, since you either figured it out long ago or the game just randomly tells you... He just is very unappealing to me. Vlad the Elder also fucking sucks. But at least he as well as the game are so open about it, that it’s easier to ignore while the game seemed to make me want to like Oyun, while I really couldn’t so this one makes me a little more salty.

 5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): 1. Artemy/Daniil: What a shocker! Narrative foils who have an actual rivals to friends ark in the game and a shitton of sexual tension within it! What’s not to love? 2. Lara/Rubin: I just think they deserve each other. Both of them are very hard working and prone to giving up themselves for the greater good but they are also harsh to others. I think they would apreciate each other but also reign the other person in and care about them. 3. Daniil/Rubin: I just want Rubin to be happy, okay? This one is more a Patho 1 thing, but they really appreciate each others work and I really like how they interact in the Bachelor route. They care about each other and they share a lot of struggles and actually a more similar view on the town and the world than Daniil does with Artemy. Also again we have two very hard working people here, who would have a lot of bonding over weird science projects. (Even if these one are worse at reigning each other in and fights would be pretty horrible to the point of needing a mediator because non of these two are talking to each other and maybe only stoop down to writing very passive aggressive letters...) 4. Notkin/Khan: Also more of a Patho2 thing, since they act way more brutal in P1 and also do not really reconcile. But in P2 they seem to care and immediately bury the hatchet when shit hits the fan. The whole house of the death quests shows them more as bickering friends. And I have a soft spot for bickering friends romances, okay? Also this one is obviously only two teenage boys having a crush, no shitheads allowed here! 5. Yulia/Eva: I cannot really chose between my favorite w/w pairing, there are so many good ones! Right now it’s Yulieva again. They are tragic, they are soft, they are so atmospheric and fun to write! Also I just love Eva and think she should get as many girlfriends as she wants.

 Character I find most attractive: Uhhh... I don’t know I find their models beautiful but there are not a lot of them I find specifically attractive. I guess it’s between Daniil, Artemy, Lara and Yulia for me. Daniil get’s the most ridiculous style points ever but... too old for me specifically. I think Artemy is really attractive but I think his outfit is also really unflattering ... Lara is so much my type and so is Yulia! (Though why didn’t you keep the short hair, queen, it would have made this choice so easy!) I think I’ll have to go with Lara, because I first saw her and just went “I love you” immediately? 

 Character I would marry:  If I assume that the other person would be as happy with our arrangement no matter who I chose: Victor. He is the perfect husband by definition and I want to learn more about time magic. Though this marriage would remain very much platonic and also very much sexless... he is way older than I am and that is disregarding that time is weird for the Kains. Also we have to consider Nina’s continuing existence... okay I don’t mind that one at all.

 Character I would be best friends with:  My first instinct is to say “man all of these people would despise me”, which is such a Pathologic mood. I think I would be best friends with Eva. I think we would get along well and we’d have much to talk about. Also, her house is cool and we could go stargazing!

 A random thought:  I love Dora! She is the worst and most iconic child caretaker of all time and I want to talk about her! The whole baby thing and the way it’s delivered to Artemy is already great but then she just silently takes the baby and gives the reward when you’re there the second time? The time she takes Grace away is genuinely such a good dialogue and a tough decision so that’s great but then, she manages to actually get Grace adopted by a dead person, if Peter is dead! And then she may think it’s Andrey WHO IS DEAD TOO! Seriously, who hired her! I know the entire town is falling apart but man! Dora sure as hell doesn’t help the case. But she tries her best! I think. I hope.

 An unpopular opinion: Oh I have a lot of unpopular opinions, but I think most of them should get their own post, where I can explain in details and a bit more serious what I’m actually talking about. But here’s a small one: Okay ummm… please my fellow burakhovsky shippers, please don’t get mad but… uuuumm…

…

I like the first Bachelor conversation in Patho2 better than the one in Patho1. … Okay, look. I love the “left hand right hand” line as much as everyone else. Wouldn’t have missed it and loved it in Pathologic Classic! And I also think it’s a shame that Daniil’s homosexuality got dialed down. Totally agree with that. But! I really love them starting out on the wrong foot. Their whole dynamic of having to establish their relationship makes their journey and the scenes where they actually reconcile again so much more powerful to me and I love how dynamic it is. And having the two of them completely clash underlines for me how much they have to try and develop to be more comfortable and confine in each other. It’s a great starting point! Also the scene is hilarious in it’s own right. The whole buildup to it where Artemy is in such a desperate position to find out his own kind-of-brother wants to murder him… starting this whole thing with “you owe me” and the whole “Vorakh” thing. It’s really great how in retrospect it’s just a really fucking bad start and a trainwreck of the Bachelor trying to sound competent but from Artemy’s perspective it’s just utterly horrible because the whole town wants to kill him, his father is dead and this stranger is talking some bullshit! Yeah, nobody would have any patience and so the situation escalates immediately! It’s great storytelling and absurd and… I really do love this scene and it’s dynamic and I think it's a great first interaction! (Even if it is sad if people think that they now get the Bachelor. Which… dynamic storyarc… complex character. But I think most people will get that eventually, if they just engage with the whole storyline.) It also makes it a bit more genuine when they actually do act friendly, because you can see, how they act, if they’re not trying. In P1 the Bachelor’s dialogue can feel manipulative rather than friendly and while that has it’s own positives, I just prefer the more dynamic approach of their relationship. To be honest, I think both conversations fit in their own games nicely. I just prefer the overall approach to their relationship arc and I also think it’s just less clumsily written and a bit more memorable apart from the very first line. And while I love it in Patho 1 I couldn’t really see it and it’s sudden intensity in the writing-style of the second game, so I also do not really miss it specifically in their interaction. It’s great were it is but it wouldn’t enhance the situation here.

 My canon OTP:  Victor and Nina. This man just loves his powerful evil and passionate wife and I respect that. I think the way they are described and how Victor would fit in makes this combination so interesting to me. He is quiet and capable and you can really imagine the whirlwind Nina still appreciating him and... it’s so cute, okay? They are in love!

 Non-canon OTP:  (Oh my god, there are so many pairings where my brain goes “what do you mean, they aren’t canon???)  I think Lara/Eva is a really cute pairing that sure as hell isn’t alluded to in the Canon at all. Lara deserves Eva’s positivity and her view on the potential of the soul could be really cute. And Eva deserve her practical care and consideration. Also they are both talking about how they do not know what to do with their live and since they both arrive at this rather depressing conclusion very differently, they might be able to help each other!  Also they could play matchmaking with the local doctors together and I find that hilarious.

 Most badass character: Aglaya. There isn’t really a competition. (Okay Clara is also really badass and one has to mention Aspity for just dying when she feels like she should make a point and for being alive whenever she has something really important to say... that’s also pretty badass and she also is in general.) Aglaya is so powerful and intimidating and armed with metaknowledge. She even knows about her plot armor (and how long that will last...) Do not cross this lady, you will definitely regret it! (Okay the true answer is obviously Teensy. But shhhh…)

 Pairing I am not a fan of:  I’m not really a fan of Aglaya/Artemy especially in Patho2. I just cannot get over her immediately opening the gallows and then breaking Grief down. Artemy in Patho2 doesn’t really feel like a person who would appreciate either and he gets like really upset about Grief without it getting really resolved. (And Aglaya is very unapologetic about it, which might be a part of the truth since we don’t know what happened but still doesn’t help the case.) Also they talk very businesslike and like Aglaya is just making plans which Artemy in mind which doesn’t feel like a good baseline even if she appreciates his insight. It’s still only one person making the decision in the end... But I also totally get the appeal and they are both stubborn, have an interesting way of seeing connections and their worldviews are very interesting together especially, if we think about P1, so I also get shipping them! I’m just not the biggest fan myself.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Uhhh... Hm... There is not really a character I find completely broken and I’ve complained about Oyun enough... So I have to go with Aglaya and only for the reason that I find the ending where they leave town pretty forced. (I’m sorry, I don’t hate her! All of the characters are so amazing, she only has some writing choices specifically that I didn’t like! But I still think she’s cool!) I actually kind of like that it exists and I think the way it plays out is very heart-wrenching and honestly amazingly made but the whole way to get to the decision feels a bit awkward to me just because both of their duties get weirdly lampshaded without making the meta entirely obvious. Either just shattering the fourth wall here or making the situation way more desperate for both of them would have done the trick, I guess.  I in general would have loves, if her meta would have been used a bit more explicitly. It felt a bit gimmicky to make her cool at times and while Artemy might not be the route for that... there ideology talk in Patho1 sure as hell managed that. Their dialogue is still good but I had very high hopes while I approached it. I do know that there is more behind the meta and I wish we could have seen a bit more of that then her offhandedly mentioning it. She never really engaged with her struggle and never allowed Artemy to really engage with it, what also made the whole town fleeing scene a bit jarring, especially if you didn’t play the first game. 

Favourite friendship: I mean the whole apple basket gang friendship, obviously! Is there really another friendship that competes in the game? I love their dynamic and I also love how torn apart the friendship is and how they are only beginning to reconcile even at the end of the game. Not all is good yet but they stay hopeful and I think that is a very strong message.

[vecna]

Oohh for the fandom meme! Dragon Age?

Send me a fandom!

Oh boy, this is going to be spicy.

It’s also very Anders-negative, so apologies up front.

The character(s) I first fell in love with:

I’m actually not sure which was the FIRST, but it’s a tie between Morrigan and Alistair. I saw fanart of them going around at the time Origins first released, and that’s what got me to try the game! 

Alistair was a breath of fresh air, because at the time, I was used to warrior men in games being all Edgy and Rough, and he was the total opposite and a sweetheart.

And Morrigan was just instantly my goth wife, and had Claudia Black as a VA, so I was sold immediately.

Both still hold a special place for me!

The character(s) I never expected to love as much as I do now:

Loghain is the main one. He does a lot of truly reprehensible shit in the first game. But once I sat down and read the prequel novels about young Loghain, plus saw what he’s like if you recruit him, he grew on me A LOT and now he’s a top fave.

Nathaniel I expected to hate as soon as I saw his name + who his father was, but then the expansion came out and I ended up loving that dude almost immediately. I really wish he was around more after Awakening, and also really wish he’d been a romance option, especially for a Cousland haha.

Merrill is a weird one because she was totally uninteresting to me in DA:O, so when they announced her as a companion in DA2 I was like, “Ehhhh.” Then they punked me by making her adorable and sweet and now I love her.

Plus a bunch of side-characters like The Architect? I liked him a bunch in the novel + Awakening – although I found his Plan in the novel much more appealing. But as the years have gone by, I keep surprising myself at just HOW disappointed I am he’s never appeared again haha.

The character(s) everyone else loves that I don’t:

There’s a few, and all of them will get me yelled at, but here we go.

First: Isabela. This one’s a bit complicated, but it really just boils down to her attitude towards how you play your character. I actively dislike characters who are super sexual – regardless of gender. But Isabela in particular bothers me because she’s constantly pushing her lewdness and sexual humor on you, and when you try to discourage it, she admonishes you with, “Well, you’re no fun.” Her whole character is just… like that for me. Super pushy, overly lewd, gets uppity when you don’t have the same ~liberated~ opinions she does, and this is all played up in the writing like she’s this Empowered Woman the player absolutely must love, especially if they’re playing a male character lol. I hate her for the same reasons a lot of people hate Liara in Mass Effect, but with the addition of pushy lewd jokey characters always rubbing me the wrong way.

Second: Iron Bull. I’ve written a lot about why he makes me more uncomfortable than any fictional character I’ve ever encountered, and I just outright hate him, he makes my skin crawl. If you want details, feel free to DM me, I don’t really want to rant about it again publicly.

Third: Anders. Again, I’ve written a lot about him before, but. I hated him in Awakening, for a lot of the same reasons I hate Isabela in DA2. But the changes they made to him in DA2 are just kinda :/. While I absolutely agree with him about Mage Rights, the level of preachiness they added to him drove me nuts, and the fact that you’re painted as a Bad Guy if you don’t like him blowing up the chantry. And from a purely OOC standpoint: He’s become a figurehead for all the aggressive Discourse people in the fandom, and if I see someone list Anders in their sidebar bio, I know pre-emptively that their blog is going to be full of 6 page long essays of meta about how everything is Problematic, and no thanks.

To a lesser extent, I’m also not fond of Zevran. But in his case, it’s not anything major like the others, I’m just tired of Bioware’s habit of making the bisexual characters overly lewd sex-focused rogues/deviants.

The character(s) I love that everyone else hates:

Loghain, lol.

But also Sebastian Vael? There’s so much about him that I find genuinely fascinating, especially regarding his backstory, and his struggles between his feelings of responsibility to his family vs his dedication to the Chantry and bettering himself. He’s such a dear character to me, and such a pivotal part of any playthrough, I’m always blown away when I remember he’s a DLC character and many people don’t have him.

HOWEVER Anders being the fandom darling means that people tend to unfairly shit on Sebastian for reacting poorly to the Chantry explosion. People also like to label him as a poster child of a White Straight Church Boy, while refusing to acknowledge he’s… not straight, and not exactly a church boy either lol.

