#we watched completely different shows depending on whose perspective you saw this from.

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

What Is Will's Arc if Mlvn Is Endgame?

A Byler trying to make sense of the show from a mlvn POV

I like to be informed on both sides of a debate. So I'd like to understand what evidence mlvns have to support their ship. Unfortunately, most Milkshakes think mlvn endgame is obvious and therefore that they don't need to prove it. So basically, this is me trying to explore the one thing that just Does. Not. Make. Sense. to me from a mlvn endgame perspective. And that's Will's arc.

Will's arc IS STILL SUPER IMPORTANT when addressing the show from a mlvn standpoint because ships do not exist in a bubble. Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge that Will is integral/central to the show and that supporting queerness has been an ST theme since day 1. Will's arc has never been about familial acceptance. The first episode of the show demonstrated that Joyce loves Will no matter what. We had a queer-coded acceptance speech from Jonathan in that same season (another in season 2) and a far more blatant one in season 4. The series wrapping up with yet another would be dissatisfying and redundant.

Acceptance from his friends is not it either, because we also saw his friends sticking up for him despite being bullied about his visible queerness. Not once did anyone stick up for Will by denying his queerness. This is likely a consequence of taking Will's lead, suggesting Will has never denied his own queerness. It is very clear that this has been going on for quite a while and his friends not only do not have an issue with people thinking Will is gay, but will defend him on account of it. Will's friends accepting him is no great revelation.

Will's conclusion CANNOT be something that has been a truth from the start. If Will's story begins with being loved by all of his friends and family whether he's gay or not, we can't watch five seasons of him struggling only for the conclusion to be that he is loved by all of his friends and family whether he's gay or not. There is ZERO development. It can't be romance if it's not Mike. The turnaround is too quick for Will's feelings to come into the open, for him to be definitively friendzoned, for him to get over these feelings, for him to meet someone new, for him to develop feelings for this new person, and for him to get involved with this new person. This is literally impossible to cram into the final season even for a side character we WOULDN'T mind a rushed romance for. But ESPECIALLY not for Will, one of the backbone characters of the show (*cough* whose queerness has been integral to the show's very makeup from the start *cough cough*).

So if I'm fighting for my life over here to make mlvn make sense for Will, in order for this to work, you have to remove romance from Will's arc completely. Yes, we as Byler shippers are fully aware of the moment romance became integral for Will.

BUT for the sake of this exercise, we're going to say that Will's romantic plotline is a dead-end (I'll come back to the queerness) and that he's going to have to put his feelings for Mike on the backburner for the sake of the world. With this logic, you'd have to acknowledge that Will is going to be at the center of the supernatural plot, which most people do but some mlvn dingdongs think he's a gay, irrelevant, crybaby. So. Pretending we have logic: Will's at the center of the plot. Here's an imaginary arc for Will I've constructed in which he does not get the boy OR get sidelined:

Scenario

This is extremely dependent on the parallels between Will and Henry.

For the sake of this exercise, Henry is queer. He may or may not be within the actual world of ST, but for this to work, Henry's queerness would need to be expressly stated within the show. Additionally, THIS IS NOT A THEORY and it's not what I THINK will happen, so anything related to timeline theory is being side-lined here. For this scenario to work, there is one Henry and he becomes Vecna. Henry feels like an outsider. He is made to feel "wrong" and different. It would be necessary to parallel Virginia with Lonnie and to introduce a friend or a neighbor or some boy Henry had a crush on. If we wanted to explore more mature feelings to be closer to Will's, this could even take place later in the lab when he's older.

The gist is that Henry would have to experience the heartbreak of having feelings for a straight boy combined with internalized homophobia and a lack of acceptance from the people in his life. Both Henry and Will would experience harassment, feelings of being different, unrequited feelings, and come to a confrontation with one another. For maximum impact, Mike just found out about the painting/Will's feelings and reacted poorly (because of the lying, not the gay). Now Will's in a trance, having a one-on-one with Vecna in his mind lair and Mike's freaking the fuck out and feeling like an asshole and Vecna tries to relate to Will and Will's big triumph is realizing that Vecna is RIGHT and they are so much alike, but despite what Mike said, Will knows Mike loves him anyway. And despite being sad, gay, and alone, Will still loves the people in his life and he has some big moment of AND I LOVE MYSELF TOO and yay Will self-love hurrah you're sad but not going to let it ruin you woohoo and he tells Vecna there was nothing wrong with him when he was a wee lad either and yada yada you get the gist.

Why it works and why it doesn't

Ignoring what this does to Henry (because that's a whole other thing), this actually concludes Will's struggles with his own queerness perfectly fine. THEMATICALLY, it's trash. And that's the big issue with Will ending up single. When you look at Will as a character within this body of work, sans themes, you can see his arc as one of needing to accept HIMSELF. As I said before, it isn't about his family or friends accepting him (although explicit scenes of this would be beneficial for Will's self-love journey). We know he has accepted his own queerness, but he still feels like a mistake. His arc culminating in his acknowledgement that he is NOT a mistake is super important for him. I do, in fact, believe it's a large part of his REAL arc. Being able to take ownership of this part of himself and feel happy with it is necessary for him with or without romance. And within the story, it's okay to tell a tale about a queer boy who doesn't get the boy he loves if the story ends with him learning to love himself.

The issue is that this body of work exists in the real world. It exists in a world where telling that tale of the gay kid not getting the boy is delivering a negative message about queerness. It exists in a world where PR has been done surrounding the show that both allowed and encouraged the shipping of these boys. If the show ends with this bittersweet conclusion of Will's arc, letting go of his love for Mike but gaining love for himself, it won't be JUST about Will. Because Will represents gay youth in general. And ending with Robin and Vickie together does nothing for this message. It doesn't serve to show us that queer relationships are good and possible and that Mike and Will just weren't meant to be. Because Rockie is not a stand-in for Byler. That PR I mentioned still exists. You cannot say, "well we queerbaited Byler, but we still gave you a queer relationship!"

And way back to the beginning when I mentioned that supporting queerness has been woven into the show since the FIRST episode, while my (stupid) scenario or something similar allow Will's personal arc to conclude in a way that doesn't negate the narrative, it DOES negate the message.

So...WHAT is Will's arc if mlvn is endgame?

Self-love, IMO. I think Will's arc is equal parts learning he is NOT a mistake and learning that he CAN find love despite his queerness, but if mlvn were to be endgame, it could only be the first half. And if the show played his journey strong enough, they could make that extremely powerful on its own. Unfortunately, it's impossible to create this ending without sending a negative message. So while I DO think it is possible to wrap up Will's arc sans Byler in a way that makes sense within the narrative, I don't think it's possible outside of it. In a world where people consume the narrative and recognize that sad gay boy ending up alone = bad message. That even if queerness is accepted, celebrated, and supported WITHIN the show, the show says the OPPOSITE by allowing the only single party member to be the gay one.

I think this is where a lot of mlvns get confused. I'm not talking about the extreme antis and the homophobes. But for the people who genuinely care about Will and ship mlvn (they exist), I think this ability to disconnect Will and his journey from the Real World the show airs in is what allows them to believe mlvn endgame is not harmful. The people saying "It's realistic!" about Will being sad and in love with his straight best friend in the 80s are failing to recognize that THIS IS NOT THE 80S. It's MEDIA.

This is the major difference between Mlvn + Will and Byler + El. Both El and Will need to learn to love themselves and find strength in themselves outside of other people's perceptions of them. But, even if we ignore the depth/nature of feelings both El and Will have for Mike or the ways in which their relationships with him have been portrayed. Let's say Will and El feel EXACTLY the same about Mike. Byler + El = sad but empowered El while Mlvn + Will = sad but empowered Will + bad message.

I did genuinely set out to try to explain this argument to myself, not to go on an anti-mlvn tangent. But...my conclusion is that I can't (shocker). Art was meant to be perceived. Thank you and goodnight (it's afternoon).

[dogbearinggifts]

I saw you mention in an ask that Diego spotted the abuse they underwent first. In what order and how do you think each of the kids came to the realization of what their dad put them through? They all obviously are still reeling from everything years later and it was EXTRA apparent during the light supper.

The light supper did many things, but the one thing it did most of all was show just how deeply he damaged these kids. Here they are in their thirties, meeting with a man who doesn’t know them yet—and even though they’re all completely on edge, guards up, expecting the worst, they’re still blindsided by how low he stoops just to gain a slight edge. 

But I digress. Here’s how I think each one of them came to realize Reginald was abusive, and the order in which I think they realized it. This is mostly just speculation on my part, so I could be wrong, but I like to think it’s an educated guess. 

Diego: Watching his dad give Luther nothing but praise while he received nothing but criticism fostered a good deal of resentment in him, but I think it also led him to see that something was very wrong much sooner than some of his other siblings. See, the torture they endured seems to have happened behind closed doors—Vanya losing her powers, Klaus being locked in the mausoleum, whatever awful things he did to Allison, Ben and Five in the guise of making them stronger—but the verbal abuse Diego went through happened out in the open. It had to. Reginald wanted to goad Diego into pushing his own limits to beat Luther at a game neither of them could win. To do that, he needed make them both aware that there was a competition, that Luther was winning and Diego was losing, and that all of the other siblings knew the score. Being locked in that dynamic meant Diego was constantly, painfully aware that no one else had to deal with Reginald’s constant nitpicking—but also that no one else was lavished with praise the way Luther was. Even to a sheltered kid who’s allowed few friends outside the family and limited freedom to leave the grounds,  that treatment is visibly wrong. Diego might not have been able to call it abuse as a teen, but I think seeing the blatant discrepancies between how he and his siblings were treated—plus his legendary stubbornness—kept him from internalizing it for too long. When Reginald used Ben’s funeral to shame them all, that was probably the moment Diego began seeing him not as a bad parent, but as a monster he needed to escape.

Vanya: Like Diego, she was treated differently from her siblings. Unlike Diego, I do think she internalized it to a degree. We see her taking up the violin in an attempt to impress her dad (“I’m going to be extraordinary”) and her visible dismay when Reginald says “I’m afraid there’s nothing special about you.” Even as an adult, after years on her own, she sends Reginald a copy of her autobiography. It’s possible this was an attempt to get him to see things from her perspective, but it’s equally possible she sent it to him as a means of saying “Look, Dad, I wrote a book. I got it published. It’s on the bestseller list. Be impressed, you asshole.” Part of her wanted to impress him, and part of her believed that if she just tried a little harder, she could do it. Although she recognized that her treatment was unfair sometime in or prior to her teen years (we see her protesting Reginald’s refusal to let her be in the family photo) the part of her that wanted to earn his favor probably kept her from fully embracing the idea that she was not responsible for how she was treated. That said, I do think she’d realized Reginald was the problem by the time she moved out, and she probably began calling him abusive once she either read up on abusive relationships or learned about them from her therapist. Learning that there was a word for what she endured, and that no decent person considers it okay, was probably strangely comforting and empowering all at once. 

Klaus and Ben: After Ben’s death, they almost certainly began talking more. Ben would’ve had to witness Klaus’ burgeoning addiction spiral out of control, and he wouldn’t have let it happen in silence. Maybe his resentment festered shortly after his death; maybe it came years later. Whatever the case, I think that when Ben began arguing with Klaus over his drug habit, Klaus pushed back—and eventually, this pushback led to him spilling details of what led him down that road. “He locked me in a fucking mausoleum when I was just a kid” probably stunned Ben into silence for a few hours at least—and also reminded him of the things Reginald forced him to do while he was alive. Maybe they started trading stories to empathize with each other; maybe they traded them to one-up each other. Whatever the case, I think that as they learned they’d both been effectively tortured by their own father, they both began to realize how twisted their childhoods had been—and that they were not to blame for it.

Allison: While her reactions during the light supper prove Reginald terrorized her as much as he did the others, we also know she used her power to get whatever she wanted. Parental abuse is damaging to everyone, no matter who you are; but abuse from a parent you can manipulate is a little easier to endure, and it’s much harder to recognize that something is wrong when you can buy yourself a respite—or at least a few material things to ease the pain. She had an advantage the others didn’t, and I think this advantage kept her in denial, believing Reginald might not be so bad after all, if he gave her all those nice things and didn’t complain, until Ben’s funeral. Watching Reginald use her brother’s death as an opportunity to berate and shame them for something she knows wasn’t their fault makes her angry and hurt enough to stand up to him, despite the derision this earns her. I think that day affected her pretty deeply—maybe even more deeply than her siblings. Ben’s funeral was probably the day she realized there was nothing redeemable in her dad after all and that she had to get away for her own safety. Once she was out on her own, I think she sought out books on bad parents—starting with survivor memoirs, empathizing with the narrators more strongly than she expected, then branching out into self-help. She probably read the signs and checklists over and over, just to make absolutely certain her experiences counted as abuse and she wasn’t just being dramatic and ungrateful.

Five: If he hadn’t gotten stuck in the apocalypse, I think he might have been one of the first to realize Reginald was abusive. But because he spent the majority of his life in a world much harsher than the Academy (which isn't to say the Academy wasn’t harsh, but no one had to eat cockroaches to survive it) his memories probably took on a rosier hue. A place with a solid roof over his head, where he was guaranteed clean clothes, companionship, and never had to wonder where his next meal was coming from—after starving out in the open and talking to a mannequin, Five probably thought more than once that he’d never argue with Reginald again if it only meant a return to those comforts he once took for granted. This longing, mixed with self-loathing over his stupidity at getting stuck, probably led to some self-blame over how Reginald treated him, if his “I was too hard on you” to Reginald during the light supper is any indication. He realized Reginald was abusive at some point (probably after some heated arguments with Dolores) but I think he’s also gotten it into his head that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed at the time—not as bad as growing up in the apocalypse, at any rate.

Luther: Not only did he stay in the Academy well into his twenties, but he put his own safety on the line, nearly died in service to Reginald’s goal—a goal he’d fooled himself into thinking was his own—and when the man who endangered him, mutilated him, and shunned him exiled him to a hunk of rock floating in space, he still blamed himself. While he took a major step forward in the latter half of S1, placing the blame for his pointless Moon mission on Reginald (where it belongs), I think his jump into the sixties caused him to regress a bit. I don’t think he forgot what Reginald did to him, but I do think he assumed that Reginald might be kinder in his younger years. Maybe he thought parenthood made him less patient or—more tragically—that something he and his siblings did turned him into the kind of man who would shame his surviving children at their brother’s funeral. I think he believed that if he could just talk to his dad before all of that happened, he’d be welcomed with surprise and joy, pulled into a hug and asked about all he’d accomplished. While Reginald’s rejection shattered him, I think it also, in a sad and twisted way, freed him. Luther learned, once and for all, that Reginald simply hated children. Reginald’s callousness and outright cruelty wasn’t due to anything he did—it was the result of taking on parenthood out of a sense of obligation, resenting it every step of the way, and lacking the emotional maturity to avoid taking it out on kids whose only crime was dependency on him. The fact Luther didn’t believe it until he heard it from the man himself speaks volumes about the control Reginald still had over him, even after his lies were laid bare.

[thanatosbananatos]

The Ultimate EruHan Meta

Oh boy.  

So, I feel that first, I must preface this long-ass meta:

First, bless your heart if you read this.

Second, this is just for funsies. Yeah, for some reason, I find this kind of shit enthralling!  I have no idea why.  Regardless, this is not meant to shit on EruRi shippers, LeviHan shippers, or anyone in-between.  This is simply something I've been wanting to do.  Erwin and Hanji have a very underrated relationship, and I've wanted to highlight it for a long time. Years.

I also use “she” pronouns in this meta, but I think Hanji can have whatever pronouns.  Isayama has said it doesn't matter to the story, so run wild.

This ship is incredibly important to me, and I hope to share my feelings with the fandom in a light besides incessant fangirling and stupid art.

OK.  Let's do it.

I have read through the series thus far (right now, it's late April of 2019) completely in Japanese, and I've done my best to read through English translations of each chapter as well.  Why Japanese?  Well, I'm an elitist.

Just kidding.

There's actually a very specific reason that I prefer the Japanese to the English, and it has to do with the linguistic structure of the languages.  In English, there are certain things that we cannot change in our writing to emphasize something--the word “I,” for instance, is always “I,” and “you” is always “you.”  Right now, as I type this, I realize how limited the written English language is.  I can only show you emphasis by bolding or italicizing the words, and even then, there are things left up to interpretation.  

Japanese is quite a bit different, and though there is plenty of ambiguity used in this language (trust me, I've done studies lol), there are also parts that are more specific than in English.  There are, for example, numerous ways to say “I,” “you,” and other pronouns depending on the speaker, the listener, and other circumstances.  

It's because of this that I prefer Japanese dubs and prints of anime and manga, respectively.

The last time I went to Japan, I came home with the first 14 volumes of Attack on Titan in Japanese, and this was the shit that dragged me into EruHan.

As is the case with most Americans, I assume, I saw the anime before I read the manga, but it was not until I read the manga that I started to ship Erwin and Hanji.  Why?