Also Vivienne, but I think that one’s really self-explanatory. I love her, and she gives a really needed perspective on the Circle, since most of the mage companions previously were apostates. But of course, she gets written off as a Chantry apologist, and an uppity bitch, when people would def love her for the same traits if she was not black lol.

The character(s) I used to love but don’t any longer:

Justice. And by extension, Anders. A lot of people like to rant about how Justice ruined Anders, but I always saw it the other way around.Justice was my favorite character in Awakening. The whole concept around him, that he was a Fade spirit who took human form and was experiencing life for the first time was SO fascinating. I felt like there was so much to explore there with his character.

Buuuut then they had him merge with Anders. With the narrative being that he WAS a spirit of Justice, but the moment he connected with Anders, it corrupted his entire spirit into something he wasn’t anymore. So essentially, the character I used to love no longer exists, thanks to Anders. And it reminds me of that phrase recently, about how the destination is so terrible you can no longer enjoy the journey? I can’t even appreciate Justice in Awakening anymore, knowing what happens to him.

To a lesser extent, Corypheus. He was SO COOL and the premise of him was AMAZING when he first appeared in the DA2 DLC, but then Inquisition had to go and turn him into a weird shallow mustache twirl villain.

The character(s) I would totally smooch:

None? Idk I don’t really have the Smooch Fictional Character gene.

The character(s) I’d want to be like:

MAEVARIS TILANI. May I one day finally have the confidence in my identity that she does, and also marry a sweet bear man who adores me.

The character(s) I’d slap:

Too many to list, really. Probably Anders.

The pairing(s) that I love:

THERE’S SO MANY. And most of them are with the PC, because I generally don’t ship NPCs together. But my top 3 are:

M!Hawke / Fenris is my ultimate OTP in the Dragon Age series, by a long-shot. Not even sure where to start on how much I love it, but two damaged guys leaning on each other to work through their respective loneliness and trauma is MY JAM. And lmao I love silver-sideburned Hawke chillin in retirement somewhere but being a supportive husband while Fenris goes off hunting the Bad Guys, it’s great.

Solas / Lavellan is a close second, with the caveat that I increasingly prefer it with a male Lavellan. Having the Inquisitor in love with Solas just changes the entire tone of the game for me, for the better, and him actually being the villain trying to end the world while in love with this normie elf is just (chef kiss). Too bad I’m burned out by how overly spammed it is.

Dorian / Inquisitor is in third, I will just always be fond of how it’s a story of the Inquisitor helping Dorian be happy with who he is, escape an abusive family, and realize that he’s allowed to be loved. Good shit good shit.

Some others:

Warden / Morrigan is probably my favorite Origins ship, and that only intensified with the way she talks about the Warden in Inquisition, esp if they’re Kieran’s other parent. What a cute goth family, regardless of the Warden’s gender, cause you can pry Bi Morrigan from my cold dead fingers.

Cassandra / Inquisitor might have a lot of Romance Cliches, but I adore it – although, similar others, I increasingly prefer it with a female Inquisitor. I actively dislike the weird no-homo rejection with her, and come on, a lady Inquisitor being her Knight In Shining Armor is just good storytelling.

Cullen / Inquisitor, for a lot of the same reasons as Cassandra. I love me a cliche romance, but I’m also fond of the narrative w/ him of someone he loves helping him heal through the lyrium withdrawals and take time to rest.

Josephine / F!Inquisitor is just adorable all around, and wholesome, and great.

Varric / Hawke COME ON HOW WAS THIS NOT AN OPTION.

On the rarepair end:

Sebastian / Hawke doesn’t seem like it would be a rarepair – you’d think everyone who loves Cullen/Inquisitor would love this one too. I do! But alas. That said, I’m also pretty aggro about this one with a male Hawke because SEBASTIAN IS CANON BI. WHY WAS HIS ROMANCE STRAIGHT.

Maric / Loghain is a rarepair I will take with me to my grave LOL. Never forget the scene where Maric thought Loghain was leaving, and bolted across the camp with almost no clothes on to beg Loghain to stay. Come on.

Nathaniel / Cousland is dear to me, and I love it so much more than Alistair / Cousland haha.

Greagoir / Wynne, I can’t believe this got validated in canon ahhhh.

The pairing(s) that I despise:

Again: THERE’S SO MANY.

Iron Bull / Dorian is my least fave by a longshot. Again, I have written about why I hate this pairing a great many times, but it’s awful and toxic and makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing anything about it ever again. Please keep poor Dorian away from that man. He deserves someone that doesn’t sexually harass him until he’s finally worn down into dubious consent (while drunk) and then outted to everyone about it.

Isabela / Fenris. Sorry, but it’s just bad writing that Fenris bails on Hawke because the physical intimacy triggered his PTSD and he needs space to process, but then will turn around and have a casual sex relationship with Isabela instead. Yikes.

Anders / Fenris. Aveline / Isabela. Alistair / Morrigan. All of the DA2 Hawke/companion rivalmances. I don’t enjoy “these two people hate and antagonize and want to kill each other… but they fuck” in any form.

Cullen / Amell. Yikes.

And basically ALL of the canon wlw pairings in this series suffer from the fact they have men writing them, and as a result they’re almost always some kind of abusive or racist, and skeeve me out. See: Celene / Briala, Leliana / Marjolaine, Branka / Hespith, etc. Please Bioware, I’m begging you to consult some actual queer women. It’s insane how badly they’re treated compared to how the canon mlm couples are written.

FINALLY, I recognize this will be the most unpopular of all, but. As much as I love M!Hawke/Fenris, I just honestly cannot stand seeing F!Hawke/Fenris. There are some pairings where I’m so attached to the m/m or f/f version, I cannot deal with the m/f version anymore, and that’s one of them. (The others are mainly non-Bioware.)

[meetmeatthecoda]

My 6x22 opinions that no one asked for which is totally cool

Okay I’ve had time to process kinda so here we go yolo

Some fun/great/meaningful Red/Liz moments:

1) Liz in trouble and Red literally thinking nothing of dropping everything to help, literally of course, cause why wouldn’t he, DESPITE him wanting Liz to just take care of herself. He manages to tamp down his instinct of worrying about Lizzie & only Lizzie and respects her as a knowledgeable & capable agent and listens to her battle plan & helps her without question THAT IS GROWTH AND I’M VERY PROUD.

2) Liz thinking nothing of using Red’s now-familiar resources for her own plan like hell yes, take control of your boyfriend’s criminal network like a bad-ass Liz I love it

3) Red meeting up with Liz in the Post Office with the line: “Fancy meeting you here.” Like WHEN has that ever NOT been used as a flirtatious LINE™?? get outta here with ur lies. He was flirting big time and I loved it.

Next 4) AND OKAY THIS MIGHT BE THE BIGGEST THING CAUSE ARAM MADE THE CODE TO THE BOX “SAMAR” AND RED DELIVERED A FUCKING CASUAL LINE ABOUT MAKING THE CODE A GIRLFRIEND’S NAME AnD The CAmErA haRD CuTS tO LiZ WHEN HE SAYS IT. PLUS LET’S KEEP IN MIND (!!!) THAT WHEN RED WAS TRAPPED IN THE BOX IN ANSLO GARRICK THE CODE WAS “JULIET” AND WHEN LIZ WAS TRAPPED IN THERE IT WAS “ROMEO”. LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING??? SYMBOLISM AND CLUES AND DOUBLE MEANINGS EVERYWHERE AND I FUCKING LOVE IT GOODBYE

5) and then the ever-popular Team Meal scene where Red & Liz stood the absolute closest they could to one another and they flirted and lip-stared and it was pretty great.

OH 6) WHEN RED’S CAR LITERALLY SMASHED INTO THE CAR THEY WERE HOLDING LIZ, RESSLER, & ARAM IN AND THE SHOOTOUT STARTED WITH THE DRAMATIC MUSIC AND RED RISKED EVERYTHING TO SAVE HIS GUYS CAUSE HE’S A GOOD. PERSON. AND WHEN THE CAR WAS GONNA EXPLODE THEY ALL DID THIS MASSIVE DOG PILE TO PROTECT EACH OTHER AND I FELL HARD & UNEXPECTEDLY FOR THE TEAM & FAMILY DYNAMIC AND I’M GONNA PRETEND THAT LIZ JUST HUNKERED DOWN NEXT TO RED AND HE THREW AN ARM AROUND HER I LOVE MY HAPPY PRETEND BUBBLE.

OH OH OH AND 7) AS MUCH AS I WANTED LIZ TO BE THE ONE TO SAVE RED FROM MCMAHON, DEMBE DID INSTEAD AND I’M FINE. WITH. IT. BC THOSE TWO ARE THE CUTEST AND I’M SO SO SO GLAD HE’S BACK AND THEIR SCENE LATER WAS ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING WOW OKAY.

Anyway, regarding the last few scenes, this is what I’ve decided to feel:

Red definitely would have stayed for dinner with his wife and daughter fucking fight me had the Katarina thing not been bothering him and Liz would have been thrilled & Agnes would have been #triggered by Red’s laugh at something Lizzie said and Agnes would have thrown her arms around him for a big hug bc OF COURSE she remembers her Reddy who she saw every day for 10 months while her mommy was in a coma JUST LET ME HAVE THIS

Oh, and that mystery dude is just confusing and I’m too tired but I think the picture he showed Red and Red’s resulting exhausted, Bob’s Burger-esque oh my god made it pretty clear that Red did not think Katarina was alive so he did not lie to Liz and he was not exactly thrilled that Kat is alive after all. I have opinions about the “twist” but I’ll leave those off and spare you all.

I also think that Red was pretty guarded and chilly when confronting Katarina, no desperate-love-struck-omg-you’re-alive revelation thank god and I think (and hope) that there is actually some bad blood between them (@codewordpumpkin play that track) that will make things worse between them going forward. In a good way. If that makes sense.

I was also very bolstered by the fact that Red did not seem to kiss her back, at least definitely not the first time, and, you know, then she fucking drugged him and had him kidnapped sooooo… hopefully no love lost there. Literally.

ALSO regarding the Katarina CRAP, she called him Raymond but (and TPTB confirmed this) that’s bc, for all intents and purposes, that’s his name now. (I refrain from using the word ‘identity’ bc that implies he adopted the real RR’s values and relationships. And, as we know, he sure as shit didn’t. #redloveslizinaveryveryromanticway)

LASTLY I’ve been thinking about the endless JB & JE articles that made me so angry and I’ve come to a conclusion:

If they can take every Shocking Unexpected Twist™ they half-retcon, half-make up at the beginning of the season & say that they had it in mind all along WHETHER THEY REALLY DID OR NOT and claim power & authority over those choices & shoe-horn them into the narrative to make it #organic??? What’s to say that this time next year, that Twist won’t be Lizzington? I know I’m reaching and it really may not happen, I know that, but HEY JUST HYPOTHETICALLY if they can bring Katarina fucking Rostova back from the dead when they clearly had no inkling of that in, say, Cape May when she was canonically  v e r y  d e a d, then what’s to say they won’t finally make it to Lizzington and tell everyone in every interview they ever give that it was the planned endgame all along? And, who knows, maybe then it will actually be the truth ❤️

My main point? Is there one, no one knows We can’t control what they write, we can only go along for the ride & try to get some enjoyment out of the resulting theorizing w/ friends & vid making & fanfic writing. And honestly? I get a hell of a lot of enjoyment out of watching our wonderful fandom members catch little clues & theory-build towards Agnesgate & Lizzington, using all those little gems like the box codes & their creativity to expand on the limited story we are provided. And, while I might be and who tf am I kidding lbr I definitely am biased for Lizzington, TPTB have yet to convince me that all those things little things that our fandom adds up to Agnesgate & Lizzington AREN’T completely intentional & planned for a GREAT, MEANINGFUL, EMOTIONAL, HARD-HITTING, MORALISTIC, & ACTUALLY TRULY SHOCKING endgame reveal. So yeah. This finale certainly wasn’t the worst we’ve had in terms of Lizzington (thank u for that perspective @ihaveyoulizzington) and honestly there’s tons of material for fanfic over this blessedly short hiatus. Moral: there’s no reason we can’t enjoy ourselves together as a fandom with the material we are given, despite other people’s opinions and views BC: entertainment is subjective and we can take what we want from it. That’s the beauty of fandom. So yeah. I certainly plan to write plenty of fun fics over the hiatus for anyone who wants to read them and I hope we continue to have fun together. Love you guys 😊❤️