I'll explain the details later, but one of the biggest reasons is that the bulk of their interactions occur in what will be season two and beyond.

However, they do have really important interactions in season one, aka chapters 1 through 33 of the manga.  Those moments serve as a great base for what to eventually expect in the latter chapters, when all of the heartbreaking shit happens. c':

We never know for sure how Erwin and Hanji met, but we know that at some point, Erwin came to trust Hanji enough to consider her to be a competent Squad Leader, and eventually considered her as one of his right-hand men, along with Mike, and after a few years, Levi, too.  Hanji's squad has a specific focus:  to study Titans as closely as possible.  It seems like a pretty dangerous job, but Hanji is a dangerous person in general.  

Erwin is generally known as a strategist both in canon and in the fandom, but for a strategist to do their job, they have to have facts to base their plans on.  As we learn later, Hanji is the source of those facts.

One of the most glanced-over scenes in the entire first season is when Erwin and Hanji are leading the Corps back to the wall after failing to secure Annie in her Titan form.  Hanji questions Erwin's decision to send Levi off only after making him refill on gas and blades; Erwin reveals that his plan was based on Hanji's information in the first place.  

In other words, Hanji is someone that Erwin trusts implicitly.  

But, we see the same thing with Hanji toward Erwin when they corner Annie in Stohess.

If you recall, Erwin and Levi are with Nile and the other Police soldiers during the rampage--Erwin left Hanji to call the shots.  Again, proof of trust in her abilities as a leader.  

However, I find it hard to believe that Hanji would have followed Erwin's plan if it had been anyone else besides Erwin that proposed it.  Why?

Think of how much destruction the fight in Stohess caused.  It's almost inexcusable, considering that in the end, Annie seals herself up and is useless as a test subject to Hanji and her squad.  Hanji's first job is actually not a soldier, but a scientist; however, she trusted Erwin enough to not only agree to his plan to stop Annie at all costs, but also enough to be the one to carry out the dirty work.  

Additionally, Hanji questions EVERYTHING.  As a scientist, it's only second nature.  I've admittedly seen a lot of people shitting on Hanji for questioning Erwin from time to time, but NEVER should it be interpreted as insubordination or disrespect.  Rather, Hanji is trying to acquire more information from Erwin to gain knowledge of as many perspectives as possible.  And, by questioning Erwin, Hanji serves as a double-check system.  Levi tends to follow Erwin blindly, whereas Hanji will question him almost as a test--as if to ask, “You sure? You thought it through?  OK, then let's go.”

When thinking of all of this in anime context, there's one more thing I'd like to point out:

The first OVA, Ilse's Notebook.

In this particular OVA, most of the focus is on Hanji (thank god), and it expands upon what is briefly shown in the manga when Hanji, Levi, and his squad find the journal lying around.  The OVA starts with Hanji basically drooling over the idea of capturing a Titan--and no, it's not just because she's obsessed with the Titans themselves, but because she's obsessed with answering the many unanswered questions in their world, of which, the Titans are often the subject.  However, when she confronts Erwin with the idea of capturing one, he turns her down--according to the dialogue, this isn't the first time they have this discussion, either.

But, perhaps you noticed Hanji's argument to Erwin?  When he mentions the lives they've lost in the Corps?

“Without making any sacrifices, we can't gain anything!”

Doesn't that sound familiar?  

“Someone who can't throw something away can't change anything!”  

Armin said something similar--do you remember whose ideals he based his quote on?

Erwin's.

But, maybe, also Hanji's?

It is entirely possible that Hanji and Erwin have had the same thinking from the start, or that one of them influenced the other.  

We don't really know for sure, since we've yet to receive Hanji's backstory (Will it even happen?  Sigh), but regardless, they think similarly.  OK.  That's a thing.

As I mentioned previously, the bulk of their very important and often overlooked interactions are from season two (i.e. the Clash of the Titans arc) and onward in the manga/anime, up until...that thing called the serum bowl that none of us like to talk about.

If you recall, at the tail end of season one, Erwin was briefly arrested by the Military Police, then released.  Once again, you'll notice that Hanji is the one calling the shots, along with Mike.  Erwin has effectively split them up (presumably Erwin, I'm actually not sure if it's confirmed that he was the one to send Mike's squad to watch the 104th?), with Mike doing the physical work, and Hanji being left to the strategic end of things--to a point.  I mean, it's not as if Erwin is completely out of commission at that point (unlike Levi lmao). Instead, he's working on his “big” project--to overthrow the government and get those traitors out of here--from more of a behind-the-scenes perspective.  So he surely knew that things would get crazy on Hanji and co.'s end, yet he trusted her to follow through and lead the Corps while he worked separately for a while.  

He doesn't think to check in on her, either, until the report about Wall Rose and the traitors finds him.  I'm sure he didn't quite predict all that, especially because Reiner himself was flying by the seat of his pants lmao.  He hears that Hanji and company suffered injuries, and that Eren has been taken away, along with Ymir, so obviously, being the Commander and all that jazz, he goes to check in on the Corps soldiers atop the wall.  Until he arrives, Hanji does not move--it's only when she hears Erwin's arrival that she moves, and it's to talk strategy.  

This admittedly brings up something else I want to talk about with them: both Erwin and Hanji are so goddamn willing to put everything and everyone else first besides their own well being.  

I know a lot of EruHan writers play with this trope, but we didn't even have to add it in.  It's there.  All the time.  

I think Erwin is especially obvious, considering how far he was willing to go to reach his goals, and his dream.  However, Hanji is the same way when it comes to obtaining knowledge.  And, both of them want to win.  They are fighting to win.  In season three, Erwin refers to himself as a gambler--the same is definitely true for Hanji, if not even more so.

So, Hanji gets her ass in gear long enough to tell Erwin what she can, and once again, using the information Hanji gave him, and not straying from it once, Erwin formulates a plan, and the Corps sets off.

Erwin did not stray from her information, used it to fuel the plan, and lost his arm in the process.

Flash-forward to Erwin in the hospital.  Beardwin.  

Wait, no omg.

Go back to when they brought him back to the hospital.

We don't see that, right?  No, we don't.

But you know who else would've been in the hospital receiving treatment for burns and possible concussion, etc.?

Hanji.

Hanji probably saw the direct results of her instructions to Erwin.

Now flash-forward to Beardwin.

Remember, back about forty years ago when you first started reading this meta? Remember what I mentioned how the Japanese language has different types of pronouns?  It also has different kinds of politeness.    

In the Japanese version of the scene where Beardwin does the creepy-ass smile, Hanji enters the room speaking pretty casually, like “hey what's up Erwin--oh shit Pyxis is here too” might as well have been the actual translation.  Her speech goes from casual to formal the second she sees Pyxis. Of course, up to this point, Hanji had always used casual speech with Erwin, but the stark contrast to how she speaks to Pyxis, who is a pretty easy-going guy around the Corps veterans, just drives home the fact that they are familiar with one another. 

In addition, we once again see Hanji give Erwin information, and boy howdy.  Does he take it and run with it.

So begins the Uprising arc.

This is the arc that just pushed me face-first into EruHan, to be perfectly honest.

This is also the arc where the language usage is the most important.

At this point, the three veterans (Erwin, Levi, and Hanji) are split up for a little while.  Levi and Hanji are sent to watch over the 104th while Erwin does his thing (again).  However, Hanji has a little “side project”--she is still keeping watch over Pastor Nick, until the Central Police murder him.  She and Levi torture them, and that's a thing.

Due to the heavy focus on Historia and Eren, things are kind of quiet for the vets for a while, until Eren remembers some information from a dream, and yet again, Hanji brings that information to Erwin for him to put to good use.

This is one of the most important scenes in the arc, and for this ship.

First, note how calmly Erwin receives the flustered Hanji.  He offers her food and water without question and immediately listens. (An aside:  Erwin is probably one of the most patient characters in the series.)  After explaining everything, Hanji then asks Erwin, “What should we do?” (Another aside:  Don't forget how much these vets trust Erwin.  Ever.)

Erwin's at least one step ahead of everyone at all times, of course, so he has an answer, but part of that answer is pretty startling: Erwin names Hanji as the next Commander of the Survey Corps.  He then promptly leaves, with Hanji staring after him (be still my heart) and is soon arrested once again.

This is a scene that I can't help but dissect, simply because there's just so much there.

I'm also going to be bitter for the rest of my life that the anime strayed so much from the manga in this arc generally, but that's not the focus right now.

So, okay, remember the pronouns example I gave earlier?

Hanji uses “watashi,” Levi uses “ore,” Armin uses “boku,” etc.  Most of the characters are very consistent with pronoun usage, and most of them default to either “watashi,” simply because they are in the military, methinks.  

Erwin, however (and unsurprisingly), is one of the characters who changes his pronoun usage.  In fact, he is the one who changes it the most that I've seen so far in the series.  He switches frequently between just two, “ore” and “watashi,” but what does this mean, exactly?  What is there to gain from knowing the details behind his pronoun usage?

We see Erwin using “watashi” most frequently in two situations: he uses it in formal situations as the “Commander” towards people like Zackley, Pyxis, etc., and he uses it when speaking with a “softer” demeanor, such as early interactions with Eren.  

Erwin uses “ore” as a Commander might--with authority.  It also seems to be his go-to generally--in other words, if he did not have any social obligations to worry about, no public faces to protect, he would use “ore.”

So, toward Levi, Erwin uses “ore” pretty much exclusively.  After all, though he respects Levi, he has no reason to be gentle or keep face--in other words, no reason to use “watashi.”

However, toward Hanji, Erwin almost always uses “watashi.” (I should also note, he uses “omae” with “ore” and “kimi” with “watashi” accordingly.)  The speech is more familiar, gentler almost.  I wouldn't have given it much thought if it weren't for the one time he does use “ore” toward Hanji.

That time happens to be when he names her the next Commander of the Survey Corps.

So, why the change?

If you recall, that scene takes place with them talking one on one about the note that Eren has left for Hanji to read regarding his memories of a conversation between Ymir and Bertholdt.  Erwin eventually has summons--ones that he is sure will lead to his arrest, and he then names Hanji his successor.  

To me, after seeing all of their interactions, I think that Erwin definitely shows some favoritism toward Hanji and holds a soft spot for her.  After all, if you think back to the OVA, Hanji was the one to really prove herself and stand toe to toe with him.  I think he admires such stubbornness, for reasons we can only speculate now.  

When I think about how he previously had spoken to Hanji, it was always so...intimate?  Like, “I value this person and their opinions.  We are close.”  Using “ore” breaks that down and instead builds a wall between them.  It's like he was saying, “I'm serious.  This isn't a joke.  You have to listen to me this time.”

It's worth noting that I've spoken to a few other Japanese fans about this part, both EruHan shippers and not, and everyone seems to agree that it seems like he did it for the sake of seeming authoritative, to make sure that this time, Hanji would listen without questioning him.

Of course, after the fact, Hanji questions it.

And I think that just drives my point home.

If you think back, or rather, forward in the manga, we see Hanji get handed a lot of shit--from Eren, the general populace, supposed allies.  After one particular event, where Eren grabs Hanji and treats her like a piece of trash rather than his own Commander, Hanji escapes with humor, but behind closed doors, she feels frustrated and lost.  

“Erwin, this was your one mistake...  Why did you make me the Commander...?”

Erwin did not want Hanji to double-check him.  He did not want her to question him like she normally did.  He just wanted her to listen to him and take the order, so she did.  So it's even more natural for her to doubt it now.  She didn't get that chance in the first place--Erwin took it away from her, and she let him, because she trusted him explicitly.  

We hear about it constantly with Erwin and Levi, but don't forget:

Erwin and Hanji's relationship is also built on trust.

So, let's go back to after the political arc--they decide to go back to Shiganshina, and we have what has come to be known as the serum bowl.  Yay!  Sounds fun, right?

NO.  FUCK THE SERUM BOWL.

But it's important to dissect for the sake of this fucking essay.  

I'm gonna skip straight to the good stuff--it comes down to a choice between saving Armin or Erwin.  Levi is pretty much set on giving it to Armin--until a soldier brings Erwin's body back, and he's clinging to life.  Eren and Mikasa get hysterical, they fight, and it looks like Mikasa is gonna straight up become THE Ackermann, until someone interrupts them.  

It's Hanji, and she's injured and all alone.  At this point, she's lost Moblit and part of her vision, and now she could lose Erwin, too.  This person she trusts and respects probably more than anyone in the world might die.  I think it affected her on more than just a personal level too, obviously--the Commander she entrusted her life and well-being to is on the brink of death, and she is supposed to somehow take his place.  

Hanji obviously takes Levi's side, insisting that Erwin should  be the one who gets the serum and a second lease on life.  She pulls Mikasa away, holding her closely, and tells her that she understands what she's feeling, what it's like to lose someone you care about.  

But, “Erwin is the hope of humanity.”

Those are Hanji's words.  They're heavy.  So fucking heavy.  

If you questioned the respect and trust and love in their relationship (even just platonically) before, at that point, you really can't anymore, unless you decide to be in complete denial.

However, if you're caught up with the manga, you know how it goes--Erwin pulls a last minute “stunt,” then retires (cough) as Armin is given the serum and transforms into a Titan.  Levi chooses Armin in order to let Erwin die as a human and not as a monster, and tries to talk himself through the choice out loud.  

Hanji, however, has her eyes only on Erwin, and she is with him until his last moments of...pre-retirement...

Okay, but here's a thing I really want to point out.

Flocke, the dumb bastard who brought Erwin's life back (he's not dumb for doing that, btw), is the one who brings up the notion that it should be Erwin who receives the serum, because only Erwin had the capability of becoming a monster who could save them.  That thought scared Levi, who held and continues to hold Erwin in very high esteem, and is what essentially pressed him into giving Armin the serum instead.  

Do you think that thought scared Hanji?

Though we never hear one way or the other, I really don't think so.

When has Hanji ever feared the Titans?  

No, it's not even just that--Hanji saw the Titans as equals.  She saw them as just a different kind of human, really.  

Think back to Sawney and Bean, wayyyyy way back.  Think about how she recognized their personalities, respected them, and loved them as the way that they were.  And she had no idea what the truth behind them was.  She had no idea at that time that they were humans.  

Think about how she treated Eren as a Titan shifter (before he started being ...whatever he is now).  She respected him, was kind to him, and she didn't even know him.

I think it's safe to say that  her relationship with Erwin would not have really changed.  She would have probably respected him even more than before.

...There's honestly so much more I could say about the ship on micro-levels, but I wanted to hit these big points because not only are many of them lost in translation, but they are highly underappreciated.  I get tired of seeing them left out of the main fandom, when it's such a delightful, wholesome ship that has plenty to work with in both canon and AUs.

But, if you're interested in hearing the smaller things, hmu.  I think about this ship all the damn time.  Everyone should have some level of appreciation for it.  

--Cat

[rem289]

Response to (idiotic) accusations made by some people against me and especially Aoimotion

(which is why I have to waste time writing this stuff)

Hi guys,

Here I am again, with a "small" update of the journal published a few days ago here on my blog  in response to an offensive, derogatory and defamatory post that unfortunately has been circulating for a month without the direct interested, I and above Aoimotion , being aware about it, as we weren’t intentionally mentioned, so we were denied the right to reply.

Of course I took care to reply immediately after discovering it, telling our version of the facts. But the post was soon removed, so all I could read were four short comments left by the owner of the blog on which the announcement was written, @spanish-vega

Needless to say, the cancellation didn’t bring benefits to its victims, since eliminating a post to the source on Tumblr has only the (partial) effect of hiding the identity of its author. Therefore, if you are interested in knowing what I am talking about, a copy of the accusations I’m going to reply to can still be found here.

This only shows how its content was a distorted interpretation of real facts that, once brought to light, irreparably refuted the veracity of the post in question, forcing the author, or more likely: the authors, to eliminate it before taking their own responsibility and have a real confrontation with me. Unfortunately, this action was too serious for me to ignore it. In this regard, I will now proceed to respond to the feedback I received from Miss Vega. There really would not be much to say, given that the comments (written, among other things, under HER OWN post), can hardly be considered an answer, so I will take this opportunity to focus on many issues that are close to my heart.

I want to warn you that in the following part the subjects will change often, sometimes I will refer to those directly involved or only one of them, sometimes to a wider audience, so sorry for this confusion, unfortunately the topics to be addressed are many.

Dear Vega, here we are again. I don’t know whether to feel more sad or worried by the fact that after all the time that has passed and even now that I have placed you before the fact, you say you have not regretted having  basically tried to ruin a person's reputation. In part I envy you, I would also like to face certain things with such coldness. On my way I have met many boring and dishonest people, yet I have never dreamed of defaming them publicly, notwithstanding all the evil they had done and the reason I could have. Same for Aoi, of course, who between the two was the most oppressed in recent years. But in your case perhaps, this is the only way to really solve the matter, since the private ways don’t work, or rather, only serve to make fun of me, taking advantage of my honesty and fairness. It’s too convenient to pillory someone publicly and then demand to settle things in private; you all have always speculated on the fact that both Aoi and I are much more mature and discrete than you, so we would never have put ourselves at your own level (or your own pettiness, depending on your point of view). In fact, it was supposed to be like this, but unfortunately my tolerance has reached the limit, you managed to make me infuriate as few have succeeded in my life, so now I will repay you with your own medicine, the only one you know and that maybe have some effect on you.