[greensconnor]

i’m asking about your dragon age characters

molly i would KILL for u im ur personal hitman now

anyway i said my city now because the entire bioware writing team sucks shit xoxo and i’m so much smarter than all of them but also fully incapable of having a normal amount of ocs for anything (see: the time i made 20 rwby ocs in less than two weeks) so i have. five worldstates here r some assorted thoughts

uhhh so the worldstates r as follows

eira mahariel (two-handed berserk/champ spec), rhett hawke (two-handed berserk spec), alas lavellan (mage knight enchanter spec), romanced alistair/fenris/dorian respectively

shiv tabris (dual wield duelist/assassin spec), radella “rads” hawke (mage spirit healer spec), kat adaar (two-handed reaver spec), romanced morrigan/isabela/cassandra respectively because im a pc gamer and i think i should be able to date whatever video game woman i like because im infinitely better than cishet men

this world state said yeah i respect mens rights. mens rights to shut the fuck up

twins bronson (sword/shield reaver spec) & bryant cousland (archer ranger spec), carmine hawke (archer assassin spec), syracuse trevelyan (dual wield tempest spec), romanced zevran/anora/josephine/bull. if ur wondering how that works my city now and the warden, hawke and the inquisitor should all meet and so they do because i Said So

riva amell (mage arcane warrior/battlemage spec), graham “gray” hawke (mage force spec), hellathen “hela” lavellan (archer assassin spec); romanced cullen/anders and later blackwall because hawke only likes men who will break his heart. hela doesn’t have a romance because she’s literally 20. who let her lead the inquisition (me it was me). also it should be noted the version of cullen i have in my head only vaguely resembles actual cullen because i write better than dragon age writers ever could and i gave him an Actual Cohesive Narrative and he gets bullied relentlessly for being scrawnier than his mage boyfriend

malien “mal” surana (mage spirit healer/keeper spec), jules hawke (sword/shield reaver spec), ash adaar (mage rift spec), romanced leliana/merrill/krem because i should have been able to kiss krem and its a Crime that i am not allowed to

knight enchanter is a Very op specialization and by Very op i mean it makes a mage with their built-in low constitution stats able to solo the biggest baddest dragon in the game on nightmare mode in under five minutes so like. alas lavellan fist fights dragons for fun send tweet

i think lavellans should be able to hit ppl with bricks for all the shit they endure. thus solas gets pranked by mahariel and alas by which i mean they just tip buckets of water onto him from the rookery

kat might be my only competent inquisitor but she did also try to knock out the right hand of the divine and attempt to gap even tho there’s fucky magic burning up her hand so does she have a brain cell? you decide

also its fantasy land and i do what i want so kat has blue/gold sectoral heterochromia

gray “mage rights” hawke is best friends with fenris which surprises literally everyone. their friendship started because they got into a fist fight and then they were like okay i respect u now. hawke is like hey fenris give me ur sword i have a fun trick to show u [uses his sword as a foci to zap carver in the ass with lightning]

i am Always thinking abt like how cullen could have been one man anti-chantry propaganda machine if he hadn’t so blatantly been shoehorned into every game past origins so anyway bioware forgot about a wholeass moon i can write what i like. [holds up cullen by the scruff of his stupid armor] not only are you bisexual you are also a bottom

i also Hate the whole uwu mage haters get fixed by romancing a mage

unlocked secret dialogue option where my inquisitors verbally cuss out dorian’s dad instead of whatever sympathetic narrative the writers were going for cuz its bullshit.

riva is a showoff and a Menace about being as good as he is because he unabashedly loves being a mage and hes like oooh look at me im sexy i dont need to use my hands to cast magic because i’m just that good ;)) and you know what. hes right.

gray, on the other hand, does Not want to be mage. he wants to be a druffalo farmer and retire in the hinterlands and be left the fuck alone. unfortunately he is gay and has one brain cell and terrible, terrible taste in men. ribbed relentlessly for this by riva (altho does he have room to talk hes been hung up on cullen since he was like 13)

shiv is trans n kieran is the result of doing the dark ritual with her wife and he looks a Lot like shiv (dark skin pointed ears, shock-white hair) and morrigan always just Assumed she dyed it or did something magic with it so seeing their kid come out like that was a WEIRD time for her

leliana almost Murdered by cassandra in worldstate 5 because the warden is Actually There The Whole Time, but its been 10 years, mal’s cut off all her hair and gotten full facial tattoos and she’s like “no one will know its me its fine” and she’s right. she gets away with it. only cullen like, Knows, because he knew her before the blight but he doesnt have a death wish n he like. will Not piss her off

shes dalish by birth n she was stolen from her clan by templars and thus is vehemently anti-circle and anti-chantry in general

uhhh the vallaslin (elf face tattoos) of my 4 dalish characters are:

eira = ghilan’nain (chose em cuz shes rlly interested in the navigation aspect of the goddess)

alas = falon’din (god of the dead n he picked them because he’s Also the god of fortune and alas is like tee hee fun but also he can and will kill u if u fuck with him so yk its fitting)

hela = june (god of the craft bc she likes to Make things but june is also the god who taught the elves 2 hunt and hela is. a hunter.)

mal = elgar’nan (allfather/god of vengeance bc. she is Vengeful. she is Angry. but yk fucking with shem politics and fucking their divine is like. mal may have little a retribution. as a treat.) yes she has the full half-face solid colour tattoo she does NOT fuck around.

bronson and bryant r not genetically identical but they Look similar enough 2 anyone who doesn’t know them well enough 2 play spot the distance. anora and bronson think this is a super fun game to play, especially when nobles realize they’ve swapped out the king but they’re too nervous to say anything

eira mahariel has two hands. one is for holding hands with alistair and the other is for throttling elven gods, apparently. she’s killed one before so solas she’s coming for your bitch ass next. watch urself.

speaking of eira and alistair are married thru dalish tradition and humans don’t recognize it n alistair loves 2 re-propose to her with random things. he’ll just pick up like. a bit of cheese and be like “marry me ;)” and she’s like GASP but whatever will the chantry say!!!! all of their friends r sick of them

“vhenan if you love me bring me a sword” “you think i could do better than a sword made out of space rock?” “:)”

eira is my youngest hero at 18 at the start of her game and kat is my oldest at 32 at the start of her game.

none of my hawkes are under six foot. rhett is the tallest (6′8″) and rads is the shortest (6′2″).

syracuse trevelyan would have been the Perfect inquisitor if he were not a pretty boy himbo and a gay bastard who does Most Things just to spite his parents.

[corypheus pointing at syracuse’s visage in his crystal orb thingo] i want that twink obliterated

i love the companions from older games return thing i truly do so i make it a point for Every companion to return in inquisition so the gang rlly is all here because i am a Slutte for found family

i lie in my keep worldstates because i dont want to choose between hawke and alistair during here lies the abyss but i never make him king and every time i play inquisition and cole has the wicked grace line it makes me Scream. alistair baby im so sorry i did this to you but i didnt actually do this to you

yes this is my everyone lives au but like. all the time. i have never left hawke in the fade and i do not intend to.

fuck whatever nonsense about wardens not being able 2 have kids. by sheer divine power (me) anora and bryant have three daughters; eleanor, sabina & cecelia n both bronson and zevran make Excellent uncles because i think anora deserves good things because i’m tired of bioware being like women bad, actually,

so like most of the time i have the warden & hawke turning up after the move to skyhold n then staying on, with the exception of bryant, carmine & mal. mal is as mentioned previously just There the whole time with her girlfriend. bryant steps in as king of ferelden w/ interests in closing the big hole in the sky spewing demons in2 his kingdom yk. carmine shows up because she wants to help & she wants protection for bethany but she outright says she’d rather die than be inquisitor so cassandra is shit out of luck.

“CHANGE HER MIND VARRIC” “she once doubled down on insisting amaranth was a shade of blue because she didn’t want to admit to being wrong. no one’s changing her mind seeker”

alas is the middle child of eight and is thus very good with children and also bossing around people older than him. 2 of his older siblings come to the inquisition when stuff in wycome has been settled

i left ash with the basic canon background with Some variation (he grew up under the qun and left of his own free will when his magic was discovered n he realized he couldn’t take living as a saarebas

kat on the other hand was raised tal-vashoth and has bounced around basically all over thedas and leads her own merc company when the conclave blows up. she also speaks multiple languages. is there a language she doesn’t speak? probably not

just realized how long this got so im gonna like. stop my general rambling now but lmao yeah theres some basics. waves hands.

[dillydedalus]

august reading

minus my women in translation month reads, because i’m still working on the last one but want to include it... that wrap-up will come in a few days once i’m done with the last book. 

not all dead white men: classics and misogyny in the digital age, donna zuckerberg classicist donna zuckerberg (facebook dude’s sister!) talks about how the alt-right, pick-up artists, incels etc. use the classics to assert & justify their misogyny and racism & portray themselves as the inheritors/saviours of western civilisation etc. the main examples she looks at are stoicism, ovid’s ars amatoria, and ancient narratives about sexual violence, which were all really interesting, but i feel like this could have been expanded a lot. 3.5/5

magic for liars, sarah gailey fun & cool crime story about a murder at a secret magical school (school nurse cut in half in magical library!), answering the burning question of what would happen if petunia dursley became a somewhat dysfunctional PI & had to solve a magical murder at hogwarts, where lily is a teacher. 3/5

the lie tree, frances hardinge frances hardinge writes the kind of middle grade/YA books i wish i could have read between like 10-14, where the world is spooky and the girls are angry spiteful stubborn resourceful sneaky things. i loved a skinful of shadows and i loved the lie tree, where curious snake girl (not literally it’s not that kind of a book) has to investigate her scandal-hounded natural scientist father’s death by spreading lies on the miserable island he died on and literally feeding them to spooky science-defying tree - and faith is very good at lying, and very angry, and very much willing to drag the whole island down with her. read for spooky trees, fake ghosts, and victorian male natural scientists being dumb and sexist & victorian female (& thus secret) natural scientist being smart & awesome. 4.5/5

the dead ladies project: exiles, expats & ex-countries, jessa crispin i have been at turns in love & really annoyed with crispin’s 2012 essay on william james, berlin & her own mental breakdown (x) since uh..... 2012 - it says some really interesting things about berlin’s capital-i Image as the city for self-destructive broke & weird messes, it’s very quotable, while also being some of the most irritating Anglophone Expat in Berlin Bullshit ever concocted (’we have surprisingly affordable rents’ sure didn’t age well.....) and saying almost nothing about the actual city outside of the Expat Bubble (apparently every single person in berlin is here because they feel like a failure.... YALL SOME PEOPLE JUST LIVE HERE). this book, structured around crispin’s soul-searching trip around europe, with each city being discussed in connection with an artist/writer/artist’s wife/etc who lived there, opens with that essay and i’m still torn. the thing is, crispin is smart & well-read & occasionally capable of some interesting insight & good writing..... she is also at times utterly insufferable, ranting at length about how she despises women who perform learned helplessness & prioritise men over everything else only to turn around & do the same fucking thing over & over, incl. going on endlessly about her torturous affair with a married writer, performing her ‘broke but independent woman traveller’ while uh.... staying at a friend’s luxurious farmhouse in switzerland for free... at one point she says she never felt at home in kansas bc based on her looks people don’t believe she’s really from kansas & constantly ask her where she’s REALLY from because.... y’all.... while she’s a good-looking white woman she has an ANGULAR FACE. sure jan. there is so much cool stuff in here, and i wish crispin had kept some most of the personal stuff out of it. 2/5 

mansfield park, jane austen hmmmm... austen is always good but this feels like it’s maybe the one novel of hers that is most negatively affected by values dissonance in that its morality feels like it’s from an alien culture which considers a private theatre performance to be the very height of impropriety (aka regency england apparently); as a result, fanny, a passive, timid, neglected girl of strong convictions often comes across as a moralistic prig (i will make no excuses for edmund, who’s just a patronising sanctimonious prig outright). there’s a quiet sort of triumph in fanny’s integrity & conviction in the face of a literal campaign of harrassment from everyone in her life including the dude she’s in love with to marry a reforming (maybe) rake & i love her for that, but her triumph in returning to mansfield park elevated in the esteem of everyone there (except aunt norris who is delightfully vile) feels empty considering that these are the same people who previously neglected her. also edmund sucks. 3/5 #justice4marycrawford #mary/fannyOTP #alsoarewegonnatalkabouttheslavery #guessnot

fool’s quest (fitz & the fool #2), robin hobb the first one in this trilogy was pretty much slow-paced set-up and character development... this one is much better: there’s a lot going on & the character development feels much more organic & complex - fitz seems to have come down from Peak Dumbass a bit & i really liked how it developed shun (shine!!!) and lant, who felt really one-dimensionally awful last book. also there are so many moments when the farseer family really comes thru for fitz & i cried literally every single time. so yeah. this one’s great, can’t wait for the next one but i also really don’t want it to be over :/ 4/5

what matters in jane austen, john mullan fun little collection of essays looking at specific details and minutae and their meaning/importance in austen’s work - like, how old are the characters (incl. age differences), how do characters address each other, what do games do they play, what about the servants, etc. don’t expect deep litcrit but it’s fun. 2.5/5