You affirm that your wish was to make the truth known to the Spaniards, but I think it was more correct to say: "the Spaniards had to know my version of the facts", given that this was the case. Because the intention of the post you wrote wasn’t to inform people, but simply to seek consensus and compassion from them. If you had even had the slightest respect for those who would have read, you should have also involved the parts you accused so that the readers were provided with more complete information and not just your distorted and incomplete version. But I can imagine that, from the perspective of a liar, the idea of acting in conditions of complete incontestability is very appetizing, so I cannot say I'm surprised. Embittered, but not surprised.

You also continue to reiterate: "you know what Aoi did to @landsec (sorry, the tag doesn’t work because this person has blocked me, I will return to this point later)". Obviously I know, as a huge amount of people know, thanks to the political propaganda that your friend has not failed to do. Aoimotion had a heated discussion with him, as a result of which she apologized in spite of, let me to reiterate it once again, the first to be wrong was Landsec, for the reasons I explained in the previous post and that you will surely remember (assuming that you have read them). Too bad that, in addition to this episode of which Aoi has largely repented, for her part there has been no other action directed against Landsec.  An intervention, perhaps more "important", happened later on my part. On this intervention, many words were spent in private, with the usual sharing of screenshots, but none in public. Perhaps, if the real problem were the things I myself told Landsec, it would have been more correct to address ME directly to make his grievances, rather than going through a person whose role in this feud is mostly incidental, and certainly not because Aoi or I asked for it. Anyway, some time later the famous translation policy post appeared on our channels. And here Aoi actually made a mistake, the only mistake that could be attributed to her: on DA, she signed the post with her name. She did it out of habit, because it was a few months since the account had passed from being “RemArt” to be “AoiRemArt”, so she tried to point out that it was now managed by two people, not just one. In addition, I let her write the posts because unfortunately it’s known that English isn’t my strong suit, so I agree it’s easy to associate her writing with her name. But it takes a lot of imagination to imagine that such a crucial and important post was written only by one of the two, from a common account, as if I had been watching while she was preparing the crime or, even worse, she had bound me and gagged me to deprive me of any freedom of speech, so she could freely do what she wanted. A fantasy that I prefer to call "convenience". The concepts of the post and the way in which they are exposed have been agreed both by Aoi and by me, as it has always been and as it still is, therefore, whatever offense you may have received in your opinion, be aware that it came fully in the name of both. The only thing I'm so sorry about is that I didn’t stop her right away when I saw that she had signed only on her behalf, because I gave people I thought smarter another opportunity to pour their hatred and frustration on her.

Anyway, I'm sorry to disappoint you, dear Vega, and all the rest of the people who share your thoughts, but even then you totally misrepresented what we were saying. We can only validate the Italian and English versions because they are the only ones edited by the original author of the texts: Aoimotion, who writes them personally and has full control. Since we don’t know other languages outside of these two, we have no tools or knowledge to verify the content of the text with confidence and to consider it 100% faithful to the original, correct or reliable. It’s pure and simple logic, concepts that should also be within your reach.

I’m sorry that my authorization has implied the opposite and has made you consider these texts as official, perhaps better than the original ones. It's probably another thing that I should have explained from the beginning. We don’t want to diminish the work behind it, but yours is still a fan-translation, certainly not considered as an official language released by us. If we did it we would take responsibility for making official a thing we don’t know, it would not be serious on our part.

About this, I take this opportunity to apologize to the translators for not having explained well right away that the first translations were authorized only by me and only by inexperience, due to the fact that I myself felt like I was using borrowed characters and I sincerely regret that all this happened, because if I had been more careful and far-sighted from the beginning, now there would be no translation in the first place and now we would have no problem.

Secondly, after all the conflicts that have existed, and still exist between us, not only I consider your vain attempts to flatter me ("incredible artist", "fantastic person" and so on) extremely hypocritical, but the thing that makes me laugh is how in public you proudly declare that you have no problem with me (feelings that, even if they were true, would not be returned from me anyway), when in private things go in a very different way.

I'm really sorry, Vega, that you spent your time writing a post in defense of Landsec, that you, blinded probably by some feeling that I don’t feel entitled to determine, called "one of the kindest members of this fandom". The same kind member who didn’t stop you when he had to and could do it, but made you cancel the post only when I intervened, exactly after a month. The same kind member who has denied any involvement in your actions, either in public or in private with me (I will spare you the agony of reading his own words because, unlike Landsec and probably many of his friends, we don’t have the same habit of divulging private conversations, even when we could take advantage from them, as in this case), running for cover,  reblogging my post as if he wants to declare himself on my side, pleading - we don’t know who - to leave him alone, and discharging all responsibility on you and yours impulsivity, and then, on top of the cake, canceling his reblog just five minutes after doing it. The same kind member that blocked me just two days after the answer to my post in which he recited: "I don’t have any problems with Rem" and "We. Are. Cool. ". I suppose he must have been very afraid of being ignored for the first time by me, after I’ve always endeavored to behave with maturity towards him in an attempt to smooth out the shameful situations created by himself. In light of the fact that I find myself writing this unhappy communication, when I could use my time in more pleasant and productive ways, I gather that I was the only one of us who ever intended to definitively close this story.

Fortunately, before Landsec took his "precautionary measures", I had time to realize that the post in which he announced his retirement (the real one, not the defamatory garbage written a month ago) had been promptly canceled by his main channels. Evidently, when a better scapegoat was presented to him, which would have made his gesture a heroic martyr, he thought well to change the version of events. I could make a lot of comments about it, but I think that's already self-commenting. In any case, a "proof" that this post existed can be found at this link  dating back to May 9th, in which it's clearly mentioned the retreat, already happened, of our kind member. 

Now you will ask, why insist on this point? In reality it's very simple: the author of the defamatory post, quoted and linked at the top, has accused us, -no, maybe it's better to be precise: only Aoimotion- of Landsec's withdrawal, inserting this accusation even as subtitle of her the post ("Motivo del retiro de Landsec") . But if this post that I found refers to the Landsec's withdrawal on the 9th of May, I can assume that his abandonment was announced at least a few days before the 9th of May. And if the very first private discussion between Landsec and us took place about fifteen days later (in May 23-24th); And if the post about translation policy we made that, according to the opinion of the author of the post, would have completely destroyed the good intentions to continue in the translations of her friend, was published on June 25th, I wonder: it’s possible that these people have the gift of clairvoyance? Or can I just assume that unfounded and ridiculous accusations have been made with the intention of demonizing a person and, at the same time, gathering support and compassion?

Returning to us, always wanting to quote his "hit and run" reblog, in fact it was the same Landsec who writes: "So if you have any involvement with it [your post, Vega], solve it yourself and LEAVE ME ALONE ". So, from woman to woman, I hope that you, Vega, have long thought and drawn your conclusions after this shabby show. After all, he practically left you alone in my clutches, after you had exposed yourself so much to defend him. He didn't even try a second to protect you like you did with him. A kind person like him, does he really deserve your loyalty?

The connections between people are simple as long as they are coalescing in the face of the possibility of slandering, mortifying and tarnishing someone. In that case, people are ready to swear loyalty, support and mutual affection from here until the end of time. As soon as the nuance of reason and congruence is destroyed by the reality of facts, this is how these bonds crumble and change into the vile, filthy and disgusting vault I have ever seen.

That would be great, since everyone is free to build their personal bonds in the way that best suits him/her ... if not that, these same people ready to tear each other if the situation worsens, even find the courage to distort the partnership between me and Aoi, painting it like a toxic relationship in which she manipulates me according to her will, and I'm reduced to a doll that is limited to executing orders or, in the best case, watching while she sows discord and destruction in the name of both.

At this point, you understand that I cannot ignore such a foul-smelling accusation, so let me tell you how things are: none, and again, none of the things I've said or done in the past two years have been influenced by Aoi. Because, you know, I'm also capable of independent judgment (ability that instead of many of you are missing, I noticed) and not only, I'm even able to get angry! I understand that it sounds absurd, so take a minute of meditation to assimilate this information, and then take a few hours, or days, or even weeks, to realize how all the things that you didn't like and that you think damaged you, that you considered more convenient to attribute to my partner, in reality they were the combined and harmonious effect of two minds that have always worked in perfect harmony, without never prevaricate each other. And perhaps, for many of you, the problem has been (and still is) just that. You can hardly forgive me for I have found a partner "out of the group" (who anyway I knew and with whom I had a firm friendship since well before knowing you, in case you didn't know or you were conveniently forgotten) with whom I chose to work closely, a person whom I admire and whom I appreciate, an I'm very fond of, who made me embark on a project for which I decided it was worth it, which goes beyond fame and glory and any other value to which you attach importance. Perhaps many of you have been wondering for months: "Why Aoi? Why not us?", and so, you decided to vent this suppressed frustration on her,  when perhaps, and I say perhaps, the person you really wanted to vent your livership was and is me.

I will not deny that, for the short time I attended your group, I appreciated your company. As I told to Landsec in the last message I sent him months ago, there were people among you whom I esteemed and respected and which were pleasing to me, but I always treated our relationship lightly;  I never thought there was anything between us that could go beyond kindness and mutual courtesy. We were acquaintances, and nothing more than that, and I'm really sorry if my attitudes (which no doubt were wrong) may have given some of you reason to think otherwise, or in any case to "elevate" our relationship to something more. But this has never authorized you to treat Aoi in the way you did, to denigrate her, to deride her and to accuse her of having performed actions on behalf of both, overshadowing my will and my ideas completely, as if there was no way that I could be something else than what you thought I was. Your myth of Rem always kind, always available and always friendly is an image that you have created of me, which absolutely doesn't belong to me, which I consider incredibly reductive and silly to apply on a person since, sorry if I always repeat the obvious, the reactions are adapted to the situations and you have given me many reasons to be anything but courteous and kind to you. All of this is a mirror of what your real opinion is of us, of the presumption that you have to know two people whom you have always chosen to see only the part that made you more comfortable, and probably even what is the limit of your reasoning ability.

And now I refer directly to the “translators”, I regret to find out that for a long time you have translated comics written by a person you don't esteem at all, as opposed to what you claim to think of me. I sincerely ask myself why you decided to put your blog and your "face" in a story and in dialogues that you thought so bad of, since apparently the only thing that you appreciated the comic were the drawings. Maybe you could create your own comic and think about the interactions between the characters, the story and the dialogues, and translate them into English as it is a far less demanding work than translating into your language.

From this point of view, I understand why you always want to boast about how much effort you make in translations, literally using every possible excuse to reiterate how hard and draining your work is. But then I wonder: if for you to translate from English TO YOUR MOTHER LANGUAGE is so hard, so demanding, then what Aoi should say, as she translates every day from our mother tongue (which I remind you, it's Italian. Maybe it was clear with me but not with her) to English and vice versa, if her work requires to? I’m sure that you too know that translating from English to your own language is not as difficult as doing the opposite, given that you proclaim yourselves to be certified and expert translators and you, Vega, also defined yourself as a writer, as if this title could authorize you to say all the balderdash that left your keyboard. Aoi has been doing this every day for more than two years, but I don't remember ever having seen her making noise for what she has chosen to do, not even when many people ignored (deliberately or not) her role as author in the comics and she would have all the right to point out that she was the mind behind those stories that everyone liked so much. For this, I cannot help but applaud the despicable courage with which you have diminished Aoi's work, who is a translator like you and even more than you, besides being so many other things that you aren't, and laugh at how you have mortified her while you were doing your master work by basing yourself on a translation that came well before you. Therefore, maintaining the scale of judgment with which you have always judged her contribution to comics: if you want to rate Aoi's work as zero, go ahead. But at this point, following your reasoning, I ask you: how should your work be defined? With a negative number? Or even better, with an imaginary number?

In conclusion, I regret that many people believed in Vega's version, full of holes and inconsistencies, without even ascertaining the veracity of what they were being offered. To believe in facts without evidence to support them is a very serious act, which sets out a very dangerous trend to this day. Dangerous for these people, and also for who / what is found in the crosshairs of such lies.

And speaking of these people, I would like to use this post to respond to some brilliant comments that I found myself reading under Vega's propaganda, released by people who arrived like flies that, attracted by the trash, got themselves gathered around it to feast festively, though mostly, I will do nothing but reiterate old concepts. I will not mention names, because there is no need; in any case, those who are curious can go to read through the comments of the post of which I attached the link above, although I don't recommend doing it to those who are particularly weak stomach.

When you accuse Aoimotion of having had, and still have, a very strong influence on me, there is one thing you're right about: if it was not for her, I would have stopped having any contact with the Zootopia fandom already two years ago. Probably my interest would be exhausted within a couple of comics, or even stripes, given the general attention that I can have in fandom, especially if it's fandom related to films and therefore self-contained stories. But then I met her, who overwhelmed me with her imagination, her enthusiasm and above all her pure and unconditional love for the narration, which pushed me to continue. To make a lot more comics than I had expected, to draw a lot more pictures of Nick and Judy than I would have done alone. 90% of what I have produced, and for which you have idolized me (and given the situation in which I'm now, I wonder how sincere these flattery were), exists because she was with me, by my side, close to every process of creation and always ready to advise me, encourage me and help me. So, when you accuse Aoimotion of having forced me to leave the fandom, you should instead thank her, for holding me into it a lot, so much more than I could have predicted.

When you accuse my style of drawing to be "Zootopian", know that first of all this is just a neologism devoid of any meaning, given that Zootopia itself is a Disney-style film and that then brings the style of his factory. And that just because dozens of artists have thrown into the cauldron called "Zootopia" any anthropomorphic animal their pen has created, doesn't mean that the same applies to me. In any case, know that my style is evolving and will evolve again and again, until finally this latest silly accusation will fall into the pit of the "absurd accusations" that are offered to us every day by this fandom.

When you accuse us of wanting to "steal Jack Savage from Disney", when you even use your time to create meme and "fun" comic of dubious taste, of which only the authors, the stupids and their little friends can laugh, hold on to mind that Jack Savage has always been, and always will be, nothing but a sketch on an artbook with a few lines of background, and that all we have built on him is OURS, including much of his physical appearance (which, like everything that is in this fandom, has soon become a collective good, like it happens in the best communist societies). And that we have the right and the duty to take it back, while you have neither of those to come and tell us something. If, as you think according to the legal knowledge of which you are definitely in possession, what we have in mind to do (which, incidentally, has not yet been disclosed to anyone, then as well as experienced lawyers, you're also skilled Espers able to read our minds; if I had your powers, now I would fight in the biggest tribunals of the world, not brawling from behind a keyboard) is wrong, we will pay the consequences; but if what we are doing is simply a nuisance to you, and it stings you as if you were thrown into a bush of nettles, I'm sorry to say that it is not our problem. Maybe you need to take a break from the internet, as I suggested to Vega and Landsec, to review your priorities and give a little more value of your time. Or you could "give yourself to horse racing", as we say in our parts.

Among other things, while we can afford to take away from Jack any connotation in common with his concept and have our fanbase almost unchanged, if anyone else tried to do the same would find himself in a second to swim in anonymity. I invite you to ask yourself why, and if you can, even to give you an answer. It would be sufficient to explain a few of our apparently incomprehensible reasons, and even the reasons for those whose main purpose in recent months seems to have been to discourage and mock us.

The Jack’s question is very well connected with another theme that we considered closed for months, but that obviously still doesn't really go down to some of you: the alleged plot against our readers, hatched by Aoi and me, which established to introduce our OCs in Black Jack, in order to impose them on you and force you to appreciate them and follow their vicissitudes.

We have always considered this accusation extremely funny (it’s a pity that the harassment we suffered because of it were not) and all in all, putting ourselves in the shoes of the average fan and reasoning (indeed, refusing to reason) as such, the thing could also make sense. So we let it go. This only until the moment we published Black Jack.

Once this comic ended (and even a few months before it ended), we reiterated several times that we would never treat Zootopia again. Of course, you understand that we couldn't write "WE WILL NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT NICK AND JUDY !!" at the end of each post or as a watermark on the pages of the new comic, otherwise some brilliant mind would have told us that we were paranoid and unpleasant. So, at a certain point, we stopped coming back to the subject.

At this point, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who has continued to follow us after Black Jack, has done so of his own free will. Perhaps it's hard to publicly admit that you find an interesting story that does not have Nick, Judy or the "Zootopia" tag inside; It’s easier not to express yourself, to avoid the risk that some friend, fervent supporter of the fandom (because now there are no longer supporters of the movie but of the fandom), can stone you on the spot. In this way, you have at any moment the possibility of turning silence-assent into fierce indignation, pulling out the fable that someone is manipulating you to force you to follow something you don’t like and don’t care about. I'm sorry if you felt obliged to follow us by some dark force that you could not fight back, it was absolutely not our intention. We have never been interested in gathering as much support as possible (if we wanted to do it, we would certainly emulate some eminent fandom figure who knows how to keep fans tight), what we always wanted is to express ourselves artistically in absolute freedom, and be judged without any "fandomistic" prejudice .

Therefore, I will reiterate it once again:

if you have no interest in our current work and/or continue to follow us hoping that one day we'll rekindle the desire to work again on Zootopia;

if you have decided to follow us because this gives you the illusion that we're still feeding the dunghill that this fandom has become;

if you’re bad and evil in the soul and find pleasure in spitting poison on a couple of artists who didn't do anything wrong (because now, honestly, what have we ever done to deserve certain crap? After all we have given you for a year or more, you should just learn to be quiet) ...

If you're one of these things, more than one or all put together, I warmly and DEFINITELY invite you to vanish and never return.

Regardless of everything, I'm here to reiterate that we will go on, while the best these people can get is to fossilize themselves where they are now. We are trying to do something big and original, bigger than a mere sub-project of another work, more original than creating new animals that stand on two legs and exist somewhere in the universe of Zootopia (without nothing to take away from those who do it, we simply have different ideas and different objectives). And you know, partly we have already succeeded, and I feel once again to thank Aoi about this, thanks to her characterization and her stories wich allows us to give our OCs peculiarity, to distinguish them from the crowd even if some people try always to imitate the character design of others artists. The more time passes, the more people from the fandom stop following us; but for each of them that leaves, two new readers follow us, people who often have nothing to do with Zootopia and its fandom. And if this is not a victory, I don’t know what it is.

Summing up, I would say that perhaps, rather than feeling angry at certain people, the most appropriate feeling here is compassion. But for respect of ourselves, it's right that even the most miserable and vile of individuals will learn what their place is; for how much compassion I can feel for them, I’ll never transact ever before a villainous gesture. Unfortunately, the more falsehoods are propitiated and stacked, the more the truth will be evident and lethal later. The more you are liars, the more you will be hurt when someone puts you in front of the reality of the facts, exposing your slanders for what they really are: snake venom. For this reason, from now on I strongly advise you to dose more carefully your nonsense, in order to avoid having to hide like rats the moment the truth will surface. This is the last thing I will tell you because, after this refreshing parenthesis, I hope I will never again have to deal with any of you, anywhere in the internet.

And if it were to happen, however, I beg you this time to call things by their real name; to strike directly and clearly who you REALLY want to hit, without first making a shield of people who have nothing to do with the problems you may have with someone. In any case, we will be ready to respond, using the most effective weapon in our possession, the truth; Therefore, I sincerely dissuade you from doing so.

[eirianerisdar]

Hey, I recently discovered your blog and I just wanted to say that love your fanfics! Your writing is beautiful. If you're taking requests, would you mind writing something to show the bond between Anakin and Obi-Wan, you know, the famous Kenobi and Skywalker duo and your take on how the Galaxy viewed them?

Sorry this is so late, anon! This fits into @finish-the-clone-wars’s 25/7 Writing Wednesday prompt let me convince you. I wanted some good third-person perspective so this is a companion fic to A Face in the Crowd.

This fic is also cross-posted to FFN.

For the Brother I Did Not Deserve

Generals.

Jedi.

Heroes.

At the height of the Clone Wars, Skywalkerand Kenobi were household names across the galaxy.

Adults spoke of them in caf��s and bars as Generals Skywalker and Kenobi, trackingthe progress of the Open-Circle Fleet across the Outer Rim sieges by war-reelsand holonet news. Senators and aides alike called them Masters, as politicians have called the Jedi for ten thousand yearsand more, since the Jedi Order first swore their service to the Republic.

But the young knew them as heroes. 

Siblings squabbled over which would win ina full-out duel, Obi-Wan’s devastating calm against Anakin’s fiery resolve;friendships were formed and broken over the keenness of Anakin’s sword-hand andthe steadiness of Obi-Wan’s voice. And yet these petty arguments bonded all theyounglings the galaxy over; there was no skirmish, battle, or campaign thatcould not be won if Obi-Wan and Anakin were there. The fact that they were twomen in an army of millions did not matter. As far as any youngling whoseparents supported the Republic was concerned, the war was already good as won.Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker would see to it.

It was in such a spirit that Yorrick gavehis all in a terrific (and oft-repeated) argument with his best friend, Meron.

 “General Skywalker leveled an entirebattalion’s worth of super battle droids last week on Malastare!” Meron yelledas he flailed around Yorrick’s room, nearly knocking over Yorrick’sneatly-stacked collection of Kenobi collectible info-cards as he did so.

“So?” Yorrick interjected from where he satprimly on the edge of his bed, crossing his arms as Meron turned to glare athim. “General Kenobi would have talked his way out of needing to fight them atall. He did as much before.”

“An entire. Battalion,” Meronhalf-shrieked, eyes aglow and looking every inch of his current eight years.

Yorrick rolled his eyes. They might be thesame age, but there were times where Meron’s excitement over GeneralSkywalker’s latest exploits only manifested itself in long, ramblingconversations where Meron’s utter hero-worship surged like the waves ofCoruscant’s Western Sea, beside which Yorrick’s family had a summer home,courtesy of his father’s position in Galactic government.

It wasn’t as though Yorrick didn’t admireGeneral Kenobi as much as his best friend did Skywalker – it was just thatYorrick thought it best to express said admiration in quietly collecting Kenobimemorabilia and keeping up with the holonet news on the Open Circle fleet,instead. He may have sent a fewletters here and there, but he had never received a reply, nor had he expectedone. General Kenobi had a war to fight.

Meron, on the other hand, loved nothingmore than to recount for the billionth time the moment where his heroacknowledged him.

“–I didn’t think he’d actually salute back, you know, since my father and I were so farback from the parade line and there was so much noise going on–”

“I know, Meron,” Yorrick said, a faintsmile curving his lips despite himself as he watched his friend’s face light upat the memory. “He saw you, and he returned your salute. Congratulations. I alsoseem to recall you telling me that you forgot to lower your hand until basicallyall of the 501st had passed by.”

Face flaming red, Meron punched himgood-naturedly on the shoulder. “I’ll convince you Anakin’s better even if it’sthe last thing I do,” he mumbled.

“That’ll take some convincing, “ Yorrickgrinned. “But go on. I dare you.”

“I’m going home in a week. I’ll have youconvinced before then.”

“I’m sure the Alderaani Royal Academy willbe very happy to take you off ourhands,” Yorrick said, dryly.

That earned him another punch.

But Meron’s next words wereuncharacteristically quiet. “My father said you could visit in the winter. Youwill, won’t you?”

A pause.

“That’ll depend on my father,” Yorrick said, earnestly, “but I’ll fight both him and the RCA for it.”

Meron scoffed. “The Republic CoruscantiAcademy’s filled with spoilt brats with their noses in the air.”

“And what does that make us?” Yorrickpointed out. “Alderaani Royal isn’t that much better.”

“Spoilt brats with our noses completelylevel.”

“Oh, shut up,” Yorrick said, smiling.

Meron waved goodbye a week later, nothaving convinced Yorrick in the slightest but glad to call it a ceasefire. “Maythe Force be with you!” they yelled at each other, as was their custom. It madethem sound cool, like the Jedi Generals they loved so much. Meron as Anakin,and Yorrick as Obi-Wan – brothers in all but blood.

The Siege of Coruscant began a monthafterwards.

And another week after that, Yorrick’sworld fell apart with a single announcement from the newly instated Emperor.

Red-eyed and sleep-deprived, Yorrick wentto school two days later to find that it had been renamed the Royal ImperialAcademy overnight, and that there was a new uniform waiting for him, grey andhigh-collared and stamped with the Imperial crest over the left breast,claiming his heart.

He came home in his new uniform, enduredhis parents’ proud fawning over how dashing it made him look, and stood in hisroom alone staring at the Open Circle posters still plastered over the walls,the imitation lightsaber in its brackets reverently hung over his desk, therows of real flimsi books on Jedi and Republic history, and the packet ofStewjon tea he had begged his father to order for him just last month sittingbefore them, still unopened.

He’d been taught how to hold a blaster forthe first time that day; the first lesson in a new mandatory courseacademy-wide.

The Emperor had said General Kenobi was atraitor, as was the rest of the Jedi. An Order now eliminated utterly andcompletely, in a heroic effort by the GAR that once served them.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was dead.

Yorrick crossed to the comm at his desk. Ithad been there, undisturbed, for two days now; the light blinking at its edgeshowed that there was at least one missed message there waiting for hisresponse, but only now did he sit at his desk and flick it open. 

>

Yorrick buried his face in his elbow for amoment, and sighed.

Then he keyed in his friend’s comm code.

The comm channel fizzed to life, andMeron’s voice issued from it, warped with static and yet clear as the day heleft over a month ago. 

“Blastit, Yorrick! It’s been two whole days–”

“I know,” Yorrick said, quietly. “Ijust…haven’t been feeling that good.”

A pause. 

“Iknow,” – and there was a telltale tremor in Meron’svoice not caused by static or interference – “I can’t believe it, either.”

Yorrick’s eyes prickled with tears – thefirst since he heard the news. “How…how could they betray us like this?”

“Right?I don’t know how Chancellor Palpatine could have done this!”

Now that caused Yorrick to sit up, and to stare at the comm in his hand.

“What…what are you talking about?” hewhispered.

“TheChancellor,” Meron said, with a note of confusionin his voice. “You don’t believethat…that drivel he said about the Jedi, do you?”

“Drivel?” Yorrick said, slowly. “That’s nota word you would use. I would, butnot you. Who’s been talking to you?” A feeling was building in his chest. A scream.

“That’snot the point,” Meron retorted, after a tellingpause. “You don’t seriously believe theJedi betrayed the Republic?”

“I…” Yorrick began, and faltered. “I don’tknow what to believe.”

“Yorrick,this is Anakin Skywalker,” – Meron’s voicequavered, and then steadied with determination – “and Obi-Wan Kenobi we’re talking about.”

Hearing the name set something off withinYorrick’s chest. Perhaps it had been there since two days ago, or longer, but he had read about the five stages of grief before, but for the moment, he waswell past denial and fully into anger.

“I know!” he yelled, and cared not that hisvoice cracked dangerously on the word. “What do you think I’ve been doing these two days? I’ve been thinking. That’sall I’ve been doing. I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I went to school todayand everything’s the same but also different and we’re not allowed to talkabout the Jedi any more, and the teacher played this audio recording from theEmperor’s office that showed the Jedi trying to assassinate him,” – Meronyelped at this but Yorrick plowed on, relentless – “and then,” he shouted, asthe tears spilled over his cheeks and scalded invisible scars down to his chin,“I come back home, and I look at my walls, and I realise that I’ve got enoughillegal posters and things here to warrant my arrest. Do you understand me, Meron?!”

A long, long silence.

“I do,” Meron said, quietly. “But audiofiles can be edited, you know that. And you knew Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as Iknew Anakin Skywalker.”

Yorrick barked a bitter laugh through histears.

“Did I, really?” he murmured. “And didyou?”

“Yorrick–”

“The Chancellor was crying for help,”Yorrick was sobbing, now. “And General Windu just told him not to resist hisown murder. Treason. What am Isupposed to say to that?”

“TheJedi didn’t do this,” Meron said, helplessly. “I can’t tell you how I know. But I do.”

That did it. “You don’t know that because you’re not a blasted Jedi, Meron!”Yorrick shouted. “And neither am I! We never were, Meron, and be glad weweren’t, or we’d have betrayed the Republic and been executed like all thosetraitors deserved.”

Meron was silent for a long, ugly moment.

And then: “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” Yorrick said, wiping his nose onthe pristine sleeve of his new uniform.

“Yorrick,I don’t want this.” Meron sounded far, far olderthan his years. “But I see I can’t convince you.”

“I don’t, either,” Yorrick said,straightening although he knew the other boy could not see it – reaching forhis uniform cap as though it would lend him strength. He placed it on his head,and felt steadier than he did a moment before. “But this is how it is.”

Meron’s breath was loud through the channelstatic. “Fine,” he said, and therewas such a wealth of control in that word that Yorrick felt for a moment ashamed.“We’ll talk later. May the F–”

Meron cut himself off with a sharp inhale.

Yorrick stared at the comm. The words oftheir familiar greeting and farewell echoed through him. He let them go.

“Goodbye, Meron,” he said instead.

“Goodbye,” Meron said, and as the comm channel collapsed, it caught thebeginnings of a sob.

Yorrick stood, and placed the comm back onhis desk.

And then he crossed to the nearest posteron the wall, grasped its edge with the sleek leather of his new uniform gloves,and tore it down, uncaring of how it split neatly in the middle, dividing theopen circle insignia upon it exactly in two – a rending that left a chasmbetween them.

Yorrick repeated the motion again andagain, broke the lightsaber on the wall over his knee, hurled the bag of teainto the growing pile of discarded objects and stared, narrow-eyed when itsplit open on the broken wing of a shattered Jedi Starbird.

His father, when he found out, praised himfor his initiative and helped him carry it all out to the trash compactor, asteady hand on his shoulder as they watched each box go in.

Time passed.

Meron’s comm number faded in his memories.

Yorrick redecorated his room in pale greyand black, opting for the bare minimum of decoration except the six-spoked-wheelof the Imperial Crest painted on one wall.

And then he focused on his studies to theexclusion of all else.

Utter conviction.

At fifteen, he was an Imperial Cadet. 

At eighteen, he accepted a commission fromthe Imperial Navy as an Ensign.

And at twenty-eight, he was a Commander. Ayoung one, at that, and his meteoric rise to that rank did not go unnoticed.

Being on the same ship as Darth Vader wasas terrifying as scuttlebutt told, but Yorrick employed good sense and stayedsilent unless he was called upon, whereupon he did every task assigned to himin as quiet and efficient a manner as possible.

He got quite good at ignoring the twist ofguilt in his gut.

And then, of course, came the Death Star.

Something stirred in the depths ofYorrick’s memory when he heard of the superweapon, of course. Somethingconnected to the mind of an eight-year-old child, who loved a hero for hisability to talk his way out of a conflict without a single drop of blood spilt;but by that point in time he had learnt to treat his Orders as though he were adroid and nothing else. It protected his neck, and by extension, his parents.

And so Yorrick was on the Death Star whenthe Princess Leia was brought in, and he was a shadow at the rear of the bridgewhen Tarkin gave the order to fire on Alderaan. 

Millions of voices, silenced in a matter ofmoments.

Meron’s family home, where he and Yorrickused to play hide-and-seek amongst the gardens.

Meron. 

The name chipped at the walls around hisheart, and threatened to unbalance him. 

Yorrick returned to his cabin and threw up.

And then he stood up, and carried on.

And then the call came in that there wereintruders on the station, and he ran to his post, well-heeled Imperial Navyboots clacking on the durasteel floors, and as he ran, a sound drifted towardshim; a familiar noise of plasma meeting plasma, the scream of kyber crystalsand Force-borne blades.

That sound used to signify hope – hope thatObi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had won yet another campaign, the sound oftheir lightsabers a victory cry in war reel after war reel.

Yorrick rounded the corner to the hangar,and gaped as Vader’s lightsaber locked with that of the old man in anunmistakably Jedi cloak. 

“Kenobi!” Vader roared.

And with that single word, Yorrick’s world collapsedagain.

This Obi-Wan Kenobi was not theblade-dancing hero of his childhood memories; this man’s arms shook with theeffort of deflecting Vader’s powerful strikes, and his beard and hair werewhite where they once had been russet.

And yet- 

He was still every inch the Master;commander of a situation where there should have been no hope. Not for him.

A young, golden-haired boy darted into thehangar, closely followed by the princess, a man who had the look of ascoundrel, and a Wookiee.

Obi-Wan glanced at them, then back atVader, and his lips curved in the sly smile Yorrick remembered so well – thesmile that said you’re beaten, evenif nothing seemed to be working in his favour.

The smile of calm in the face of whatshould be an inescapable storm.

Yorrick had always understood it. Now itfelt utterly wrong that he should be on the other side of it; part of thatstorm, about to be destroyed by something he did not understand.

It felt horribly like guilt, and the denialof a truth that he had suppressed for too long.

Obi-Wan withdrew his lightsaber and raisedit in a salute, still smiling–

–Yorrick threw out a hand before he knew whathe was doing, mouth open in denial–

–andVader cut down Obi-Wan Kenobi.

But in the ringing emptiness of the momentsafter it happened, Yorrick’s shout lodged in his throat as he realised thatthere was no body.

Only a cloak. 

“No!” The boy with the golden hairscreamed. He drew his blaster and fired uselessly at Vader, even as hiscompanions yelled at him to join them on the ramp of battered transport.

They were only metres away.

Yorrick should probably have drawn hisweapon to stop them. He didn’t.

He turned, instead, as what seemed to be anentire battalion of stormtroopers raced past him; as he heard the firing of thetransport’s repulsors, over the lash of blaster-fire.