dead mountain: the untold true story of the dyatlov pass incident, donnie eichar hello i’m fred & i am obsessed with mountaineering disasters. the dyatlov pass incident refers to a night in 1959 where 9 russian hikers died in the ural mountains after they left their tent half-dressed without shoes for ~mysterious reasons. it’s pretty creepy & theories about it run from ‘avalanche’ to ‘animal [yeti] attack’ to ‘aliens and/or soviet conspiracy theory’. eichar too is super obsessed w/ this mystery and even went to the ural mountains & the dyatlov pass to investigate, which sadly makes for the least interesting (and possibly the longest) part of this book (the other timelines are the dyatlov group hike & the investigations after their deaths). the ‘59 timelines are both interesting tho & provide a good look into how weird the whole thing is. i enjoyed this, but i wish he had cut the endless chapters of him investigating, which is mostly russians being like ‘idk man aliens/radioactivity/secret govt agents?’ and him hiking around in a lot of snow, neither of which really added to his theory or my enjoyment. 2/5

if beale street could talk, james baldwin baldwin’s prose is staggeringly brilliant as always. this is a story about a young black couple (tish, who is the narrator, and fonny) in the 70s who are planning to move together and marry when fonny is wrongly arrested for rape by a racist cop with a grudge; tish and her family try to get him out, especially once tish realises that she’s pregnant. tish is a great narrator, at the same time kind of naive and soft, and full of world-weary cynicism about white institutions and racism, and her narrative voice at times drifts in and out of other characters’ minds, which i found an interesting effect. as many baldwin’s novels this is full of rage & violence & tenderness & tiny sparks of hope. 4/5

lady susan, jane austen epistolary novella about a 35-year-old lady susan, a scheming, ruthless, not-so-grieving widow, who is trying to get her timid daughter frederica married to a buffoon. while staying with her sweetly clueless brother-in-law vernon and trying to win over his much more suspicious wife, she makes the wife’s brother reginald (lol) fall in love with her. a very different protag and story for austen & while the end can’t quite commit to either punishing susan very much or letting her triumph, it is a lot of fun. 3/5

on a sunbeam, tillie walden this is an absolutely beautiful (the colours!) graphic novel about a spaceship crew (the spaceship is a fish) who fly around & restore old space buildings. it’s also a story about a romance between two young girls at a boarding school (in space) and about found families and deep space and there’s not a single man in this, just women and elliot, who’s nonbinary. lovely, dreamy and completely gorgeous. want me a fish spaceship. 4/5

between birthday books and birthday giftcards i also acquired uh.... 12 new books??? which is INSANE. i’m not committing to a book buying ban but i should probably chill a lil in the next few months. 

[swanqueeneverafter]

What Dreams May Come, Pt.36

Henry's Dreamscape. Dawn. (Rumplestiltskin walks along a candlelit path towards a mausoleum. Once inside, he approaches the altar. Waving his hand so that a picture of Belle appears, he begins talking to her.) Rumplestiltskin: "Can you hear me, Belle? It's me. Things aren’t going well. I know it's only been a short time since I began my journey without you, but it feels like an eternity.” Facilier: “That's good. (Rumplestiltskin turns to see a man sitting on a stool, his face covered with a mask. Standing, he removes the mask:) Quite good. Let it all out. After all, there's no greater pain than being separated from true love. Especially for someone like you, Dark One.” Rumplestiltskin: “I don't know why you're here, but you of all people should know I am no longer the Dark One. I suggest you go.” Facilier: “I use that title out of respect, and I came to help. You see, anyone can come here to talk to the dead. It's hearing them that's the trick.” Rumplestiltskin: “Only in this world is my wife dead. She, unlike you, is alive and well and with my son back home.” Facilier: “For now.” Rumplestiltskin: “Let me guess. You’ve struck some sort of deal with Morpheus so that should his army win, you get to come back to life.” Facilier: (Smiles:) “Not only that. Lord Morpheus has promised me immortality. Of course, had I known you were really so interested in surrendering your power, I would have loved to have taken it from you myself.” Rumplestiltskin: “Pity the Savior beat you to it.” Facilier: “Indeed. And by the time I got my hands on her, she had already removed the Darkness from herself and your world. That was a shame, but I managed to leave a lasting impression on her, regardless.” (Chuckles.) Rumplestiltskin: “You’re very proud of yourself for someone who has never had the courage to do things on his own. First you aligned yourself with the former Dark Ones, then my mother, and now Morpheus.” Facilier: “I don’t believe I need a lecture on courage from a notorious coward.” Rumplestiltskin: “Very well. I have lived with my own cowardice on that day for far too long, and soon I will get the chance to rectify that on the battlefield. But for now, I get the chance to do this. (Using his magic, Rumple raises Facilier off the ground, choking him:) You may be dead, but you can still feel pain.” Facilier: (Choking:) “Belle says you have to hurry.” Rumplestiltskin: “What was that, dearie?” Facilier: (Continues, still choking:) “Because she sees there's still darkness in you, and she's afraid that without her, you'll succumb to it.” (Noticing the scales returning to his hand, Rumplestiltskin releases Facilier, turning back towards the altar.)

Rumplestiltskin: “Don't worry, Belle. We will find a way to win this battle and defeat Morpheus. I promise.” Facilier: “Oh, you better hope you do because if you don't, this is the only reality you will ever know. (Rumplestiltskin walks past him out of the mausoleum:) Good luck, Dark One.” Dream World. Wonderland. (Ella sits atop a large toadstool awaiting Alice's return. Spotting something in the distance, she slides off the toadstool and moves closer.) Ella: (Smiling as she sees Henry approach:) "Henry!" Henry: "Ella!" (Rushing towards each other, their reunion is marred somewhat when they suddenly both find themselves suspended in mid air inside a large net.) Henry: "Great. A white rabbit trap. You all right?” Ella: (Breathing heavy:) “Yeah. (Henry chuckles:) I'm glad you think this is funny.” Henry: “Oh, no. It just reminds me of a story of how my grandpa met my grandma. He trapped her in a net.” Ella: “That's weird and aggressive.” Henry: “Yeah, well, she hit him with a rock first.” Ella: “Your grandma sounds like my kind of woman. Can you reach your sword?” Henry: “Yeah, let me see if I can. Yeah, no, I don't think I can get it. I think you're gonna have to get it.” Ella: (Struggles:) “I can't reach it. (Struggles some more then manages to use the sword to cut themselves loose, Ella landing on top of Henry:) Oof! Are you okay?” Henry: “Never better.” (They share a laugh before slowly leaning closer to share a passionate kiss.)

Gareth & Madelena's War Camp. (Moving quickly across the compound to avoid being seen, Madelena enters Lord Morpheus' tent.) Queen Madelena: "I'm ready to do whatever I need to join the dark, dark evil w...” (She gasps as Morpheus turns around holding a large knife and a baby.) Morpheus: “Excellent.” Queen Madelena: “Oh, God, no, sorry. That's beyond even me. (Chuckles:) Oh, fine, give it here.” Morpheus: “No, no. It's all right. I'm just babysitting for one of the kitchen staff. I was cutting up a peach for the little chap.” Queen Madelena: “Oh, sorry, I thought you meant... (Motions slitting her throat:) Kcch!” Morpheus: “Ah, right, so, the D'Dew. (Places the baby in the bassinet:) You're interested?” Queen Madelena: “Very. I'm in. Let's d'do it.” Morpheus: “Oh, God, that's very funny. Ha!” Queen Madelena: “Thank you.” Morpheus: “I think with these powers, you'll definitely win the war. And I think you'll find the D'Dew folks a fun group of people to be with.” Queen Madelena: “So, is there like a ceremony or something?” Morpheus: “No, you just sign a contract for your immortal soul.” Queen Madelena: “Oh.” (Morpheus hands Madelena the knife and goes to search for the contract.) Morpheus: “Ah, where did I put it? Ahh. Here. If... (Turns to see Madelena  about to cut her palm with the knife:) No, no, no. You don't have to sign in blood.” Queen Madelena: “Huh?” Morpheus: “I just gave you the knife to hold. (Takes the knife from her and replaces it with a quill:) A quill is fine. (Chuckles:) Yes, but points for enthusiasm, though.” (Madelena signs the contract.) Queen Madelena: “If you could, let's just keep this as our little secret. There's no reason Gareth needs to know.” Morpheus: “Of course. Now please step away from the baby. You really freaked me out before.” Queen Madelena: “Yes, sure, no problem.”

Henry's Dreamscape. Forest. (Standing beside a portal, through which Alice, Will & Tiana have just exited, Emma and Regina wait anxiously for their son to emerge.) Alice: "Prepare yourselves. In this world, Henry looks a little different." Regina: "Different? How different?" (Before Alice can reply, two more figures jump out of the portal.) Henry: (Spotting them:) "Moms!" Regina: "Henry?" Emma: "Oh, my God. Look at you!” Henry: “I know, I know.” (Emma and Henry embrace while Regina looks on, stunned.) Emma: “Guess I really will have to stop calling you 'kid'." Henry: "Guys, there's someone I want you to meet. (Stepping aside:) This, is Ella." Ella: (Smiles:) "It's so nice to finally meet you both. Henry's told me so much about you." Regina: (Chuckles:) "And yet we've heard so little about you. Could you excuse us a moment?" Ella: "Of course. (While the Swan-Mills' talk among themselves, Ella walks over to stand with Tiana, Will & Alice:) Well that was strange. How could they be Henry's mothers? Does time work differently where you come from?" Tiana: (Scoffs:) "You have no idea." Will: "Trust me, luv, I've had a lot of experience meeting parents, and that could've been a lot worse." Tiana: "Excuse me? How much experience?" Will: (Coughs, awkwardly:) "A few?"

(Henry and Regina embrace.) Regina: "Oh, I was so worried about you." Henry: "Me? Alice told me what you've both been through to get here. I'm so sorry I got you into all of this. What if something had happened either of you, or to the baby?" Regina: (Taking Henry's hands in hers:) "Shh. Henry, you know there's nothing that would ever stop us from helping you. Now, tell us about Ella." Henry: (Chuckles:) "There'll be plenty of time for that later. We've got a battle to win." Emma: "Yeah, about that. Henry, you've just returned from another dreamscape, meaning that you must've left this one right? (Henry nods:) So how come this place didn't just... fade away?" Henry: "Actually, Morpheus kind of explained it to me as he held me captive. It’s funny how bad guys always explain their evil plans. Anyway, it turns out that after several millennia of merely watching other people's dreams play out in his world, Morpheus began creating his own. Building dreamscape after dreamscape, expanding his dominion over centuries. And not just the land, the people too." Regina: "Sounds like he considers himself to be an Author of sorts." Henry: "Exactly. So when you guys joined the Realms of Story, Morpheus started his plans to take over everything." Emma: "And you were part of his plan?" Henry: (Nods:) "Morpheus knew he needed to find the perfect dreamscape for me to keep me returning to his world. Well, turns out he couldn't find an exact match and so that's why I look like this." Regina: "He aged you to... fit the narrative?" Henry: "Yeah. He made me the hero, which is all I've ever wanted. Of course, I was so blinded by living my dream that I failed to realise it was a trap. He chose me because I'm your son and when the time was right, he'd set his trap. (Sighs:) Again, I’m so sorry, Moms." Emma: "Hey, this is not your fault." Regina: "That's right, and now that we're all back together, nothing Morpheus can do will be able to stop us. (Henry smiles:) There's just one thing I want to know... (Glances over at Ella:) How serious are things with you and Ella?" Henry: (Groans:) "Mom." Regina: "I just think she has the right to know how old you really are." Henry: (Looks to Emma, then back to Regina:) "You're absolutely right. And while I'm telling her that, perhaps I can tell Ella the real age difference between you two?" Emma: (As Regina's jaw drops:) "Ouch. Direct hit. Well played, Henry." Henry: (Smiling at Regina:) "Thanks, Mom."

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

I don't get people being upset about how they handled mollys death... like they did everything they could at the level they're at? Literally the only other thing would be to fudge rolls and thats not how they play

Yeah, my wife pointed that out too - they’re at a level where they don’t personally have access to p much any rez-type spells, and they don’t have enough social clout anywhere yet to push for it from some temple or w/e, they’d have to pay out the ass with gold they DON’T HAVE.

Like... I get being upset he’s dead.  I get being upset he’s not coming back.  I get feeling like it’s kind of a disappointing lack of completion of a narrative thread, because it is.  But saying you’re disappointed with how it was HANDLED?  like... that’s what you say when you don’t like how the writer’s room dealt with an actor leaving a tv show.  That’s WRITING.

This is adamantly NOT WRITING.  like, yes, obviously all of them have a sense of narrative and drama and know they have an audience and want to provide a fun satisfying experience, but ultimately, to me, saying you’re “disappointed by how [insert anything that was even partially decided by dice rolls] was handled” is like barging into my DnD campaign and telling me you don’t like how I handled the underwater dragon fight because the players accidentally invoked the deus ex machina item that a goddess had given the cleric.  Like... fuck off?  I handled it the best i could as a DM, and tried to give MY PLAYERS the best experience possible.

Because ultimately, it’s THEIR game, and THEIR story, and we’re all guests in their adventures and should fucking behave like it and stop acting like we’re owed any sort of outcome just because it would feel more narratively satisfying

[ewh111]

2018 Annual List of Favorite Film Experiences

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I hope you’ve been having a great holiday season. It’s been another fun year in film, television, and streaming. It felt like a particularly good year for diverse voices, visions, casts, and storytelling. While I still feel like I’m catching up on year-end releases, here’s my annual list of the ones that have entertained, moved me, provoked thoughts, or just plain stuck with me the most with their story-telling and artistry (In no particular order).

All the best for a wonderful 2019!

Cheers, Ed

Indelible (But VERY Different) Cinematic Experiences

Roma—I wasn’t sure what the hype was about for the first hour which leisurely unfolds before you, but it’s just the build-up as Alfonso Cuaron’s beautiful and powerful film slowly draws you in, and then suddenly grabs you with unexpected emotional impact. An intimate, yet sweeping story of a maid who holds together a crumbling family as her own life combusts. Based on the director’s own life and the woman who raised him, Roma is a complex multi-layered domestic/social/political drama with some truly haunting and indelible sequences. Some may be challenged by the pacing and seeming lack of narrative. Be patient and stick with it; it’s worth it.

Sorry to Bother You—Audacious, original first film and new vision from rapper/hip hop musician Boots Riley starring a terrific Lakeith Stanfield as down on his luck young man who gets a job as a telemarketer and advised by veteran caller Danny Glover to use his “white voice” to become a power caller. The story then takes a twisted wackadoodle turn that truly defies description. This bold and outrageous absurdist social satire/surreal anti-capitalist black comedy also stars an excellent Armie Hammer in a bizzaro role.

A Full House of Documentaries: A Pair of Giants of Our Time and Three of a Kind

Won’t You Be My Neighbor—Celebrating a true hero, it’s a warm and loving look at this pioneer of children’s television who became a role model of kindness and compassion for generations. Little did I realize when watching him as a child the bold and courageous manner in which he addressed the social issues of the day. And it is worthwhile to see the full six-minute video of Fred Rogers Senate testimony that saved funding for public television: https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA.

RBG—An inspirational telling of the brilliant legal mind who shaped America’s legal landscape on gender equality and women’s rights and became a pop culture icon. 

Three Identical Strangers—Fascinating documentary that starts as a “can’t believe it’s true” tale of separated-at-birth triplets who miraculously find each other as young adults, and then takes a very dark turn as the layers of the story are revealed, raising some real ethical questions about research and the debate about nature vs. nurture.

Additional Docu-series to watch: The Staircase (a gripping and powerful docu-series that is an intimate and detailed look at our criminal justice system as seen through the eyes of a man accused of murder who claims the death of his wife was an accident); The Fourth Estate (a fascinating behind the scenes look at the NY Times and their reporters as they cover the beginning of the Trump administration).

Historical Dramedies

The Death of Stalin—Dark and bitingly funny, this relevant political satire by Armando Iannucci of Veep portrays the intrigue surrounding the flock of sycophantic bureaucrats who vie to become the next Soviet leader after the sudden stroke and death of Stalin. A masterful historical farce with a great cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin, and Jason Isaacs. And it’s worth noting that the most absurd moments actually did take place (e.g., a rerun concert just to make a recording for Stalin; the alcoholic and meglomaniacal son of Stalin who lost the entire national hockey team by ordering their flight into a snowstorm and then replacing the dead players in hopes his dad wouldn’t notice).

The Favourite—While I decidedly did not care for filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’s much acclaimed The Lobster, this is a much more accessible outing. A highly original period/costume piece with an amazing trio of performances from Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, The Favourite is a dark and wickedly humorous look at the conniving palace intrigue, love triangles, and back-stabbing world of Queen Anne’s court, complete with fops, duck races, pigeon shooting, and rabbits that rule the roost. 

Vice—Not your typical biopic. From the man who brought you The Big Short, Adam McKay delivers an entertaining dark dramedy. Christian Bale wholly transforms into the enigmatic Dick Cheney in this boldly told tale (including a faux Shakespearean pillow talk bit and a mid-film happily-ever-after credit sequence) of a ne'er do well who becomes the most powerful man in the world, all “in the service of the people.” With a very strong supporting cast of Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.

BlacKkKlansman—Director Spke Lee and the producers of Get Out deliver the unbelievably true buddy-cop tale from the 1970s of a black man who goes undercover to infiltrate the KKK by phone while his white Jewish partner stands in for him in face-to-face meetings. Told in a funny and entertaining manner, it’s one of Spike Lee’s best film in years, though it’s unfortunate how little the racial issues have changed over time.

Odes to Stan Lee and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Black Panther—This is not just another Marvel superhero movie. This is what every origin story should be: a totally immersive world is created with a sophisticated and impressively well-told story, balancing big themes, character development, action, mythology, and strong messaging, including female empowerment. Black Panther is perhaps the best (and most political without being heavy-handed) entry in the MCU while leaving a very large cultural footprint on Hollywood.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse—I really didn’t think we needed another entry into the Spidey world, but this one was truly fantastic, perhaps the best of the bunch. With visually stunning animation unlike anything I’ve seen before, it’s the most trippy, inclusive, and soulful Spider-Man ever, and the one most true to its comic book roots.

More Fantastic Animation, Stop Motion, and CGI

Isle of Dogs–I am an unabashed fan of Wes Anderson, and here he creates a masterful stop motion universe, much more sophisticated and intricate than his last one, the wonderful Fantastic Mr. Fox. Taking place in a fictional dystopian Japan, he creates yet another Andersonian obsessively detailed world, infused with Japanese culture and canines. On the surface, it’s a simple story of a boy seeking his pet dog in a world where dogs have been banished to a trash-filled island, but it works on so many other levels, existential and political. A great cast of voices infuse each character with individuality and nuanced personalities, including Brian Cranston, Edward Norton, and Bill Murray. 

Ready Player One—An unexpectedly wild and entertaining journey, this Spielberg film that takes place in a dystopian future steeped in the nostalgia of the 1980s (video games, movies, music) where its citizens find salvation and escape in a virtual world called the OASIS. The central story of a teen in a whirlwind contest seeking control of the OASIS is a visually stunning and thrilling ride combining live action and CGI that is thoroughly satisfying (though I feel I need to go back to take in all the pop culture references that whirl by).  

Incredibles 2–Well worth the wait after 14 years. Just what you would hope for in summer film. Well-developed characters, action, and story with amazing animation and a terrifically snazzy Michael Giacchino soundtrack.

Other Enjoyable Film Experiences Worth Mentioning

22 July, A Quiet Place, Beautiful Boy, Boy Erased, Crazy Rich Asians, Eighth Grade, Green Book, Love, Simon, Mary Poppins Returns, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Paddington 2, The Price of Everything, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Science Fair, Searching, The Hate U Give, Tully, Victoria & Abdul

In the Queue

A Star Is Born, Burning, Cold War, First Man, First Reformed, Free Solo, The Frontrunner, If Beale Street Could Talk, Shoplifters

Binge-Worthy Television

The Americans, Barry, Succession

For the Foodie Set

Fat Salt Acid Heat, Ugly Delicious

Favorite Theater Experience

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child--if you’re a HP fan, it’s like being reunited with old friends. Great story and incredible stagecraft. 

Trailers

Black Panther: https://youtu.be/xjDjIWPwcPU

BlacKkKlansman: https://youtu.be/0vWHEuhEuno

Incredibles 2: https://youtu.be/i5qOzqD9Rms

Isle of Dogs: https://youtu.be/dt__kig8PVU

RBG: https://youtu.be/biIRlcQqmOc

Ready Player One: https://youtu.be/cSp1dM2Vj48

Roma: https://youtu.be/6BS27ngZtxg

Sorry to Bother You: https://youtu.be/PQKiRpiVRQM

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: https://youtu.be/g4Hbz2jLxvQ

The Death of Stalin: https://youtu.be/kPpXFnHoC-0

The Favourite: https://youtu.be/SYb-wkehT1g

Three Identical Strangers: https://youtu.be/c-OF0OaK3o0

Vice: https://youtu.be/jO3GsRQO0dM

Won’t You Be My Neighbor: https://youtu.be/FhwktRDG_aQ

[in-flagrante]

Godless review – Netflix's wonderfully wicked western fires on all cylinders ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jake Nevins - Wednesday 22 November 2017 09.47 EST

Godless, Netflix’s new seven-part miniseries, opens in 1884, in Creede, Colorado, with a thick cloud of smog shrouding the camera. The haze slowly dissolves to reveal a chilling landscape: parched bodies being tended to by swarms of flies; a man, sedentary, with a gunshot through his head; a train-wreck near which a young boy hangs from a noose; and a woman, crouched over a corpse, singing mournfully about Christ. It’s a near-wordless several minutes, a triumph of mood and cinematography, that evokes the sort of rough-and-tumble anarchy of the great filmic frontiersman. Soon after, we’re in La Belle, New Mexico, where we learn who’s responsible for the massacre, and from thereon it’s guns blazing.

Written and directed by Scott Frank and executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh, Godless is grim, exciting and visually arresting. It’s slow, but necessarily so, patiently offering vital exposition while its classic, western plot unfurls itself violently. That violence can be pegged, mostly, to Jeff Daniels’ Frank Griffin, a menacing, one-armed outlaw who’s looking for a man named Roy Goode. Goode, played by Jack O’Connell, was once a member of Griffin’s criminal cabal, but when a train heist turns savage and Goode saves a woman who’s being raped, he bucks town with the loot, staves off Griffin and his 32 men, and lumbers to a farm owned by Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery).

Fletcher, who Dockery plays with brutal, soft-spoken gravitas, is twice-widowed and lives with her son, Truckee. After a catastrophic mining accident wiped out most of the townsmen, La Belle has become a colony of tough, strong-willed women, the sort of place one imagines Julie Christie’s Mrs Miller might have resided had McCabe not been in the picture. A bit of internet digging reveals that La Belle was actually a real town, in Taos County, New Mexico, named after Belle Dixon, the wife of a gold miner; though it lasted just 16 years, it makes a weird kind of sense that it’s been revitalized in 2017 as a proto-feminist pasture, shot in a sweeping 2.39:1 aspect ratio where horses roam and women rule. And the show sets itself up for those women to stand their ground against Griffin’s outlaws.

Godless was originally intended to be a movie, but Soderbergh encouraged Frank, who co-wrote the screenplays for the films Logan, Marley & Me, and Minority Report, to turn it into a miniseries. After watching the hour-plus-long first episode, which only plants the seeds of what’s to come, and the equally lengthy ones that follow, it’s no wonder Soderbergh thought the script a better fit for television. Characters are developed richly but steadily, and much needs to be established before Griffin and Goode’s inevitable confrontation, the lead-up to which is beautifully protracted to give weight and import to several other characters, among them Merrit Wever’s Mary Agnes, another of La Belle’s gritty, gun-toting widows, and her brother Sheriff Bill McNue (Scoot McNairy), who is hot on Griffin’s heels and delivers wonderfully hokey one-liners like, “You don’t seem all that much like a desperado so much as you just look desperate.”

It’s hard to pinpoint one standout performance; Dockery is superb, wielding her gun with mighty force, and so is Wever, who’s been a stalwart supporting player on shows like The Walking Dead and Nurse Jackie; Daniels is a convincingly boozy villain, whiskey dribbling down his beard as he looks to exact revenge on his old protege; and McNairy, O’Connor and Thomas Brodie-Sangster, as the town deputy Whitey Winn, each turn in authentic, understated performances. It would not be surprising to see one or two or even three of them in the Emmys conversation next summer, which tends to emphasize plucky, period-piece roles like these.

The plot may be too slow for some – which, in addition to the genre, might drive viewers away – but Godless is worth it if only for aesthetic pleasure. Shot by Steven Meizler, who worked with Soderbergh on The Girlfriend Experience, the long, vivid tracking shots are lyrical and impressionistic, and there’s a scene in a church, where Griffin implores the townspeople to steer clear of Roy Goode lest they suffer like Christ did, that brought to mind the great face-off between Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday of There Will Be Blood. That the series is so full of cinematic references both visual and narrative is part of the fun; Godless doesn’t resist its classification as a western with a capital W, and instead embraces the genre’s outsize influence in the American film canon.

Godless is now available on Netflix worldwide

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/nov/22/godless-review-netflix-wonderfully-wicked-western-fires-on-all-cylinders

[garkgatiss]

Kernel of Truth: The Car and The Driver

John is driving. John is in the driver’s seat. 

John is on his heart-phone. John is driving erratically.

And then John is injured or dies.

Intro Post: Four episodes, three false narratives, two potential outcomes, no loose ends. Summary:

These three episodes are a set. They’re all retellings of the same events, pieced together from the limited information that John is willing to divulge, supplemented by imagination and colored by the author’s own feelings and motivations. Fresh paint to disguise another smell. Throughout all three episodes, we see wildly diverging narratives inspired by the same core kernels of truth. The fourth episode, the final ending of Clue, will tell us what really happened.