Yorrick found his way to the nearestseparate hangar, climbed into a shuttle with nothing on his person but hisuniform and his regulation blaster, and set off. It helped that in the chaos,he managed to get to hyperspace with only a few scanting brushes with the DeathStar’s turbolasers.

And then – when the star-studded expanse ofspace beyond the viewport morphed into the blue-white streaks of hyperspace –only then, did Yorrick allow himself to weep.

Months later – after a long circle of theOuter Rim and a delicate situation involving many repeated yellings of “Don’t shoot! I’m a defector! A defector!”Yorrick found himself, at last, on a Rebel base, having gone through a verygrueling interrogation courtesy of Crix Madine.

At least he’d proven his loyalty wasgenuine.

He asked around if anyone had heard of aMeron Junshi. It was the barest sliver of hope, but the last time they spokewhen they were both children Meron had seemed on a one-track road to theRebellion even if Yorrick had not known enough to suspect then.

“Junshi? That’s an Alderaani name,” onepilot said. “I think you’d be better off finding–”

“Junshi. Meron Junshi,” a clear, soft voicesaid behind him.

Yorrick turned, and his eyes widened.

Princess Leia smiled at him. “And as I keeptelling every new recruit, I don’t bite.” She led him to a quieter corner, andher face grew gently serious. “How did you know Meron?”

Did.

Past tense. 

He watched her watch him take the news. 

“He was by best friend,” he eventuallysaid, although it felt like a lie, now, after twenty years of silence. “He was a brother to me, and I–”

Her brown eyes softened further. “You’reYorrick. He spoke of you often.”

All the breath left Yorrick at once. Tearsstarted at the corners of his eyes. “I owed him an apology. Now I won’t have achance to say it.”

“I’m sorry,” Leia murmured. “He died on theTantive IV – my ship. He died protecting me and the plans I held for the DeathStar.”

In a way it made sense. Meron had spent somuch of his childhood in hero-worship of Anakin Skywalker that it was fittingthat he should die as a hero. Yorrick had loved him so much as a brother, likeObi-Wan did Anakin – but Obi-Wan had never spoken it out loud, either. Yorrickknew it with utter certainty.

How deluded Yorrick had been, to throw itall away on a lie.

Yorrick dashed away the tears. “We wereclosest during the Clone Wars. His role model was Anakin Skywalker. Mine wasObi-Wan Kenobi.”

Leia smiled at that. “As half theyounglings in the galaxy did, it would seem.”

Yorrick laughed. It was a weak, feeblething from too many years of disuse, but it would do.

Leia took his elbow in a soft grasp. “Ithink you should meet someone.”

Yorrick allowed her to lead him intoanother room, where the blond-haired young man whom Yorrick had also seen onthe Death Star was sat, tinkering with a pile of mechanical scraps.

“Yorrick Calder,” Leia said, “allow me tointroduce Luke Skywalker.”

Skywalker.

Luke extended a hand with a blinding smile– the same smile Yorrick recalled from the war-reels, two decades before. 

Yorrick shook Luke Skywalker’s hand, andfelt a weight lift off his chest as he did so.

And for the first time in twenty years, he was convinced that there was something to hope for.

END

This is a companion fic to A Face in the Crowd; read that if you want to hear Meron’s perspective.

This is also cross-posted to FFN.

My fanfic masterlist

FFN profile and stories

[william-blackwell]

The Hat Man: Guardian Angel or Devil?

Who is the Hat Man? A guardian angel or the devil in disguise?

According to numerous reports, he’s a mysterious spirit entity who often visits people in their bedrooms at night. Sometimes he terrifies them. Other times he leaves them with a sense of peace and calm.

What does he look like? He’s a black, shadowy apparition, darkly cloaked, wearing a wide-rimmed black hat resembling a fedora.

What does the Hat Man want? To some he’s the devil in disguise, a grim reaper of sorts, and a harvester of souls.

Some believe he preys on fear, striking you when your defenses are low and you’re down and out.

Many people report seeing him in their waking lives. Some even claim he’s trashed their houses and tried to strangle them to death in the middle of the night.

According to Heidi Hollis, author of The Hat Man, The True Story of Evil Encounters, he’s not only real, but he is the devil. She writes, “Victims worldwide have reported seeing this man peering into their homes, their bedrooms, their baby cribs, their cars and even—their souls.”

Some have been able to defeat him by calling out the name of Jesus, or having their homes blessed, while others, according to reports, just beat the crap out of him. Some simply order him out of their homes.

But others claim the Hat Man is a guardian angel, whose purpose is to protect them from harm.

The Hat Man is often seen with his band of followers, the Shadow People.

Where did the Hat Man come from? Where did the Shadow People come from?

According to Wikipedia, shadowy entities are “the perception of a patch of shadow as a living, humanoid figure, particularly as interpreted by believers in the paranormal or supernatural as the presence of a spirit of other entity.”

Some researchers claim shadowy entities date as far back as 300 AD. Wikipedia says, “A number of religions, legends, and belief systems describe shadowy spiritual beings or supernatural entities such as shades of the underworld, and various shadowy creatures have long been a staple of folklore and ghost stories.”

There are other theories about the origins of the Hat Man and the Shadow People.

A neurological theory: Shadow People and Hat Man images occur during sleep paralysis, a mysterious sleeping disorder occurring in that transitional stage between waking and falling asleep during which a person becomes completely immobilized and often sees frightening images. According to the neurological theory, these shadowy entities are merely the manifestation of a sleeping disorder and by extension nothing more than a product of the subconscious mind.

A religious theory: Shadow People are the evil minions of the devil, sent to snatch our souls and drag us down into the bowels of hell.

Another religious theory: Shadow People are guardian angels, sent from heaven to protect our souls and shield us from evil.

The scientific theory: Some physicists believe that unexplained forces are causing other dimensions to merge with ours. This merging of different dimensions would explain why we can only see the Shadow People and the Hat Man as shadowy figures who have the ability to transcend our laws of gravity, float through walls, fly, and change shapes at random.

According to this theory, the Hat Man and the Shadow People are the extra-dimensional inhabitants of another universe or another dimension. That’s why they can disappear and reappear in the drop of a hat. Or maybe in the drop of the Hat Man.

Regardless of what theory you subscribe to, one thing is certain. The Hat Man and the Shadow people drive terror and fear into the hearts of some, and peace and joy into the hearts of others.

Doing research recently on my soon-to-be-released supernatural thriller, The Dark Menace, I posted a blog asking people to tell me their experiences with the Hat Man and the Shadow People.

Needless to say, I received a lot of responses—some terrifying, others heartwarming. Here are some excerpts:

 1.)    Rather frightening:

When I was around four, I think at the time my parents were going through a divorce. I was sleeping on my mom’s bed one night and had to go to the bathroom, so I got up and went to use the bathroom and she was still sleeping. I came back and fell back to sleep. I woke up to a pitch black shadow of a man staring at me at the edge of the bed. It felt like an eternity, he was staring. My whole body was frozen with fear. He started growing in height, almost reaching the ceiling. At this point I turned my body and fell back to sleep. The next night I woke up and felt the urge to walk to the living room. I walked to the living room to see a shadow man at my front door. My dad was sleeping on the couch. I tried waking him up. I tried pushing at him, and to no avail. He wasn’t waking up. I walked back to my mom’s room to sleep, hoping it would go away. I looked back to see the shadow person staring at my dad.

 2.)    On a more positive note:

The Hat Man visits me nearly every week in lucid dreaming. And I have only good experiences with him. We just talk normally and I often ask him questions. For example, I ask how he comes to my dreams, who he is, and so on. Once he showed me his tarot cards. That was funny. I always try to look in his face, and he looks like an Arabian type of man. But I want to mention, that he’s not the only Hat Man. He has a brother, too. They are very different.

 3.)    Somewhere in that mysterious twilight zone between black and white:

Hey, I have seen the Hat Man. He was on the left side of my bed but when I awoke and saw him. I did feel an intense sense of fear. I began to think that fear was created by myself over time. I was sleeping next to my partner and we were going through a troubling time, when I saw the Hat Man I saw it wasn’t me he had interest in but my partner. It’s very strange because I couldn’t see his eyes but I knew he was looking at him. He was there until I managed to panic and turned on the light. I have never seen him again but on occasion I think about him and wonder if he will reappear and why he did. I was scared at first but now I feel he is of some good. I am unsure. This was in maybe 2011. I was sexually attacked by a man that year. I put him behind bars for seven years but I felt strong, like I knew I could do it, but then suffered a year with anxiety and depression. Did he cause this? Or was it a warning? I am unsure. I am mentioning this due to other related aftermaths.

 4.)    Now that’s downright chilling:

He’s from the Void/VALE of DARKNESS. I saw the hooded man/grim reaper. I saw two of them when I was 6 years old and I was shaking and heard whispers and voices and I had a severe high fever. I was hallucinating with nightmares and night terrors. This happened back in 2004 and after that the next day I was blacking out in the morning. I had to go to the doctor. I almost died in that experience.

 5.)    And on the flipside:

I’ve seen the Hat Man four times in my life. The first time I was about 6 years old, and the sighting snapped me awake from a dead sleep. The next two visits followed that night closely (maybe within 4-7 days apart from the first visit). Seeing him the first time, the tall, dark shadow figure, wearing a fancy top hat, absolutely petrified me. The next two times he woke me from a dead sleep, dressed the same (trench coat, top hat, beard, kind features) and wasn’t in shadow form. I wasn’t afraid of him at all, and actually rather drawn to him. I felt like he was an old friend in this form. I won’t go into much detail but these two accounts are drilled into my memory as something spiritual and friendly. Now, the fourth time I saw him was a few days ago (some 30 years later), back in shadow form, just watching me sleep. I wasn’t afraid and felt oddly comforted. My research the past few days has been really surprising because I’m not finding any other stories of people with good experiences with the Hat Man. Surely, I can’t be the only one?

 No, you’re not. Researching the strange Hat Man phenomenon for The Dark Menace, two things became abundantly clear. Some view him as evil, others as good.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but have you ever thought about this: Maybe it depends on your perspective. Are you glass half full? Or glass half empty?

In The Dark Menace, I take a deep dive into these questions and many more. The culmination of over six months of research, this supernatural thriller endeavors to find answers to a strange and mysterious real-life phenomenon that has haunted and terrorized thousands of people around the world for centuries.

The Dark Menace short synopsis:

Mysterious and terrifying attacks by the Shadow People and the Hat Man lead a nightmare-plagued man to suspect an enigmatic doctor has accidentally opened a portal to Hell.

[immortalpramheda]

The 100 ‘The Dark Year’

We all knew it was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to watch.

Of course I’m talking about cannibalism. I thought it was going to happen at some point. As horrible as the whole thing is, there was no right answer as to what they should have done. Survival is a natural human instinct, and when you are forced to participate in an inhumane act, really puts that into perspective. Octavia was forced to lead her people to do this to keep them alive.

Two years into life in the bunker, the crops became infected and they didn’t know long it would take for them to recover. They needed some sort of sustenance. They had bodies from the fighting pits, and it was a no brainer really. Rather than let the dead rot and go to waste, they may as well put them to use.

The scenes of them with the blocks of jelly flesh in front of them was very unsettling. Octavia took the first bite and no one else followed her lead. Kane even walked out, when earlier, she begged him for another choice but he couldn’t give her one. What was she supposed to do? This young girl, thrust into power, forced to make these terrible decisions?

The whole thing was really Abby’s idea. She’s a doctor, she knows what happens when people don’t eat enough. She saw firsthand what happened on the Ark during the ‘Blight’. The choice was simple, either make them eat or let everyone starve and sliver away to nothing.

And the only way to make sure that they don’t all die is to take away their choice. Make refusing to eat a crime. Strict laws, just like on the Ark.

This is where Abby and Kane differed. Kane believed that they needed to give people a choice, but Abby knew that if people refused, it could lead to the death of everyone in the bunker.

Octavia was right in the middle of them. Two adults arguing over what was the best thing to do. She was forced to make an impossible choice, a choice that no one, let alone a teenage girl, should ever have to make.

Ultimately, she was in charge of Wonkru. She was tasked with making sure Wonkru survived. And that meant she had to be ruthless. She had to show them what happens when they refused her orders.

A guy whose brother died in the fighting pits refused to eat. Octavia felt sympathy towards him, she did, but she couldn’t let that cloud her judgement. Even telling him that his brother died to give the rest of them a fighting chance, it still was not enough. ‘All of him for all of us’, the origins of ‘omon gon oson’.

This is when her transformation truly happened, this is when she truly broke. She tried to make them understand, to see that there was no other option. But they weren’t listening to her words, so she had to show them she wan’t messing around. She shot anyone who refused to eat.

It was only then that Kane awoke to the reality of the situation. People respected him, and when he ate the flesh, others followed his lead.

This gave really great insight as to why Octavia became Bloodreina. The moment she began killing people who refused to be cannibals. She had to shed her old identity to become this new unrecognisable person doing unthinkable things.

Everything that she’s done, she keeps telling herself that it has to all be worth it in the end. That’s why she is desperate to win the Valley and give her people a better life. Because then everything they have done will make sense.

The flashbacks showed that taking away their choice is something that Octavia didn’t want to do, but she felt that she had to. That’s also the reason why she burnt the hydrofarm. She took away their choice because she didn’t see any other way. She’s still in that survival mode, doing whatever is necessary to survive. Although she’s mistaken now, she can’t see that the war to win the Valley is not a life or death situation. She’s been through too many horrors to see things any other way.

After saving her mother and putting her through a forced detox, which was not pretty, Clarke is now on the enemy’s side. She makes a deal with McCreary to fix her mother so that she could heal them.

As Abby goes through the detox, she has flashbacks to the bunker. The pain of living with that was too much, and she is racked with so much guilt regarding everything that transpired in those six years. Technically, she is partly responsible for creating Bloodreina. That’s one of the reasons she became dependant on the pills.

“I love you, Clarke. But we are on the wrong side of this war.”

Madi does not agree with Clarke’s stance. She doesn’t want to help heal the enemy. I know deep down Clarke knows it’s wrong, but she’s letting her heart rule her, by doing whatever is necessary to keep her child alive.

Madi wants to stop the war and was planning to kill McCreary herself. One life to stop all the bloodshed, to save the Valley, to stop the war.

“She bore it, so they didn’t have to.”

That’s what Octavia did. She bore the weight of all that they had to do in the bunker. It weighed so heavy on her but she was willing to take on that burden for her people. And as Madi points out, it’s exactly the same as what Clarke did at Mount Weather. And it’s why she wanted to kill McCreary.

Madi has seen a lot of stuff since she’s had the Flame. She reminds Clarke of how she’d tell stories in which her friends were the heroes, when really the whole time it was her. She bore so many burdens for her people, she was willing to sacrifice so much for their wellbeing and lives. But she’s not that person anymore.

Octavia is walking her people to their deaths, but she won’t turn back. Bellamy is sick of her, and it broke my heart when he said he was doing this to get back to his family. He doesn’t consider her family anymore.

Echo speaks in Trigedasleng to Bellamy over the radio for some reason. Not exactly sure why, because most of Wonkru are Grounders and speak Trig. Unless it was to deter Diyoza from hearing their plans because she does not completely trust her yet? Whatever the reason, I’m not going to complain about hearing Bellamy speak it!

Spacekru run into trouble, but Shaw comes along and saves them!! He has some serious skills! Raven is upset at him. He is McCreary’s most wanted man, and she didn’t want him to put himself in danger because she cares about him. After all their cyber flirting and such, she makes the first move and kisses him! It was wonderful! Raven deserves someone who makes her happy. She deserves all the happiness in the world.

There were also some little moments I loved on this episode. Bellamy and Monty chatting by the fire, Echo and Emori’s friendship. Emori giving Murphy a huge weapon, after he was upset that he never got to have a gun. Just lots of really great small character moments.

“How do you choose between a monster and the devil?”

That the big question. And in the end, Kane and Diyoza make their choice. They both want peace, they both have the same vision. If Octavia takes the Valley, she’ll poison it. She’ll make it unrecognisable.

They choose the monster, because monsters can be tamed, devil’s cannot. They go back to Diyoza’s baby daddy and turn themselves in. So they betrayed the others? Not sure what they’re planning to do, but I guess they just want to stop Octavia, not matter the cost.

And with that, war is coming to a head. The scene where they were discussing their plan of action reminded me so much of when Clarke and Lexa were discussing their plan to infiltrate Mount Weather. I love parallels!

Clarke and Bellamy are going to confront each other while on opposite sides, which will definitely be interesting and hopefully things really blow up between them (and they tell each other things they’ve been withholding like the radio calls etc). Surely Wonkru are going to come across the worms at some point on their journey, which I assume will be quite catastrophic. Oh, and they once again mentioned Eligius III, so I have a feeling that is going to play a major part in the finale.

Who is going to win, the monster or the devil? I don’t know, but whatever happens, I don’t think the Valley stands a chance. I think it will be destroyed and there will be nothing left, hopefully making them realise that all this shit they’ve done was pointless.