T6T vs. TLD: Two Potential Outcomes

So even before TFP aired, we had several car-centric events popping up in the first two false narratives:

John drives the car to the hospital

Charlie calls his dad from the driver’s seat of his car, sitting in his parents’ driveway, but dies silently of a seizure, probably

Drunk driver crashing into Charlie’s car

Mrs. Hudson’s wild ride, while on the phone

John asking to drive Mrs. Hudson’s car sometimes, which she refuses 

John later driving Mrs. Hudson’s car, while on the phone, to the hospital to save Sherlock (which all started as a Mary-inspired plan for Sherlock to save John)

Key here for me is that Mary’s trip to the hospital at the start of T6T and John’s mad dash to the hospital to save Sherlock in TLD puts John in the driver’s seat in both episodes. We could be metaphorically talking about John being in the driver’s seat of his own life for fucking finally, but we’ll explore a more literal interpretation first.

The two potential outcomes, the comparative differences between T6T and TLD come up here again. In T6T, John doesn’t make it to the hospital in time for Mary to give birth. In TLD, John arrives in the nick of time to save Sherlock, just like Mrs. Hudson did earlier that day. The repeated question here is, apparently: will John make it in time?

John the Driver

The other "wild ride” we have, to parallel Mrs. Hudson’s in TLD, is the drunk driver who crashes into Charlie’s car in T6T. Both people are sitting in the driver’s seat, both people are John mirrors: a gay boy with conservative, homophobic parents who travels halfway round the world to escape them as soon as he’s old enough, and an alcoholic. Since TLD is John writing a story while projecting himself onto every character all at once, it makes sense. One John mirror is pulled from the wreckage, one John mirror is already dead from a seizure.

John wants to name this case, “The Ghost Driver,” btw.

The message I’m getting loud and clear so far is: John is driving, John is in the driver’s seat, John is on his heart-phone, John is driving erratically. And then John is injured or dies.

I’ve talked already about how the indicators of John’s alcoholism have gone through the roof this season. I’m trying to read my way around the thought that a Garridebs moment may be the outcome of a literal drunk driving suicide accident, but it’s a serious possibility right now. It’s really messing me up now that we have a Garrideb in TFP with DTs, i.e. alcohol withdrawal, symptoms of which include: seizures.

Alternatively, it’s alcohol that lets John metaphorically take the wheel in his own life, ending in situations like the Stag Night Knee Grope. Good thing we have death compared with sex all over TLD. Good thing we have a different Garridebs suspect already in mind.

Metaphorically speaking, it looks like people don’t want John to be the driver. Throughout her birth scene, Mary screams “Please, God, just drive! God, drive!” asking subtextually of course for Sherlock to take control. Sherlock dismissively tells John to take the bus in T6T, and Mrs. Hudson won’t let John driver her car at all, until changing her mind in the final hour so that John can rush to save Sherlock. Again, TLD does that fun thing where it at first echoes an aspect of T6T and then later rectifies it. Two potential outcomes.

(Bless you, Mrs. Hudson, for finally handing John the keys, assuming the drunk driving is entirely metaphorical.)  

TFP

So! Onto TFP. Boats, planes, but no cars, really. Right?

WRONG. 

There’s this (bless you Ariane Devere and ctrl+f, for I would never have found this one on my own):

GOVERNOR (into phone): I need to speak to Mycroft. 

(In London, Sir Edwin, now sporting a full beard, is in the back seat of a car.) 

SIR EDWIN (into his phone): He’s in hospital. There was an explosion. 

GOVERNOR (into phone): Put me through to the hospital. 

SIR EDWIN: He’s not conscious. He’s severely injured. No-one is even confident he’s going to pull through. 

So in this entirely forgettable and nonsense scene in TFP that's apparently there to explain how John and Sherlock ended up exploded onto a boat in the middle of the ocean with no injuries while Mycroft took a detour through a hospital and nearly died before meeting back up with them on Terrordome Island, we have someone 

in a car, 

having a phone conversation, trying to get through to 

the hospital, where someone is 

being treated for life-threatening injuries.

Can you smell a kernel of truth through the coat of fresh paint yet? 

There’s one more thing in TFP, but it’s pretty nuts: the little girl on the plane keeps calling the pilot, “The Driver.” 

John The Driver, redux

GIRL: Even the driver’s asleep. 

John, is that you? Are you asleep at the wheel? The emphasis in T6T and TLD on how you haven’t been sleeping at all is starting to worry me.

SHERLOCK: That’s right; the front. 

GIRL: You mean where the driver is? 

SHERLOCK (continuing to walk around the room, shining the lantern on the many photos): Yes, that’s it. 

GIRL: Okay. (She starts to get up from the floor.) I’m going. (She starts to walk down the aisle, pausing and looking down at the unconscious flight attendant lying in her way. Sherlock continues looking at the photos. Some of them are of Sherlock at older ages than his young pirate self and a few pictures are of other members of the Holmes family.) 

SHERLOCK: Are you there yet? (It’s not the girl who replies but John, who jerks awake somewhere dark. The wall behind him is bare rock.) 

JOHN: Yeah, I’m here. (He stands up abruptly when he realizes that he’s sitting in water up to his waist.) 

SHERLOCK: John! 

JOHN (his voice coming from Sherlock’s earpiece): Yeah. 

SHERLOCK: Where are you? 

JOHN: I don’t know. I’ve just woken up. Where are you?

Ok, John’s the Driver. Who was just sleeping. This is... pretty obvious at this point. :(

SHERLOCK: Oh, hello. Are you at the front of the plane now? 

GIRL (in the flight deck, shaking the arm of the unconscious pilot): Yeah. I still can’t wake the driver up.

Again. :(

And then there’s Sherlock, on the phone this entire time, talking the little girl through the landing of the plane on her own:

SHERLOCK: Well, you and I are going to have to drive this plane together. Just you and me.

:’)

ETA: Actually, turns out there’s one more clue from TFP that I want to cover:

Golf Whiskey X-Ray

TECHNICIAN: Golf Whiskey X-ray, this is a restricted area, repeat, restricted area. You are off course. 

TECHNICIAN (into radio): Are you receiving? (There’s no immediate reply and he activates his radio again.) 

TECHNICIAN: Golf Whiskey X-ray, you are off course. Are you receiving? (The radio from the other end activates.) 

JOHN’s VOICE: Yeah, receiving you. This is a distress call, repeat, distress call. We’re in trouble here. 

(A radar image on the screen in front of the technician shows a bright red dot close to the centre of the screen.) 

TECHNICIAN: Golf Whiskey X-ray, what is your situation? (There’s no response.) 

TECHNICIAN: Golf Whiskey X-ray? Where are you now? 

JOHN’s VOICE (over radio): We’re headed for the rocks. We’re going to hit.

Not sure what significance G-W-X might have on its own, but if you just take the words literally, as in...

[an economy 4-door hatchback, such as Volkswagen’s] Golf,

Whiskey, and

X-Ray,

... they paint another bleak picture of how we ended up in John’s deathbed dream episode. Add in the distress call, and it’s hard not to read this very literally right alongside all the other drinking John mirrors, erratic drivers on phones, and distress calls picked up at the last second we’ve seen in S4.

ETA: After combing through and recapping the #SherlockLive twitter case, the man who kills himself to frame his wife and her lover has a prior conviction for a drunk driving accident, in which the wife was also injured.

My final prediction of the real event is some combination of:

John drinking

John driving

John on the phone

John reaching out to Sherlock, the Distress Call

The will-he/won’t-he survive business surrounding The Driver points very clearly to John’s injury in a Garridebs moment, imo. The evidence seems to point heavily toward a literal drunk driving suicide accident as I read it, but that simultaneously feels a little too dark and a little too ordinary for this show. Then again, this season is apparently much darker than any they’ve done before. 

Bonus points: Pairs well with the parallels Nattie @loudest-subtext-in-tv picked up on in her What Dreams May Come meta. I’ve never seen the movie and I don’t at all subscribe to EMP, but any tie to a movie where a depressed guy a) crashes his car after b) calling his wife on the phone to tell her he loves her one last, fateful time before c) sustaining life-threatening injuries and having a movie-length afterlife adventure seems pretty relevant here.

All transcripts from the incredible Ariane Devere.

[recentanimenews]

You're Not My Dad! Celebrating Genjuro Kazanari, the Best Dad in Anime

Anime has a long and sordid history of bad dads. Edward and Alphonse’s dad abandoned them when they needed him most. Shoto Todoroki’s dad has quite a backstory. And we all know that Shinji Ikari’s dad was The Worst. The dads of anime represent a laundry list of parenting sins: cruelty, abandonment, physical and emotional abuse, experimenting on your daughter and her dog, obliterating the world to be reunited with your dead wife, hiding in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and slowly going insane rather than stay with your kid. On the other hand, if you’re a good dad, you’re probably dead and your child is out avenging your memory. Unless you were secretly bad the whole time!

  In this sea of poor parenting decisions there is only one good (living) dad worth his salt. One dad to rule them all. Let us say his name: Genjuro Kazanari, Symphogear’s patron saint. Genjuro Kazanari, the only good man in the world. Genjuro is anime’s greatest dad and he isn’t even a dad.

Genjuro is a supremely muscular human, an upright man with perpetually rolled-up sleeves and a goatee. While his Symphogear wards fight monsters with outrageous weaponry, he punches those monsters in the face. His existence defies the rules of his narrative universe and renders him a Looney Tunes character in an already ridiculous cartoon. If he was handled a little differently he’d be an annoyance. But I love Genjuro — he’s stereotypically masculine in a lot of ways but embodies positive traits rather than negative ones. He’s strong but knows his own limitations. He’ll put himself on the line for others but would never do so if that meant making other people’s lives harder. He’s self-admittedly an ordinary guy staffing a department that manages superhumans, but he’s made it his mission in life to offer what support he can provide so they can succeed. With no strings attached.

  Genjuro goes to bat for every character in the first season of Symphogear, no questions asked. He stands up for Tsubasa as her uncle, even though Tsubasa has complicated feelings toward her family. He mentors Hibiki and sets her down the path to becoming the martial arts master who punches a hole in K2. He accepts Chris into his organization even when Chris had up until that moment been a staunch enemy. His martial arts training sessions are the stuff of Symphogear legend, as infamous as the beef stroganoff song in GX or Dr. Ver yelling about being the Last Action Hero. Nothing is more Symphogear to me than Genjuro’s insert song in the second season being a cover of the theme to Jackie Chan’s action movie classic, “Police Story.” Genjuro rises to the task of caring for his wards with the help of his life’s two guiding passions: working out and action movies. They are enough.

    It’s fun to compare Genjuro to the other fathers in the Symphogear universe since they can’t help but come up short. Hibiki’s dad is a coward, a sad and pathetic man who has never once been there for his daughter. By contrast, Genjuro will not only do anything for Hibiki but also believes in her strength and in her ability to succeed. Even more revealing is the contrast Genjuro makes to Tsubasa’s foster parent, Yatsuhiro Kazanari. Kazanari refused to have anything to do with Tsubasa, driving her to become independent but also lonely. When pressed in the third season, he insists that he did it for her — to give her the room to thrive on her own. Helicopter parents are a scourge, and it’s admirable in some respects that Kazanari wanted Tsubasa to learn to live outside of the constraints of her family. But Kazanari never asked Tsubasa what she thought — he simply presumed as her guardian that he knew better. Genjuro would do no such thing. He listens. When needed, he stands out of the way, and when needed he offers support. He does so with the consent of his wards and a complete lack of ego.

  Genjuro knows his limits. Despite being a super-strong martial arts master, Genjuro knows that he is not the hero of this story. He has no supernatural powers, and no absurd weapons. He works out a lot and eats the right foods, and that’s the extent of his abilities! Yet his humility and steadfastness set him apart. I could not care less for Hibiki’s dad or Kazunari, even as the writers struggle to endear me to them. They remind me of too many bad anime parents: the absent fathers, the domineering fathers, the self-justifying fathers. But Genjuro will never let you down, so long as he’s eaten his meal that day.

  Some of my friends at this moment are first-time parents; from what I’ve heard, it can be stressful and intimidating work. Caring for even a single human life is a heavy responsibility. But all parents could learn something from Genjuro: be who you are, let your kid be who they are, don’t infringe on their dreams but do what you can so they can attain them. It’s a challenge, but we all know that Genjuro is just an ordinary guy. Any of us can do it if we follow his advice:

      What are you doing this Father's Day? Who's your favorite anime dad? Are there any other good anime dads? Let us know in the comments!

  Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. He sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? Adam wishes you a Happy Father's Day, though if you don't have a dad (or despise him, because he's the worst) that's cool with him. You can follow him at: @wendeego

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[hballou]

Shift Your Money Relationship with Chella Diaz

Shift Your Money Relationship: Finding Your Money Leaks with Chella Diaz

Chella Diaz knew at a very young age how to manage money, at 9 years old she would go to the Farmer’s market and knew the vendors that had the best product at the lowest price. She purchased her car at 17 and her first home at 23. Chella was married for 17 years and has two sons. For over 15 years, Chella has been on her spiritual journey.