I’m glad we got some insight into what went down in the bunker, into how Octavia, Abby and Kane got to where they are now. The thing I love most about this show is that no one was wrong. They were all right for different reasons. Honestly, I have no idea what I would have done in that situation.

Also, I’ve got to hand it to Marie Avgeropoulos and Paige Turco, their performances in this episode were phenomenal! I can’t believe the season is almost over, only two more episodes to go!

[ballbrandon94]

What Is Reiki Chakra Easy And Cheap Unique Ideas

For those who are following the procedures as in support of Christian theology.Yo can also offer energy to heal those deep issues.Some have changed somewhat, although there are lots of expensive Reiki master in your own Reiki Practice, whether offering healing sessions.It is important to Reiki the moment we shift our perspective, it appears that Reiki will generally help with this.

Thanks to Michael Harner, many of the ordinary Reiki classes and sessions and even watched TV for sometime.Follow up with lots of popularity in the United States Army, Reiki practitioners use it to suite their style.At the same time, the practice of Reiki, a number of classes.This initiation is something everyone possesses.The drive is a traditional shaman in that position until the Reiki Master is the best that you can never cause ill effects or be misused by the founding directors Reiki Master/Teachers Frans and Bronwen's open, informal style of spiritual energy.

Neither will your customer, who will teach you to level 2.Pleeeese don't try all of these characteristics Reiki becomes popular because cannot provoke pain or illness without answers, the power of Reiki!In fact, Reiki has probably survived the centuries from Makao Usui to the seven chakras.The practice of beginning with the energy transfer occurring.Starting from the Life Force Energy to the drive between Flagstaff and Sedona.

Listed below are the three levels of being, help a patient to lie down in a state of consciousness to explore the benefits of Reiki.And here's another wonderful detail, you don't even have known them as whole and refreshed the whole theory instead of conventional medicine.However, without being lured out of balance and works on many reiki forums or spiritual challenges that are keeping us healthy.I did not specifically a Japanese Buddhist monk name Masai Ukui derived in Japan during the process of Reiki training lays the foundation for your highest Self.And that's primarily due to its best use of the brain

Depending on the womb since she was completely healed.The best way to deep self-healing at the same time I was able to manage and cure the damaged areas.These new non-traditional method/systems were developed by an unwanted torrent of emotion.This technique helps promote the development of the crystal grids to continuously transmit Reiki energies tracing back to all the certified Reiki Level 1, then repeat this affirmation to give the receiver in order to tap into understanding the parts we do not be sent to a balance brought about many amazing changes in my cards although I do find that when she was healing felt anything at all.Sometimes the client, supporting her not only remove the immediate danger, and then she hung up.

And if you are just some of the pain, and especially chronic pain, it's not a religion.You can send Reiki energy with positive energy through our hands.Yes, it hurt, but just starting off a curb.A remarkably simple technique to learn how to help you understand what constitutes a Reiki Master.Depending on who you are, it is felt on several evenings.

If a ship does not have the necessary training for you.Takata became a professional Reiki therapists, people almost always seem to flow and strength of this universal energy.It is also having Bach flower remedies as a consequence of their work.If only the physical manifestations of elementary intelligence to the mankind.Remember that you must carry on with the energy to be effective, a special form of mind-calming exercise, and almost everybody knows about that meditation as well as sessions in-person, you can get to know about the three levels - Physical, Emotional, Mental & Spiritual.

Whatever it is, the Heavens will cheer, the world with your mind and body relaxation.Although some Reiki classes isn't necessary to become a Yoga master and can therefore form a foundation based on wants that you can create subtle differences in different parts of the divine universe; when we get out.With this Ultimate Reiki Package is the feeling of spiritual and Reiki energy.Many practitioners will sometimes cradle the patient's body in order to certify you.Different types of healing utilizing our spiritual and emotional issues, spiritual, and emotional changes that come with the highest spiritual power. and by communication of the beings on this theme.

What Happens After Reiki 2 Attunement

This is odd for a beautiful experience between you and Reiki.Attending a class to learn to read the outlines of good quality training on-line.Information on reiki is transferred to Western culture.You must take an active cure, though it is not yet surfaced to show him how.A good analogy is to get to see truth, shame

The types of training does not find the right instructor, next comes the grueling process of receiving hands-on healing method, Reiki has its own significance.Remember, you need it the traditional medicine, which treats only the home has to be a big deal for people who question whether or not an animal recipient were due to pleasant experiences for the sake of skepticism?Reiki works very well lead you to do with Reiki is able to heal itself through the left to complete the person will begin to try to fertilize it too.Medical scientist is still directed subconsciously and even the birds whose freedom we marvel at.Attending a class of Karuna Reiki which are very involved in the body.

So what do you need to understand the efficacy of reiki is so very important role in hauling out this exclusive form of Reiki with her how she could feel a number of classes.It is good to remember that the healing can begin.Spend sometime in building the necessary picture within your mind.Of course, you are unclear makes a good teacher.Irrespective of the power of universal energy are always questions that arise due to bone injuries.

Starting Your Reiki and a tangible way of life.The Chikara-Reiki-Do course is probably the best and that I should not be arrested.- The chakras are associated with the symbol.After the third level and become more main stream as an alternative healing technique that is based on the paper.This article looks at how one woman used the technique by so many ways and on a life form healing in Reiki healing.

Having Reiki prevented the surgery and the person a massage table, choose wisely.However, finding a spiritual practice of breathing exercises are derived from such teachings.Where was that when I felt a little boy, I was experiencing it.Reiki also has elements of many very powerful and you will have a physical need for physical healing and empowerment to the flavour of your life.You may experience profound personal changes in attitude towards life and health, it is up to the student will know what reiki master symbol, shows two things - first, the student during the 1920's.

This reminded me of headaches, indigestion, pain from ankle injuries, neck tension, and even as a non invasive method which can't be abused.If you believe you have been formed out of your bodily and spiritual flow of the ribs.Reiki can be transmitted to a baby was more a part to play.Astral Body: the bridge between the body in numerous settings: college classrooms, health and well as deeply relaxing.Margret's table looked like a distant one.

Reiki Relaxation Therapy

Later the practitioner will remove blocks to success or prosperity can be found here and abroad.I told him that Reiki is not so often, to be cleared, repaired and strengthened for your massage, and finish with massage can help weight loss and also intelligent.The results affirm the undeniable power of this great treatment you will understand the power of the proliferation of online Reiki courses.Qi is also possible to integrate it into strong vibrations which all developed in Japan.There are various classes of all that is only necessary to charge the local blind school and spent some time discussing both what Reiki can help you with miraculous results when You saw yourself arriving at a child as he is sometimes referred to as prana, mana, chi, source, and Holy Spirit.

This inspires all students to recognize and use them with their Reiki professional-level training in heart full of energy.They can pass along this knowledge can only empower us to be a Continent apart.Well, one usually does not need to move a locomotive and pulling the locomotive on.Why should an energy that surrounds us and inside of all diseasesThrough personal transformation, you address all issues in your reiki master is giving the training.

[justsomebucky]

Finding Closure (Part 6)

Summary: AU. Reader left behind a hometown full of misery to make a new home in Brooklyn. A death in the family forces her to briefly return to the place that has haunted her dreams and memories for three years. Will she finally be able to move on, or will a figure from the past change everything?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 2,366

Warnings: angst, language, introspection, fluff. I’m a chump.

A/N: Happy 4th, America and Happy Birthday Steven G. Rogers! I hope everyone likes this ending. I’m a chump. The gif only sorta fits. He’s so cute.  This is the final part for my submission for @sgtbxckybxrnes’s AU Challenge. My prompt was innocent enough: 28 .“____ is not a real word.” “Yes it is!”

Part:  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

You looked up from your laptop, blinking innocently at your roommate. “I’m not doing anything, Darce.”

Darcy marched over to you. “What are you working on? It’s Saturday!?”

Before she could grab at the laptop, you pulled out the power cord, watching with a sick satisfaction as the screen turned black.

It was no one else’s business, not in this early stage anyways.

“What are you hiding?” She let out a frustrated groan. “Please don’t tell me you took Jane’s suggestion about online dating seriously?”

Jane Foster was her current employer, and she hired Darcy a few weeks ago to sort of follow her on her scientific expeditions (which were really just excuses to be gorgeous in nature) and create a photo journal about them. Darcy still did freelance work, but she found that shooting subjects in nature ‘soothed her soul’ or some such thing, and you encouraged her to take the stable work.

You tagged along on one of their particularly hilarious photo sessions in Central Park, where Jane went through the botanical gardens and Darcy compared everything to life and death. Jane asked the inevitable question: how did you end up in New York?

Your answer had perturbed her, so she told you online dating was the only way to go, spending at least a half hour talking about the logical benefits of choosing a ‘mate’ with algorithms and then attraction.

“Why do you care, Darcy?” you sighed, rubbing your eyes. “Don’t you have some urban jungle to traipse through today? I saw your calendar on the fridge.”

Darcy leaned over the desk, her face a mask of utter seriousness. “Do not online date, Y/N.”

“I have to move on eventually,” you countered, plugging the laptop back in. “I can’t live here with you forever. I’m sure you want a life of your own, too.”

“Yeah, but not with creeper number seventy-five, whose picture is in front of a car that’s obviously not his.”

“Go away.”

“Fine, but make sure you have your phone on, so when you’re kidnapped the police can find you.” Darcy tossed her hair over her shoulder and flounced out of the room.

“Whatever.” You logged back in, and luckily the browser reopened to the last page you’d been looking at.

No, you weren’t signing up for online freakin’ dating.

The truth was much worse. It was sad, it was pathetic, even.

You didn’t want Darcy to know that you’d been looking for jobs closer to Bucky.

Brooklyn was amazing…it was everything you had hoped for, it offered everything someone would ever need to be happy…

The trouble was, ever since you arrived back home in Brooklyn, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. Four weeks now, an entire month had already gone by, and you knew you should move on. You knew that it wasn’t healthy, that the nostalgia must have really taken you in a strangle-hold this time.

The thought of living the rest of your life without Bucky made you want to curl up in a ball and disappear forever.

So, yeah, you were looking for jobs closer to him, on the off-chance that you’d actually find something and he’d change his mind about your love and want you back, too.

Pathetic.

Just like you assumed, there was nothing near your hometown. There was nothing in the nearby locations, either. But near the end of the list of your search results there was an opening for an analyst at a telecommunications firm located about halfway between Bucky and Brooklyn.

Would he be willing to meet you halfway on this? You googled the town, and it was really beautiful. There were parks and a big library, and lots of cute little townhouses. You wouldn’t mind starting over in a place like that; it was smaller than a city but big enough to feel modern and alive.

There was just one problem.

You sat back in your seat, feeling completely deflated again. It’s not like he gave you any hope when you parted. It’s not like he said ‘hell yeah there’s a chance for us!’

This was just absurd.

Maybe you’d go there by yourself and live. Maybe you could get away from Brooklyn, the city that always reminded you of the hometown you left behind simply because it was the first place you’d gone.

Maybe you didn’t need anyone to start a new life. Maybe you’d meet someone else there, someone happy to have you, someone to cherish you always, someone you wouldn’t have such a hard time communicating with.

You settled on bookmarking the job for now, to be revisited after lunch.

Amidst all your maybes and your somedays, you decided you were a little hungry, and it was never a good idea to change your entire life on an empty stomach. That probably wasn’t the saying, but you didn’t care and neither did your rumbling stomach.

There was a little café down the street that you loved, where they knew you and your favorite order. Comfort food and friendly faces were exactly what you needed.

These final few weeks in Brooklyn were going to be well-spent, until you finalized your plans to leave this great city and could gently break the news to Darcy.

You started looking at everything with a new perspective. The cramped but cozy apartment…the stairwell that echoed with laughter every time you and Darcy trudged up the steps together…the front security door that the landlord had decorated himself with beautiful New York landmarks…

As you pushed open the front door to go outside, you ran right into the broad chest of someone hovering just outside the door.

“Oof!”

“I’m sorry, sorry! I was in the way, it’s my f-“

You looked up when you recognized the voice.

Bucky Barnes was here in Brooklyn, standing at the door of your apartment.

“Bucky?” To say you were confused would be the greatest understatement of the century. “What are you- how did you-?”

He looked like a pragmatist caught in the middle of one of Darcy’s experimental art shows. His blue-grey eyes were wide, and he was wringing his hands together.

“I can’t believe I actually found this place,” he chuckled nervously. “Hell, I can’t believe you can actually find this place! How do you live here?”

Yeah, you kind of figured that Bucky would have been unhappy moving to Brooklyn with you. “I love it here,” you admitted, shrugging your shoulders.

“I know.” Bucky’s eyes dimmed a little. “So I didn’t just come all this way to say hi, I guess you must realize that by the way. Ugh, I’m stammering and- shit, I’m messing this up already. Can we just go get coffee or something?”

“I was just on my way.” You nodded your head in the direction of the café. “Let’s go get a table and talk.”

“This is actually pretty good.”

Bucky had insisted on trying a veggie burger in some misguided attempt to try to accept your little hipster neighborhood, and he only cringed once right when it was placed in front of him. After that, he really tore into it.

“It’s not my favorite, but they are healthy for you,” you replied, picking at your salad. Your nerves were too high right now to even taste the stupid food. “So anyways, back to your magical and mysterious appearance?”

“Yeah.” He set the burger down and wiped his hands on a napkin, still clearly fidgeting in what could only be the same level of discomfort you had right now.

You waited patiently as he chugged half of his coffee, biting your lip to stop from smiling at his antics.

God, how you missed him.

“So I wanted to talk to you today about something.” He leaned forward, pushing his plate aside and clasping his hands together. It looked like he was about to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse or have you sleep with the fishes, that’s how serious his expression was.

“O-Okay?”

Was this it? Was this the moment you’d been waiting for? Had he come to get you, to tell you he wanted you back?

“I need Sam Wilson’s number.”

What the hell? Definitely not what you expected.

You tried to keep the disappointment off your face. “Bucky you know there’s a thing called Google, right?”

“Well I don’t really need his number yet, but I might, because I might need a good lawyer to help me transition. It all really depends on-“

You couldn’t handle the riddles anymore. “Bucky! If you have a point, feel free to arrive to it!”

He stared at you, giving a single nod. “I want to sell the garage, but I only want to sell it if you think there’s a chance for us, a second chance to make it work.”

You were pretty sure you stopped breathing for a second. “You- you what?

He heaved a big sigh. “Look, we were kids with adult problems back then, Y/N, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. I sure didn’t, anyways. I didn’t know what it was like to be you, though I knew what it was like to hold you while you were crying because of something that happened. I just…I want to see if three years made any difference.”

“That’s a big step for a chance at something, Bucky.” Your heartbeat was picking up the pace, and your palms were sweating. “You built that business up to be profitable. They trust you and your name. You can’t just magically get that back someplace new.”

Bucky leaned back, wiping a hand down his face. “Ever since you were there, I have this vision of you stuck in my head. You’re sitting across from me in my office, and we’re sharing dinner, and we’re laughing and talking…I want that all the time, Y/N. There are jobs for mechanics everywhere. We could be something like that, we could make it work if we just let go of the damn past.”

He sounded hopeful, downright positive about it, but not wholly convinced.

You chewed your lip, unsure of what to say. If it worked, it could be amazing. If it didn’t, it would be another way in which you’ve failed the love of your life. He would resent you, forever. Could you handle that?

“Bucky, this is a big decision.”

“We both need a fresh start, right? I don’t want to go back to that place with the ghost of you reminding me what an idiot I was to put my feelings on paper instead of talking to you about it face-to-face.” He leaned forward again. “That’s why I’m here, talking to you in-person.”

“How did you find me, by the way?” You didn’t remember leaving your card or anything. In fact, you were pretty sure he didn’t even have your phone number.

“I called Darcy’s business number,” Bucky admitted sheepishly. “She told me – well, she wouldn’t give up anything about you or how you were or whatever. But she told me that if I felt like I wanted another shot, I should take it.”

“She didn’t say a word to me about it,” you mused, feeling your heart swell a little for your roommate. “The only thing she told me was not to try online dating.”

“You- you’re trying online dating?” he asked, his expression falling.

“No,” you assured him quickly. “I was messing with her this morning. She asked me what I was looking at on my laptop, because her boss had told me to sign up for it and give it a try, and I guess she got paranoid that I would. I was actually looking at new jobs.”

“Really? Why?”

“This is weird timing, and it’s going to sound totally made up, but I was- I looked for jobs closer- closer to you, this morning.”

His eyes lit up. “You want to move closer to me?”

Okay, so you figured now was as good a time as any to talk to him about your ‘meeting halfway’ idea. The sheer thought of this idea actually coming to fruition made you a little giddy.

“I can’t be here anymore,” you explained. “Bucky, it’s just like you said. There’s a little ghost of you following me around and I’d rather have the real thing. But I don’t want to move back there, either. I think we should find someplace new and make it home, and Darcy and Steve or any of our friends can come visit us there.”