Chella has been hosting workshops to empower people to master their money skills. Her simple approach to creating a spending plan that will serve you today and for many years to come will allow you to reach your financial goals with joy and grace.

Chella has worked with many coaches and mentors and created a program that meets each client where they are and provides them with the tools they need to unpack their emotional baggage around money.

Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou: It’s 2pm on the Eastern Coast time zone. We are hosting The Nonprofit Exchange yet again. Every week, it’s special. We have a guest who shares some really good stuff. We are talking about money today, but it will be different. It’s one of those things everyone talks about.

*Sponsored by EZCard*

My guest today is Chella Diaz. Long-time friend, but we finally connected, and I understand why she needed to be on this show and tell you things that she knows. Chella, tell people a little bit about yourself and why you’re doing this thing that you’re doing.

Chella Diaz: It would be my pleasure. It’s an honor to be here. It’s all about timing. We have known each other for several years, and I’m glad we’re here. The timing is absolutely prefect.

I have been good with money since I was nine. I was just one of those little interesting kids. I purchased my first car when I was 17 and my first house when I was 23. Before some of you start jumping, I have been speaking for a long time. My dad was a baker, and my mom was a housewife. Some of you may think I got lots of help. I did, but not financial. When I went to purchase my first house, I was short $1,600. My dad did lend me the money at that point in time, but up until then, it was just one of those things that made sense. I have two amazing boys, young men now.

I spent many years in the corporate world. I was a real estate underwriter. Along with my being good with money, I got the opportunity to review over 20,000 real estate loans. I got to see this black and white stuff. This is me reviewing tax returns and seeing how the wealthy save their money and the folks that don’t have money. I saw a pattern.

After my divorce, and after the company I worked for shut down, I knew that I didn’t want to go back to that. I knew there was something bigger I wanted to do. That was when I published my first book Money Bootcamp. My idea was to empower high school and college students. That was when my business idea began. The first business idea doesn’t always take off.

Then I was asked to speak at various women’s groups. For me, that was when the light went on. Watching and teaching women not only how to manage money but also how to set themselves apart so they always have enough money to do what they want to do, and watching the lights go on. I do work with some men, but my main audience is women and high school students and college students.

To me, I feel that this is my way of giving back. This is my mission. I get to have so much fun doing it. People always say, “Find something that you like, and you will never work a day in my life.” I feel very fortunate because that is what I am doing right now: having an amazing time.

Hugh: Yeah, you gotta have fun. I am still doing what I do in my senior years and enjoying it more than ever before. There is a lot more to do and more to learn. My area is leadership and organizational development. It’s a big area. Money is another big area.

We start out in the nonprofit world with this word “nonprofit.” We immediately set the tone that is negative. We have profitability. It’s not profit in the sense of a business where we look out for our shareholders and have this big salary for the top person. It’s a for-purpose enterprise, where we are doing charitable work, but watching money. We have this negative thing about money from the start.

When we minimize things and we cut pennies, we are really hurting ourselves in terms of how we manage money. We’re in an era where women leaders are stepping up. This is a good time for you to talk about how women bring unique skills to the marketplace as entrepreneurs running a social enterprise or business. My wife is a clergy in the Methodist church. There are new opportunities for women to bring fresh perspectives and ideas.

Let’s talk about how we see money. What are the biggest problems in how people think about money?

Chella: I believe it goes back to when we are five years old, and we begin to hear, “We can’t afford it. You have to work hard for your money. Money does not grow on trees.” These are three of the most popular phrases I come across. When we think about that story we hear, how it travels and grows with us, so that we can’t afford it. Now we are here in a purpose, where we want to help people, but we are still having this, “I can’t afford it. You have to struggle for money.” That interferes with our mission and purpose. It prevents us from asking, going after, and showing up. Whether we are working on our passion project, it doesn’t matter. We tend not to show up for our business. We tend not to share. Most importantly, we do not ask for what we need.

Hugh: In the case of nonprofits, we are sharing our vision and our mission and the impact that we’re having on people’s lives. In a way, we’re asking, but we’re inviting people to participate in that work. We start these habits. If I hear you right, we have been spoonfed these from the beginning. We were told things about leadership that don’t work, and we have been told things about money that don’t help us at all. What is the antidote to this?

Chella: It’s going and identifying what that story was and connecting to how that is currently affecting your financial picture. It sounds simplistic, but every single one of my clients who has done this- Once you have identified and shed some light on this, then you are no longer subject to that story. It’s giving a voice.

Hugh: Don’t give the voice to the story. It’s like we download software in our computer, but we have to learn how to use it correctly. We only use the templates.

We have Ryad here from Algeria, part of Bob Hopkin’s class in Dallas. He has a special interest in inspiring young leaders to think about philanthropy in a new way. To be a philanthropist, we don’t need to be afraid of money. Philanthropy is not all about the money. We do make financial contributions. As we welcome new people into the Methodist church, we say to participate with your time, talent, and money. There is a triple invitation, but there is an opportunity for young people to understand.

I had Ivan Misner on the show last week. The motto for BNI is Givers Gain. It’s a different mindset.

How do we get an awareness of some of these negative things we have been taught? You are in who we have been taught. How do we have an awareness to gain a mindset?

Chella: By simply beginning to write. As we are sitting here, I am a huge note-taker. As you are saying wisdoms, write down. Sit down for 10 minutes, for seven days, silent, and think about those money conversations you listened to. That will bring them up to awareness.

Everybody has a conversation. There are a few of you out there who are not going to have it because adults do not talk about money. Go back. 10 minutes. Seven days. I would love to hear from you what your feedback is. These things, the minute you begin to give the mind a task, it will do it for you.

But if you don’t remember, that is also very telling because that means as a little child, what stories did you make up about the fact that adults were not talking about money? That is also very powerful. You make up a story as a kid as to what that meant. I wish I was making this up.

As an adult, it’s possible you are in a relationship, and you don’t talk about money. But you have this white elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. Not hearing a conversation is also incredibly telling. What did that little child make up as a story?

Hugh: We know that we give energy to what we think about. If you think about debt, we are in a panic time. The media wants to scare us so that we read their newspaper or watch their show. We don’t need to buy into these narratives that have penalized us. Dan Pallotta has this keynote where he talks about the way we think about charity is dead wrong. Nonprofit is a good starting point. It’s a bad word; it’s a lie. But it’s the word we know. It’s a genre of operating. It’s a tax-exempt business.

Part of the headline here is, “Money Leaks.” What do you mean? Do you carry it in a bucket, and it leaks out?

Chella: I am going to make that a picture. As we go through life, and we get services, and we don’t realize that some of these, are we using them? The most traditional one would be a membership to the gym and we don’t use it. There are so many other things that we go out and purchase, and we don’t use. Those are the money leaks. Those are the ones.

But also, how are you choosing to spend your money? This is the $100,000 question. If you are able to sit down and track your finances for 30 days, whether you go back and do it or start fresh from here moving forward, if you are able to track any time you spend over a dollar on a notepad or a Word document or an app, at the end of the four weeks, you are going to divide that list into how much you spend on wants and how much on needs. I prefer to do it every week, so it doesn’t seem like such an overwhelming task. For four weeks, how much did you spend on wants versus needs? At the end of the four weeks, you will find your money leaks.

One of my favorite examples is a young lady was spending $750 a month for lunch. You don’t realize how much you’re spending. You go to the bank and get the money. You’re on automatic pilot. You don’t realize where the money is going. By taking the time to do this one task for four weeks, whether it’s lunch or dinner or snacks- One of my clients, $125 in snacks. He would stop at the corner store before getting to work to pick up snacks. $125 for snacks? Imagine what you could do with $125 a month extra.

By doing this one task, you are going to find where your money leaks are. I don’t believe in giving up everything. After you find the money leaks, my lunch person, she decided to put away $500 toward a down payment of a house, but she still went out to lunch. She still had $250 to work with for lunch. You will find what other choices you can make with your money. How are you choosing to spend your money? That’s where the magic happens, folks.

Hugh: You start buying a $5 latte every day. That adds up to a lot of money. That is a lot of money over the terms of a week, a year. You add all those wants up, not needs. You can get an app like Mint, which shows you every day where your money went. It’s free. Is something like that helpful?

Chella: Absolutely. It’s doing the work for you. The only thing with some of those apps. If you are able to track everything, fabulous. Sometimes you may not be able to track stopping at the store and picking up flowers. When you pay with cash, that is where Mint may not be great. But it is a great start. I like Mint.

Hugh: I try to do everything on a credit card. I don’t care what the interest rate is. A high interest rate encourages me to pay it off. To me, the interest rate, the higher the better. I can’t pay interest, so it encourages me to pay the thing off. My particular card gives me a summary by category in addition to the Mint, and it also gives me hotel points. I go to a lot of hotels I don’t pay any money for. There is a liability in a credit card where you just use credit without the cash to pay it at the end of the month. There is an accountability process here. If you are struggling to make ends meet, you have to be aware of your own spending. We go out and have drinks with friends, and we spend money. We don’t have to do all that. We can drink water and have a good time and have a wine at home. Pay for a bottle instead of one glass at a restaurant. Or give it up all together. How do you stay on track? Do you have an accountability partner idea? Maybe we encourage each other.

Chella: Hugh just brought up a big idea. If you know anybody who has credit cards, ask them to add up three months’ worth of interest. How much did they pay in three months? When you see that, let’s say it’s $500 for three months. That is going to be $2,000 for the year. This is the game-changer. When you start thinking not only am I making the credit card company rich, but what could I be doing with $2,000 at the end of the year? Imagine what that looks like in your bank account. I find that when people do this task, they are able to go out and work maybe a little bit harder for the short term to pay off that debt, be it selling something or doing something extra so that money can flow into their account.

The accountability is one of my favorite things to do. I still have two accountability partners. I suggest they cannot be a spouse or significant other. This is something you’re working on yourself first. Then you can come together. It’s not that you can’t tell them what you’re doing. Once upon a time, purchasing personal development courses was a weakness for me. Any time I saw it on TV or an event, any time I went to spend over $100, I needed to call my accountability partner and share that I wanted to buy this thing I could not live without. You tell each other what your goals are, what your weaknesses are, and then you call each other during that time. After I started talking about it, justifying why I needed to buy this, it was so silly. I really didn’t need it. An accountability partner helps you to stay on track on whatever financial goals you are. It helps you stay away from the shiny objects, and they are there to celebrate any time you achieve a milestone.

Hugh: These are all good personal growth habits. I wanted you on the show because we all bring our good and bad habits into the workplace. Many of our audience has a vision for changing people’s lives through a nonprofit they founded; sometimes they run it, or they get other people to run it. We want to identify these because the personal problems become systemic problems and a problem for the organization.

In the nonprofit world, we are required to have a board of directors, and they oversee the money part. The same issues that you just talked about do exist in organizations. I have seen organizations who are broke, but there is no discipline or system or accountability or awareness of living beyond our means. We don’t have the money coming in, but we have to do these programs because they are compelling. You have to take care of home first. How do leaders bring these shortcomings into the business? How does that hurt everybody?

Chella: That’s why I think you have to start at home. Find your money leaks, fix them. Once you start to do that, what happens is you begin to see other opportunities, whether it’s the saving $500 a month. Other opportunities begin to present themselves. Debt creates overwhelm and stress. When you are stressed and have to think about how you make those payments, there is that “Another payment, I have to write out ten checks.” I know people don’t do that anymore. Automatic pay, whatever that is. I need to pay ten bills versus three bills. That takes stress. When you are able to get that under control at home, those skillsets will transfer to your organization.

You are able to come up with different ideas for a fundraiser. You are able to share about your project to that person you haven’t thought about sharing. It opens up more space for you to be able to be more productive and bring in more money to your nonprofit, or what I call a passion project.

Hugh: Your passion project. What is your passion project?

Chella: My passion project is to do workshops for high school students and college students. It’s interesting because I hear a lot from them about how they don’t care about the money, but they want to make a difference. I say, “In order to make a difference, you need the money.”

Hugh: Ryad, as a young person facing the life ahead, does this stimulate any questions for you, or do you want to comment on what you’re hearing?

Ryad Benabdelkader: Yes. By the way, I like the use of the credit card. Where I live, it’s not used very much. People love cash. They never use a credit card. Starting with my family and my parents, they just use cash in Algeria. But I like the idea of the credit card because you have to think about how to use the money twice. You won’t just buy it with cash. Each time my parents are just spending, spending, spending. If it was with a credit card, it would be better, and they know where to spend the money. I love the idea of credit cards. I hope we will apply it one day.

Hugh: You’re in Algeria.

Ryad: Yes.

Hugh: How do you pay for things? Physical cash or digital payments.

Ryad: Physical cash.

Hugh: I understand you were admitted to a college in France, so you will be going to France. How will this kind of information help you think about managing your expenses in college?

Ryad: I love the idea of credit cards because like this, I will manage and optimize how and where to spend the money without carrying cash. I would just be buying this and this. With a credit card, I will only buy things I need with limits. Each time you see the card, you think about money.