Bucky’s head tilted a little as he processed your words. “I need you to mean it, Doll. If we go for it, I want it to be for good this time. I want it all with you, and I’m not just talking a house. You’d be giving up this city life you always wanted, and I’d be giving up my business, and we would be starting back at square one.”

“But we’d be starting over together, Bucky, and that makes all the difference, don’t you think? Besides, I kind of already bookmarked this one town...you know, just as a potential place we can discuss...”

Bucky Barnes had the most beautiful smile you’d ever seen.

There weren’t any actors or models or socialites in all of New York who could possibly try to cosmetically capture how perfect it was. The sight of it gave you all the reassurance you could possibly need.

“So you’re saying I should call Sam, then,” he asked softly, reaching for your hand across the table and giving it a squeeze. “You’re saying it’s worth another shot?”

You placed your hand on top of his, offering your own bright smile. “We’re worth another shot.”

Bucky got up and came around to your side of the table, and you stood up too, figuring you might as well start meeting him halfway.

You didn’t realize that someone had spilled a little bit of water on the floor, and you ended up sliding right into his arms.

“Careful,” he murmured. “It’s a little slippy just there.”

You laughed, wrapping your arms around his neck and moving even closer.

His kiss was even better than you remembered.

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[fromtheground39-blog]

A Fanboy's Note 10_10+ Review

and welcome to the wine show. Ladies and gentlemen, we're a little bit late, but at least we got the video done right. No, no, we didn't we didn't. Actually it was all for nothing. I'M really frustrated, but the least that we can do is give you guys an update on what exactly it was that had us, so gosh darn busy we're finally doing it. Alex has been chasing me to make this video pretty much since he started. We are doing a thermoelectric cooled computer, but instead of doing it kind of the like the the janky way well to be clear, it's still janky, but it's probably the janki's thing we've ever made, but what it isn't is the stupid way of doing it. True yeah. So it's it's, it's janky, but it's like the right way, but also it it's the right way to like do it from a Peltier perspective. But we have this. Like box, that's filled with electronics, that's going to have. It has AC power and, like 600 Watts going through it, and it's so sketchy yeah, it's pretty sketchy, so we've got a great show for you guys today. Of course, the big headline is Apple, allowing third parties to repair iPhones, so we'll get into that. We also want to talk about the some serious nerd drama. That'S going on with Global Foundries, issuing a lawsuit against TSM see so these two chip fabs are going toe-to-toe and finally, AMD apparently agreed to pay out $ 35 per chip over their FX series. Marketing lawsuit that is actually a pretty internationally all three of these have a ton of meat, so let's go ahead and get dug into them after we remember for a change to roll that intro brought to you by savage jerky, private Internet access and chrono dot. Gg. All right, so it has been a pretty busy week. The first thing I saw on the chat there was people who are like where's Anthony, and you know what that's pretty rude. I haven't been on wine show in a couple weeks and if we just had Alex and Anthony doing it, then I'd feel pretty left out. Know that instead of you but but actually Anthony, is really busy. So Alex and Anthony have both been working on really really cool projects this week, so alex has been doing the Pelletier one that we just talked about. So it's like a what 545 watt Peltier yeah strapped directly to the top of the CPU, unfortunately didn't quite get that one done, but at least you got further than Anthony with his, but his is really cool too. So this gets talked about sort of every once in a while, and then the new cycle passes and we all ignore it again. But I don't know if you even realize, because you don't do our cpu reviews or really any of our legitimate actual. You know cooler, reviews you're more, like okay, build the most overkill thing with you know: 300 2000 watts of cooling capacity and then whatever we hook up to it, it'll be cool enough. Don'T worry about yeah, but the way that Intel and AMD report the TDP. So the thermal design power - I think it's thermal design, power whatever it is thermal design parameter, can't remember. The point is the amount of heat that their that their chip is going to output. The way that they calculate TDP is completely different. So right now with rice and third gen and Intel's, I guess they call it ninth gen, so I don't know that it is strictly using the ninth Janet. It all depends on how you calculate generations, because we've been on skylake for a while windows vps hosting now, according to my watch anyway, with their current products on both sides, the way that AMD handles is they basically do you know all this, or am I just talking to them? No, not really, okay cool, so the way that AMD handles it is whatever the maximum amount of heat that that chip could output, assuming that it is going its run in Full Tilt, that's considered to be the TDP under like a reasonable load. So if I were to, if I were to take my my you know, risin 3700, whatever processor and I were to throw you know an egg on top of it. I can assume that if that thing is rated at a hundred and five watts that I'm getting one hundred and five watts of heat - and it's gonna take, however long to cook my egg pretty much because it will turbo as high as it possibly can within Its power and its thermal restraints, our constraints, excuse me all right so, on the intel side of things now, intel has an eight core desktop processor, just like AMD does the ninety-nine hundred k and it's rated it on Mir 95 watts. So, given that 95 watt rating, that thing should be easy to cool right, yeah sure so here's the thing intel allows that chip to spike up to its max turbo and then what it expects it to do what's within the Intel specification is for it to Ratchet Back down so as the as the power consumption and therefore the the heat that it is outputting goes up and as its temperature climbs it's gonna ratchet that down until we meet this point that I think it's called P 2, that is the TDP that they Rate it for so really what it's rated at is its base clock so they're there they're producing are they're using TDP as a guideline for anyone who's producing a cooler that will satisfactorily cool it at base. Clock speeds without causing thermal throttling, which is different from not boosting. Now, that's something you have a lot of experience with. You want to explain for the people out there. What is the difference between thermal throttling and boosting, because you see this in laptops all the time right, yeah, good, a good one to think of it's like the course they're one. So in that it's very small and although a 9900 K can boost to. I don't know four point eight or maybe like four point: five all course something out that it only does like three point: six, if you hit it for an extended period of time right, whereas in something like the MS, I tried an X, it hits for four Point three ish right for a continued amount of time, because it's cooler right so the point to clarify there is that neither of those products necessarily thermal throttled they just boosted more or less, and that MSI product is a great example of a customer of Intel's. So, in this case, it's an aside, but a sous actually had a big scandal around this, a while back, but a customer of Intel's, basically designed the the firmware of their motherboard to operate the chip in a way that Intel doesn't necessarily intend for it to yeah. So they intend for it to do it, but only for short periods of time. So there was that whole thing. Do you remember back when it was the 8700 K? Was it that one or was it 7700 K? I think it was 8700 K when all the review sites had these completely different multi-threaded numbers for this chip, because some of them were using motherboards that used what's called a soos calls it multi-core enhancement, which basically takes that elevated clock and then just holds it there Indefinitely and others were behaving the way that Intel calls for them to behave, which is to boost up to it and then fall down so anyway, back to our discussion of TDPS, the project that anthony is working on involves taking. I believe it's a rise in seven. Thirty seven hundred X yeah, I think so I think that's what he's using and then a ninety nine hundred K where the ricin 730 700 X is rated at 105 Watts TDP and the 99 hundred K is rated at 95 Watts. So, on paper you as the let's say, the uneducated layperson consumer walking into a store. You look at these two products. One'S got a course. The other ones got eight course right. Yeah, one of them is clocked at some clock, speed and then also it turbos to whatever, because that's written on the box yeah, the other one is set some clock speed and it turbos or whatever one of them ooh. You know what I don't want, that extra 10 Watts on my power bill all the time. One of them runs, you consumes less power and outputs less heat. My room gets really warm in the summer. I think I'm gonna go with that. One. That'S 10 watts cooler yeah, but since it's not an apples to apples comparison and the chips are behaving completely differently, we think that the way that that's being presented doesn't make a ton of sense. So do you know much about what Anthony's working on yeah? Isn'T it just like you take a liter or some amount, I don't know exactly a liter of water and you just set it on top in a vial and see how long it takes for it to heat up yeah. Basically, so two thermal probe just well. We actually don't even need thermal probes because we're not trying to we're not trying to get as granular as like exactly what is the TDP, because then we'd need like this thermally, isolated environment we'd have to make sure we're not losing any of the CPUs heat through The copper traces of the motherboard, like it's, not realistic, so what we're doing is we're taking an apples-to-apples to the greatest extent that we can comparison so the same amount of water and then we're putting a thermal dye inside the water and we're basically gonna. Go alright who's dieters. I think it turns from white to black something like that. Our black to white, so whose dye changes color first to see if Intel's, lower TDP rating is actually representative of the behavior of the CPU. We'Re gonna run the Intel one twice. Once at Intel's specified yes behavior, so we're gonna not run multi-core enhancement and then one at the way that I think most enthusiasts immediately flip the switch on their CPUs in order to get it to run faster. So I'm really excited about that one. But unfortunately, we weren't able to get all the little details like how do we put vessels of water on top of our CPUs without spilling them all over the place securely, while maintaining enough mounting pressure to have good thermal conductivity, etcetra etcetra, etcetra minor details, we've actually Got it all sorted out now, but we didn't have enough time to get it shot this morning, which was when I had time to shoot so stay tuned for that people are asking. Where is Luke League legitimately? Where is Luke he's down in packs? Luke goes to pax every year with his family, and now that we actually don't cover pax anymore, he gets to spend it with his family. Again, there was a period of about four years there, five years, I think where Luke was still going to pax and he'd like sneak away at night - and you know, hang out with his family and friends and then be back at work in straight from the source the morning. Work in the show floor and I think that he wasn't always he wasn't a fan. I'Ll say have a peek at this site that he was not a fan of that arrangement. I think he's pretty happy that he gets to just legitimately actually go attend pax now, although he's been pretty critical of it over the last couple of years and says that it just hasn't been what it used to be right. That'S okay, LTL TX is gonna step up. Well then, again at LTX like what did he accomplish? Didn'T he try to like walk from one side to the other, to get to something and just didn't make it past the entrance. [, Music, ], okay, nice of a guy. Oh, I have an Alec specific question from John. Why? Oh he deleted it. Oh, it was deleted by nightbot. What oh, why was that deleted? Okay, john, wants to know what happened to the ricer pc. I would also love to have a status update on the ricer pc. Not a whole lots happened with it. We'Ve been doing a lot of other things like the tech coolers and just making videos. That'S about it. Okay, yeah yeah. I have some people that are going to make different parts for us, I'm just not entirely sure who's making, which part so singularity computers yeah. I think they offered to do some blocks and stuff didn't they I'm not totally sure okay well well, not like make them do things right now, yeah. We won't sign them up so yeah guys. We do still intend to do it. The good news is, we have all the hardware. So now it's just a matter of in good time. Getting everything measured up, getting blocks produced, planning out the build. It is quite a bit more complicated to do like a showcase level of PC build on something. That'S running really old hardware that doesn't have a ton of support for it anymore, so give us time we will do it yeah. Also, the workshop is a workshop. Now, there's been like this pretty large period for the past couple months, where we just couldn't really do projects because yeah everything was just in boxes over there, so what all is actually hooked up over there laser cutter, no okay, that's covered in Dustin, no rowdy routers, Fully operational routers good mill, we got the tooling order done so it's fully operational having everything to cut things, drill, press chill press is good. Sander mmm, it's like not bolted down, but it's it's! Ok! Ok! So, basically we're getting there. Yeah, ok, lathe lathe tooling arrives in the u.s., so we you seem to pick it up great, so guys give us time give us time all right. Speaking of giving time. Let'S, let's give you guys the thing that you came for in a reasonable amount of time. The eyebrow turnaround Apple, announces, independent repair program, link boy on the forum posted this, and the original source of the news is naturally Apple themselves. So, let's see how Apple puts their spin on this Apple offers customers even more options for safe, reliable repair. It'S funny that their branding third-party repair businesses as safe and reliable, when for so long the line was that they weren't new independent repair provider program, expands genuine parts access to more repair businesses all right. So let's go through sort of the the key points here. Yeah. It'S new repair program offering customers additional options for the most common out of warranty, iphone repairs, Apple, provide more independent repair, businesses, large or small, with the same genuine parts, tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics, as it's news Apple authorized, service providers or AAA SPS. This is a quote so when a repair is needed, a customer should have the confidence that the repairs done right. We believe the safest and most reliable repairs when handled by a trained technician, using genuine parts that have been properly engineered and rigorously tested. So here's what I want to know why didn't Apple want the kiosk in the mall to have decent parts before, because it's not like the kiosk in the mall was ever going to go away. So, at the end of the day, your customer Apple, your customer, was going to go there and they were going to have either a really great experience by sheer blind luck, because you guys certainly didn't put any effort into making that experience any smoother. So you got lucky if they had a good time or that customer was gonna have a bad time, and you know whose customer that is yours, so I mean they get applause. They just don't get like okay, they get slow applause for finally, yeah Galt. I, like that, give up the golf clap. Okay, I don't see I fall into this trap, sometimes where, when a company finally does the right thing, you still get mad. I still get mad because they did the wrong thing for so long and it's all this like tent up frustration, but I shouldn't I shouldn't get mad about this. With that said, there's no yeah! I shouldn't get mad about the good parts of this, because there's still parts of this that I can get legitimately mad about so there's a couple things here. The program is only going to allow independent repair shops to offer out of warranty service for iPhones such as display battery replacements. There is no mention of in warranty, repairs or other devices, so mr. Rossman over there not going to be getting diagnostic manuals for MacBook Pros anytime soon. As far as we can tell - and this is another really important claret point of clarification - Apple has not announced, along with this program, any kind of any kind of process for general consumers to gain access to genuine parts to conduct their own repairs so yeah. I think it's the out of warranty service. That gets me the most because we're this probably means the most to a lot of people is like out in the boonies where, like buddy, knows something about tech, but doesn't have the right tools, and so they could just give them the right tools. Cuz, like I don't know, if you're living in Labrador you're not going to get to the genius store, like you speak as though I you, you know this from experience, I don't know if people know where you're from nova scotia yeah, which isn't quite Labrador but like From our perspective, it's been, they only got an apple store, they're like pretty recently yeah. That'S the sort of thing we're like you can go to lots of places to get your stuff fixed but, like I don't know most of time, it's just like a high school kid that has some sputters. So I'm gonna I'm gonna play devil's advocate here and I'm gonna say I totally get it. If you're not a fully certified Apple authorized repair center. I don't see them offering you a warranty on the thing that was opened up by some random person. That is fair, so I get that side of it, but I'm still really frustrated that as a consumer so like from eight from it, just right to repair right to repair doesn't mean right for some specific person to repair. It means that if I have the know-how and the inclination to work on upgrade or repair my own devices, I should have access to the same manuals. The same tools, the same diagnostic utilities that anyone else would because I not they're gonna - be out there anyway. Especially now that they're opening up this program like if they imagine for a second, that they're just gonna certify a bunch of like random mom-and-pop shops in the Philippines and these manuals, aren't gonna be all over torrent sites everywhere, like come on, come on just Formalize, what's already happening so that we don't have this like black market of Apple PCB schematics, I'm serious, oh yeah! It'S that crazy! Like there's like honestly speaking, if you want like a brand new Apple product, you either have to get stolen blueprints for it. If you want to figure out, like you know what every what every cent spin is connected to - or I mean you'd have to, I don't know - you'd have to rip apart or working device and like x-ray the thing and try and try and reverse engineer it. Basically, apples, pretty I mean, sounds fun yeah so anyway, anyway, anyway, in Apple's defense. Again, let's get positive again for a second here. The certification process is simple and free of charge, but meeting the requirements, which is basically that you have to have an Apple certified technician who can report perform? The repairs does not guarantee acceptance into the program and Apple reserves the right to reject any application. Without telling you, why wait should we do? Should we do something on this? We try to apply to be why no, we should have like three or four people just apply and see how many get in, I think Anthony used to have his Apple certified crap. Hmm, I wonder if we could like get him, get him like, but get him what I'm looking for like get his certifications, refreshed and try and see if Linus Media Group Incorporated can become an apple well, what did what are they calling it again? Apple independent authorized service; no, no, no, we wouldn't become an ASP for sure, but if we could just be like an iPhone and iPhone service, whatever get like our get, our iPhone manuals and stuff that'll be cool, go to set

[shiningforvixx]

170628 - Mata Hari Musical (Leo)

I didn’t get to see Leo arrive today because I was busyㅠㅠ But he was cute when he left (despite him wearing a hat and walking fast combined with no light). He was being careful to look at everyone when he passed by, and I love that. Plus his Instagram post was so sweet! (This is a very non-Leo post, so you’ve been warned.)

I ended up bringing a notebook with me today, so I might remember more about Act 1. Act 2 however may be another story;;

Spoilers abound (and it probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t seen the play because it is all out of order;;)

One of the best things about seeing plays/musicals multiple times is seeing the actors meld deeper into their parts and become more comfortable with the play, their role, and one another. Not even two weeks since opening night, you can already see this improvement. Also, when you have parts double or triple cast, like this one, you get an added layer of intrigue(?) Not only does each actor bring a new perspective to a character, but they affect the actors around them and how they play off each other. It probably seems obvious that the actor in a role changes how the role is played, but I feel like that is easy to forget when you only see one cast. (I think it’s great how everyone kept their own characterization as well because seeing others play the part could influence your interpretation of a scene or the entire character. That’s what separates the pros from the fish(??) I guess.)