Hugh: Before I go to Professor Hopkins, let’s talk about philanthropy. In order to be a philanthropist, you want to manage your time because we give time and talent, but we also give money. Why do you think it’s important to manage our own finances? Why do you think it’s important to have our house in order to be a better philanthropist? I will give you some time to think about it. Bob, what kinds of questions do you have today?

Bob Hopkins: Thank you very much. Unfortunately, I hate this topic. I hate this topic for me personally. I hate the words, “I can’t afford it.” In respect to you, I think your topic and what you tell the students is what they need because people need to manage money. I have never been able to do that unfortunately. Because of my elderly age, what you see on the horse is what I look like today. I am 50 years older than that person on that horse.

I try to teach students to think positively instead of thinking, “I can’t have, and I don’t have.” I think that God gives us everything we need, and you just have to have a positive attitude about it. Unfortunately, I don’t manage money very well. For some reason, there always seems to be money when I need it. But I do understand, and it’s a good thing I don’t have children. I was thinking of you when you said, “What did I think of money when I was five years old?” I could always have what I needed. When I became an adult, my parents divorced, and I think one reason that happened is because of money. It’s not been one of my best topics.

Hugh: Let me introduce you to my friend Chella. Bob is a colleague in Texas. Sandy, do you have any questions here?

Sandy Birkenmaier: My parents didn’t have a whole lot of money when I was growing up. When I was 10, they bought their first brand new car. They had no credit whatsoever because they’d always paid cash for everything. I learned pretty early that it was important to have a credit record at least. My dad died when I was 13, and we had even less money. I never had money when I was growing up unless there was something special I needed to buy. I had to justify then why it was that I needed money. I raised my kids that you do need to establish a credit record, but you need to not be using a credit card unless you are able to pay that credit card off. I pretty much managed to do that through adulthood. There have been times where things have gotten rough, and the credit cards have stacked up, but I got them paid off as quickly as possible. I think I have a pretty good relationship with money.

Hugh: Great. Sandy, thank you. Chella, that triggered a couple of interesting topics. Thank you for allowing me to have you comment. When you start an enterprise and apply for a credit card, they will check your personal credit. You are the founder of this and want to apply for a credit card. This is one area that is important for having your act together. Do you want to comment on that?

Bob’s relationship with money, he’s a mover and shaker. He is an energy field. I am sure in his career with nonprofits, he has seen a challenge with money. It’s an attitude that comes from the top. Those are two areas for you to bounce off of.

Chella: Actually, Hugh, you mentioned earlier. When it comes to money and credit, people think about it as a negative thing. But you are proof that that’s not the case. You are able to get things for free. It’s about learning how to use the system. I have a friend who got a 32-inch flat-screen TV for free. She was a business owner, and she charged a lot, and she paid a lot. She accumulated so many points. That’s the thing about credit cards. We can use them to our advantage. We can use them just like Sandy, thank you for sharing, and Bob. We are going to come back to you. But you can use these credit cards to your advantage. They don’t have to be the bad word. This is a tool you can use to get free stuff. I personally have gotten gift cards. You can give them away for gifts. It can definitely work to your advantage.

Know that the magic is you only need three types of credit that is being reported. All you need is three lines in order to build a credit score.

Hugh: Three lines? Three credit cards?

Chella: It could be a credit card. A car loan. Anything that reports. It cannot be paying rent. That is not reported. Utility bills, those are not reported. Those do not count. Three, be it two credit cards, a car loan. Three of them in order to build credit. That’s it.

Hugh: It’s all back to what you were talking about. It’s a matter of discipline or attitude and an awareness. I see a lot of people start a business or nonprofit, and they say, “We will make money and do these things.” How important is it to put a budget line item on there to mark our discipline for spending?

Chella: I love that. I don’t like to use the b-word. The budget. If we start thinking about, “This is how I am creating a spending plan” instead. It sounds softer and not quite so rigid. But if you create a spending plan, then you have choice. You are spending this. This is how much we allocated for this and that. Create a spending plan, and stick to it. Sometimes, we want to do, and we want to serve. But if we don’t have the money coming in, it’s going to stop sooner or later. There is only so much you can do. Right now, I do know quite a few nonprofits where the money is just not coming in, and they may need to shut down.

Hugh: It’s a challenge for the whole sector. Small businesses, churches, restaurants, nonprofits: we are challenged to how we do things. My wife and I have gone through a personal discipline of looking at expenses, and we spend a lot less than we used to. We eat really well, and we do pretty much anything we want to do, but we stay under budget every single month. Even though I have a number of credit cards, and a lot of credit lines, we primarily use one, so I don’t have to remember to pay the others. Everything comes on the 1st of the month, so there is a ritual in paying it all. 100% on-time payments, no interest charges. It’s been a good discipline that has energized us, and we have more money to support the charities we want to support. It feels good to be able to give some to other people.

When you build your budget, let’s talk about the giving part of this. Part of philanthropy is money. Part of it is showing up. You talked about showing up earlier. It’s not just physically present, but it’s emotionally present. Where does giving come into our financial system?

Chella: Giving should be up here with paying yourself, giving, then meeting your obligations, then down the line should be your wants. Not to deprive yourself. But I am saying if you put it in that order, I guarantee you that you will always have money for everything. It just shows up. The money always showed up for Bob.

I agree with you. I think that God gives you all that you need. I am delighted, and I believe in thinking positive. Where I see the struggle is we want to think positive, and your students are saying that. It’s the monkey chatter behind the scenes from the money conversations we heard as children. We have that conflict. It’s about identifying it so that it’s minimized. I haven’t been able to make it go away entirely, but it is minimized, so the voice is softer and not as loud. It’s about making the voice softer.

Hugh: That annoying voice that lies to us. A while back, we had Dr. David Gruder talking about the psychologist’s view of money shadow. Say more about how those negative scripts hurt us.

Chella: Because we believe them, right? I’ll share mine. My dad was a baker. He definitely shared that you have to work hard for your money. He did. He worked very hard. One time, he took two jobs. One paycheck went toward a down payment for the house. After we bought the house, he quit the job. So he did work hard for his money. He was incredibly successful and bought lots of great properties. I grew up that you have to work hard with money because my dad did physical work. He was a baker.

When I did my very first paid speaking gig, I went through it. Here I am getting paid for something I love doing and for talking. I went through that psychology. It’s about what that five-year-old identifies with, and how we carry that along with us. Which is why I think identifying it and releasing it is where the key comes in. You’re no longer subject to it.

Hugh: You started talking about the lies we hear about money. What were those?

Chella: You have to work hard. You have to struggle. Money does not grow on trees. And we can’t afford it. Those are the ones that keep coming up, no matter what income you’re in. We go back to whatever those adults have. The key here is that this is something- Think of it as a gift. These stories we have been told are a gift. Sometimes I think it comes from good intention. The adults want to prepare us for the future. They want to set us up for success. The stories they are giving you are a gift. Now give them back. It was a gift that you don’t have to take. It’s okay to give the gift back.

Hugh: Wow. I was formulating another question, but I got into what you were talking about. I can’t afford it. That’s code for, “I don’t like it,” or “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.” Isn’t it?

Chella: it is. It also could be simply that the adults didn’t understand. We go back to the adults. We go back. Even if you now look at the grocery store and see a mom and kids, if you hear the mom saying, “No, we can’t afford it,” what is that child’s interpretation of money? It’s not about the fact you said you can’t afford it, because maybe you can’t, or you don’t want to. Telling them you can’t afford it is about the interpretation the kid is walking away with.

Hugh: You’re choosing to spend money on something else. It ceases to be a reason and becomes an excuse. There is no reason to pay for anything you want. Back to your list of wants and needs. Do you do this on a monthly basis, a weekly basis, in hindsight or forecast?

Chella: I like the moving forward because you become more aware. We’re sure nothing slipped through the cracks. Keep track of your money for seven days. Any time you spend a dollar, you write it down. I like to divide the seven days into wants and needs. That’s it. I don’t analyze it or judge it. We just do a black and white list. You do this for four weeks. You will find some of the things that you are ready to let go from that list. What are some of the things, like my lunch person? Along with going out for lunch, she is putting $500 toward a down payment of a house, which was important to her. Once you find something you can replace it with, I take it Bob likes horses. Can we buy new toys for the horse? Does that work? Once you are able to find where the money is going and you choose something else to do with it, that is where you begin to shift and accumulate to have money for those things.

You’re a perfect example, Hugh. You have a spending plan, but you are always able to do the things you want to do. It’s about having the choice to do what we want to do.

Hugh: A spending plan doesn’t mean you can’t do fun things. A whole lot of things don’t cost money, or very little money. Sometimes the free things are healthier anyway.

What I see often is, especially in early-stage organizations, we make bad decisions on spending. We put wants ahead of the needs, like hiring staff prematurely until we have enough money in the bank to pay for that person for at least a year. We get out ahead of it. We assume the product will sell. We assume the donors will donate. We will assume we will get grants. So we hire in preparation for that. That is a bad habit we bring over with our personal life. We bully our way through here. Really, we need to have a foundation of revenue becoming revenue until we can get an executive director or a funding specialist on our staff. It’s good to get someone on staff who knows how to handle money.

So it needs to be the right choice at the right stage, and we need to have a plan that can work, and an accounting system to track it. We can’t keep it in our head. We have a lot of systems that interface with our credit cards and bank accounts. It’s automatically kept up to date for us. It’s a good era to manage that.

We get a chunk of money. A donor writes us a large check. Whoopee. We can go to work. We can hire people and buy equipment and rent space, and we run out of money. We haven’t looked at our forecast. A budget is a spending plan, but really what’s our cash flow projection? In business, we call it a burn rate. You are spending money and not selling things enough to offset the cost of doing business.

It’s still a burn rate in the nonprofit world. We’re not offsetting the old revenue with new revenue. We are spending the money without creating new money. There is a relationship to money that comes from our personal life, that brings in good discipline and running an organization. I am not perfect in all of this. I am not here saying I am the model; I am here to say we are all struggling and need to improve.

Do you want to comment on any of that? Talk a little bit about that. After that piece, we have a relationship with money, but our relationships with people impact our cash as well.

Chella: I could not have asked for a better set-up. That is why if you do the 30 days for your personal life and your business, you will know exactly what it takes to run your business on a monthly basis. When you get that $100,000 check, what if you are able to put away one to two years of monthly revenue on your business and spend the rest on projects? At least you know you’re covered for however many months. We don’t know when the next money will come in. That’s magical. You know that you at least will be able to continue to do that work for the amount of time. The more money that comes in, the better. But cover that base first.

It’s a work in progress. Sometimes we will fall off track a little bit, and then you get back. But keeping track or finding out what it is you need on a monthly basis is magical because then you will always be prepared. It’s the ideal situation. Also, that peace of mind will come with it.

Prematurely hiring someone. What if you are able to ask them to volunteer five hours, ten hours a week? Then you will get to know each other, see each other’s skillsets. When you are ready to hire them, they will be able to step in. It’s that intern, if you will. Then you know if they are a fit for your company. Asking for that volunteer is a great way to help you until you can get the money ready, but also find out if they are a fit for your company. If not, you will spend a lot of time and money investing in something that may not work. A volunteer is a great way to help you, and do what you want to do, which is help. You want to give back. But you don’t have to spend the money.

Hugh: Yes. Relationships. We have mental capital, a product or service, and the work we do, and we want financial capital. But there is this relationship capital in between those.

Chella: I want you to think about money and relationship the same way you would do a business partner, a donor, or whatever. How you’re talking to that donor is the same way you should be talking to money. If you are telling money, “I don’t have enough. You’re never enough,” if that was a partner, and this is where the money relationship shifts. If you are in a relationship, because you are, we are in a relationship with money, whether we are readily able to admit it or not. Talk to money the same way you would talk about a potential donor. How you would treat that person is the same way. Treat the donor the same way as money and treat money the same way as the donor. This is a win-win for all. There is something for the donor to contribute to your organization. Think about money. Start dating money. Get to that point where you are ready to make a commitment and get married.

Hugh: Find your money leaks. Develop a plan. Get an accountability partner. Don’t bleed yourself dry. Don’t deprive yourself of fun things. But be responsible.

Your analogy with the person who was spending $750 and they cut it down to $250 on lunches, they can now save money for a house. In the world of nonprofits, we want to put away money to build an endowment fund. People do give to it specifically, but we can build it in more than one way. Having an endowment fund allows you to build interest that could pay for your operations expenses if it was large enough. That is a discipline for nonprofits.

*Sponsored by EZCard*

Chella, this has been useful stuff. This is not just theory, but applicable information. This is what we like to do: help leaders be better leaders. What closing thought would you like to leave people with?

Chella: I truly encourage you to do the four-week challenge. It’s just four weeks to finding your money leaks and get your money journey on track. Love to hear from you. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to be here today. Every single person who has done this, their money conversation and relationship has shifted. Highly encourage you. It’s only four weeks.  

Hugh: Only four weeks. Your life is a downer if you don’t do it. Chella has been building her website. Chella Diaz, thank you for being our guest today on The Nonprofit Exchange.

Chella: It’s been an honor, thank you.

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