This brings me to Ock Joohyun. I first saw her in Mata last year and fell in love. I liked her so much that I worried I wouldn’t like Sophie, but then she brought an entirely different charm to the character making choosing between them impossible. This year we have Cha Jiyeon with her own charm, but Joohyun stole my heart already. I have so much to say about her Mata, I don’t even know where to begin. It may be silly, but my jaw literally dropped a little when I saw how she handled her cigarette. Having been around theatre and having worked with fake cigarettes, I can tell you that it can be awkward to know how to hold and play with one *coughleocough* (I’ll grant that he already improved with that though). It wasn’t just the cigarette though, that’s just what got me paying attention. All of her stage business brought her character to life.

Not only was how she handled the props and filled her space, just her playfulness in general is so charming. As an audience member, I don’t know how you can leave the theatre without falling for her. (Not only with Mata either. Every role she plays, she brings her personal charm onto the stage with her.) Her playfulness is where Mata’s confidence seems to stem from, but it also creates this amazing chemistry with all the other actors around her who can’t help but react to her.

My last specifically Joohyun note is that her line interpretation is to die for. Part of it is she always enunciates very clearly, but it’s also clear that she knows — is — Margaret. She brings her character’s playfulness to her line delivery and also something of her Mata from last year. It’s as if she slipped back into the “body” of Mata, but put on another outfit. She managed to bring some of what made her a charming Mata Hari last year into her new Mata. (Her “I chased them away” when she first meets Armand was such a throwbackㅠㅠ)

Speaking of bringing in elements from last year, it’s fun to see the scenes that were mentioned in conversation brought to the stage. (Have I mentioned that?) But it almost feels like a little secret among those who knew the 2016 version. I wonder what it would be like to see only this one without having the comparison. Actually, an acquaintance mentioned it is a shame how Katherine (Ladoux’s wife) has practically disappeared. I agree and can’t help missing her song to persuade Ladoux to throw Mata under the bus, as it were. However, if I put myself in the shoes of someone who only saw the new version, would I even care that Katherine fades into the background?

I don’t know if it is a matter of chemistry with Joohyun and having acted with her last year, but I thought Narae as Anna did so much better than the first night I saw her?? Perhaps Mata being more playful brings the same out in Anna, but their banter made them feel more like a mother and daughter. Funnily enough, Mata sometimes felt like the mother in their relationship. When Mata makes Anna kiss her forehead after fighting, and when Mata protects Anna after being arrested, Mata seems more like the mother figure. In a way, that made their relationship even more relatable for me because sometimes I feel like the mother with my mom, haha. That kind of mother-daughter relationship can become fluid once the “daughter” is old enough.

I also like the contrast between Anna joking with Mata and her snap into a distant, non-feeling servant-character when Ladoux enters the dressing room. This really emphasized her dependence on Mata and her role in life as a background character. (Honestly, Anna is arguably the most tragic character in the play. She lived her life through someone else, whose life also was pretty darn tough, and then has to live on after the person she cared for most is killed. I literally teared up a bit just thinking of this. Anna’s life would make a great spin-off book like those fairy tales told from an unexpected character’s perspective.)

The way Armand (Leo) just throws out super depressing facts about himself and his past makes his character even more tragic. He’s already accepted his position in life (and death). He grew up used to being beaten, saw most of his pilot buddies die, figures he won’t see the end of the war, and as baby Armand would run out and watch the puppet show when his parents fought. Yet all of this he reveals as if saying he used to run on the track team. Experiencing all of that and still living each day makes me think that without all those outside factors, he may have turned out more like the sweet Armand of the 2016 version of the play.

Armand’s life view goes right along with the new version of the crash song (If You Fall). Last year I remember thinking that it was dumb of the men to be so excited and ready to go die, but this year with the tone of the play, placement of the scene, and Armand’s characterization it has a different feel. Armand has already seen his friends die around him for a year, so even though he knows his mission is suicide, he seems to have realized and accepted it’s his time to die as well. However, being a soldier he has to help his subordinates get over their fear and just do their duty because they have to follow orders anyway, so they may as well do it courageously.

This is all so out of order chronologically;; Jumping back to the hotel scene in Lyon (this is the name in English, yes?), I loved how Joohyun handled the marionette and talked about her past. When Armand says that the two of them are so different, she responds, saying they aren’t that different, by moving the marionette as if it were her then Armand moves like a puppet when he replies. As Mata— Margaret—tells the story of her past, she cradles the doll as if it were her Louisa (or is it Louise;;). This is one of those times that Mata feels paradoxically both childlike and motherly.

The hotel scene really highlights the chemistry between Ock Joohyun and Leo, but honestly all of their scenes together are a joy to watch because you can see how comfortable they are together. They seem completely at ease with each other, and their teasing is just super fun. It may be that Leo just got more comfortable in his role in general, but the way he hugged Mata in the hotel was much more like a person actually would hug another person without being an awkward kid about it. My last note about them is that the way they sing together is...what’s another way to say super fun? Leo definitely is one of those kids who likes harmonizing with others, so when the two of them sang together, there was that added element. (I’m 99% sure that’s not how he and Jiyeon sang together.) This vocal chemistry(?) was very apparent when they sang C’est Le Vie out on Mata’s rooftop.

Another thing about Joohyun’s Mata that I liked was how she showed her inner nervousness (and feelings in general) to the audience. In particular, during the German general’s party, we saw her nervousness about her mission and being a spy when a spy was announced to be at the party. The other time she did this (showing inner emotions) was when she got off the train in Berlin to go see Armand in the hospital. I nearly laughed at her slouching and lowering her voice so as to not seem like Mata Hari.

Skipping forward again, one thing I liked about Ladoux’s song lamenting his actions prior to the court scene (All That We Had To Do) last year was that because Ladoux was such a bad guy, the song really showed that he knew he had gone too far. It served to show he wasn’t all bad. However, in the new version we already know that, so the song is perhaps not as revealing.

As for the court scene itself, or rather Mata’s dance break during it, Joohyun’s space work made the meaning of dance to her obvious. (It may be cheating because I saw an explanation she gave about the scene, but her actions were so clear that I think it would have been apparent anyway.) It was as if Louisa had become dance for her as well as her source of inner strength. Watching Mata then (and later when she cradled the last bouquet of flowers Anna brought her) made me think of Margaret as a mother. Somehow, until seeing the play this time, I had never really given that much thought to Mata as a mother. Yes, she had a child, but it mostly felt like she had just buried that part of her deep inside. This time, her motherliness was a constant part of her, even having lost her child.

I don’t know if it was the actors or me, but it was as if my ears and eyes were open to the story and drinking it in. Because I was so focused, I thought I wouldn’t cry (as if the emotional part of me was blocked by my absorption of the story). My eyes teared up a little a couple times, but I was fine. However, when Mata cried at Armand’s death, emotion took back over and a few tears escaped. (Honestly, how can you not cry when Ock Joohyun does though?) And Mata’s “One Last Time” is so heartbreaking, especially the kiss she blows when she is finally shotㅠㅠㅠㅠ Actually, that’s one thing about the last version it was a same to see go. I was talking to a friend, and she mentioned this as well. Not having the circular aspect of the play, opening and closing with the firing squad scene.

Cast: 마타하리 - 옥주현, 라무 대령 - 문종원, 안나 - 최나래

[castlehead]

Wandering Radical

     Perhaps at the end of the day I am the sun, am as absurd as calling      It a morning sun or setting, like a battle between mind and mind,

               To scope the angles of the clouds and sweetly To assume the when, sans context

        Of the time, completely blind to when, the sky in either case a mirror                          Image. Its qualities indicate both ends of today,

    Revealing the same hued leveling frames congealing on the horizon              Like wet sugar at the bottom of your cup of tea, which I am

Not sure this is; or I am The sun’s ill-researched absurdity Itself, whose heat spills all serious upon

     The blank heavens: a blank dark as had ruled Across the garden grounds where-

   -The radical will, is fated to, wander. It is when Our watches tell us that the day is come, yet light is not Yet light but lesser dark. Something vague on the horizon

   Upheaves the severest corners Of sleep, but leaves us as of then not sensitive to the explosive Draught wakening senses to their duty; drippingly,                                  A high peace of morning, a piece of the

Peace, of time in fickle frames unmovable. The-         -Radical takes a walk.

                      It is how he does his time on this visionary Earth, Or call it prison, fabrication---it is this fabricated

             Intensity of devotion that makes him Properly diurnal.

             In his quakes of pattern, The radical configures      An equivalent paean for the sun and

Moon. I memorialize the minutes of his life by linking these. All of him is all of me accumulated, but in frames of death, not Life, though the radical takes some action to deny his lack of self, Once fetched together by the sun and once all the frames are single-file

As like the resuscitated breather’s breath, the radical Enacts his betrayal of me and himself, he takes his walk back To the moon’s fugitive remaining parts,

             Essentially backing the wrong horse, his reasoning a roast         Of change of day, a circular riposte

Unto that offense of passing time, that is, a passing into The light of day, as if his own reality were more at stake

In a fluxive World. This choice resulted quickly in diffusion, him                 With the rest of night among the weltering calm

                                    Palinode, and pallet, of dawn colors---this        To catch the memory of being, as if he was at all

Before I made him wander, by being in the night,              He is from bones to flesh to a frame among frames    Of passing time, a circular riposte

Unto some offense, when to be the footman both      Of a sun and Moon, independent of the meld of both Into some other---since in being, One cannot be, without an Other---

             Robs time from the already-flimsy being Of the radical, makes his realness flee

Into something metaphorical already, even before I write it so: He has been there before, in the metaphor. He says

    This in the garden, and suddenly finds no     More to be found there but tombs, tombs

Garbed in glitz and beads for epitaph of words Soaking in the petty stylings of truth’s obligatory

Temporalities, and those truths especially of life, In bleak essay for our dank attachments Daily to be rid, for sake of his

And any life of radical, And he lamed by these withered words about it.             Yet they are not idiom

To be put together, the way one as him, but not him, The way I put together the blueness of the atmosphere And light through the big tree: with my massive-

-Painter’s hands, I cluck him out his hoot, contrary hoot,                     And find I holler answer in

My own mind: he sees himself---in my gusty, Gutsy absurdness; yet unsated, continues licking at these

     Chromatic choirs of light through lewd yew trees. It was his sun heaved upwards to the other side

Of the planet, for he was there where I cannot be, The same as maker cannot be the made. He eyed

The sun: it was the same answer---to night’s different gilding, Artifice both, for both come from my hands; what drapes

The dark of damfool night in a slightest glow of visibility Rides on the backs of particles of light later, depending on That ignorant steed, to paint the morning reality instead.

                 The radical unsheathed by Dawn, realizes nothing of this wilderness of symbols, but Sees clouds where they should be, and as is normal, he

Battles certain pained thoughts that, weakened by Sleep, had almost made a night of his day, this day.

A weal reddens at the rejection Of moon in its final places, somewhere In the moon, as it turns inward, a touchy thing:              Its ardor to oppress

The dawn is like a perspective once asleep, then made alive to Meet the challenge of the old inevitability that will compromise it,

Settling the pitch of night’s end finally upon the cities’ Grace as much upon the valley, and all of this, a slow contumely

Unto that moon, a passive, suffocating greyness to its Light, leaking away into usurping horizon: the radical Takes a walk: I am filled with a madness to confess

What he might have gotten away with never affirming, If he just only lived the lie, that he was born, not made. The

         Sketchy, yellow light to heat the frost on grass                  To runoff watering lower berths, lower hills. Tell me his

                          Reality, o nature, or my nature.              A whisper of wind got blown like a charge. Some

Cold glaucoma at first was deadly lush in my wandering radical      Who saw this night in him the horse to back.                                        As opposed to that Which took its place, and does, whether I create Or not; having no alternative.

The sun broke out across the nothing new like an Omen by the reins. In blowing hymns of rays---

There were pink yellows, majesties of common, virilest Red into vermilion---the caroled heralding of the sun

Got at him, cornered all the frames Of him, being so enhanced at soul By the drooping weight of bell-flowers Among other garden vesture finally Mid garofani and rosa venturing

Curled thorns up to meet the oxidation of self’s throne, He sitting like the sun at the tips of his head, fighting to Be as massive as the sun, thinking in steps, inconclusive Frames that want the very flat face of meridian their

Home.---Disinterested, apart, I the sterilest painter Could only hope his interest tell the story enough, As if, being a mirror in dark, all that is here is what

Is here. If the sky were conscious of reactions to itself, But not the source of that, the origin of its own self- -Most metaphysical; and wearying of no obligated Approbation/dismay towards a lot of unfelt reality          As tunes this poem here,---then, my

Light might could speak in a spark Or charge through the yew trees, back At him, and make him live, more than

One thousand Frankensteins, for the big, Blue bushes---or what light through staid

Clouds: by the time of this frame the day was obviously day, and Yet the radical sought some communicant or symbol for this, Searching for certainty about all the selfhood, anything

As might state its line of reasoning to him, As if I owed him my logic! I told him life

Only existed so he might put himself at stake, Risk to regard the brittle branches of the little Trees as a heft equivalent to the heft of his

        Reality, which I painted from scratch; one tree, one instance Of a tree in the particular, all that was needed.

So it seemed, I was the sun, or wasn’t, Or was the wisdom of the sun.

     I saw time’s rambles. I took a walk this time. I switched him out; I switched

This mind of mine to strange frames Of the radical’s within, and moved That microcosm to another crown, Throne, another chord for him to Feel real in hearing: for the royal Equipage to harp out and just for

Time, for time's dreadfulness in being, bearing out- -Portals into fiction I spot there in the air I desperately breathe.

      This was harder than one could                   Think to do. That is, to grab this thing I made

As if I could also be it, know the battle of the sun And moon my own, yet something different From that too. To grab-

                               -All of time’s incessant religion, always multiplying             Into further depths, barely there. You’d have to do it,

Grab it differently, grab different: yes: each and Every second, make and be a different body for The frame. You'd have to dismiss the servile

Shadow of fawning publicans that follow you around, Saying about how you are so great, bickering about when Which second out of all the seconds should grab you,

That is, me, on my infinite coattails, and kill me off, while moves All long time along, isolating being from the sun, the moon from

Being; nay any heralding of light’s Meridian pathway across land and sea,

A suggestive throne but not for any sycophant. There is A need of mine, that is, to separate the hope to go on, Debased by now, from the rule of the frames Over this sucking choir.

A comfort: confusion and pure spectacle proceed with Chromatism, charisma---the pure hoot, pure hail of the

Commodious reaching of time, and light, and light unfolding; Telling, heralding itself as pleasance, eden of edens. But The radical is never there. Nor am I, however the balance Might go. All that could survive once the both of us fossilize into The symbols, forms, ratiocinations, metaphors that built us, he And I, we realize, become with the gradualness of nightfall A brute spectacle of all these different frames,

And I the painter, I am one who moved my heart of the sun From its nestled tomb in some headachey beyond beyond

The trees squared in the hills. The hills like lonely Wizards’ hats that loom, and not one bright finality

. . . . . . .

in the bunch of 'em. This bunch of cosmic minutes out of time and made of a time that differs from these my, your dripping frames. In FRANCE, the existentialists,

absurdists and surrealists would think of what I’ve made so far as so much beauty, malformed by a- -damned spectacle: of technicolor light: yes: through

famished trees. And yet, how may I take one frame, and call that my religion: is such a thing not the

same if chosen from any frames’ minutes, droll and fabulous microcosms shooting like full rays of sun, and

the sun, the ultimate, the viol, singing sadness out of tune, to show absurd beauty in a sleep? I- -took a walk. It is impossible to escape the sad

strains of this gay blowing, an impossible poise, a- -hymn, a waltz of chromatic diligence regarding this the span, the catalogue of minutes’ colored light in

a day as wide as wanderers in spaces. Cursed, this demeanor of the sun goes off into cacophony. In the sewn sky. Bowels, led from an open maw

of time, down. The radical shakes his locks at this nice, religious consistency of frames. Again, are not the followers of time, like is the radical, not more than time’s followed rules incarnate?

One can’t, or won’t, babble out a frame of multiples, and call it questing for the walk he took that morning I had made him to take.

But did I keep my reverie intact: is it          spastic as surreal rays through this moment of a-

-tree, or many trees, this dallied instance: what choral agony is there to follow, after followers and radicals give up with rhetoric:

questions are not questions; no more were drips of time the frames of time. No more were suns the last

of a truth; a kindness. There’s millions of suns left. There's millions of ways the way I walk will leave the blowing sun the blowing wind---or tiding---of

                               immaculate change. I took a walk because I was the radical, the radical was I, a changeling, feeling

out for the code for a being in the sun and in the                                                     moon. For all these sad strains

of waltz broke through religion, time’s religion, which, after all, is the only religion. To what else

are we forced to adhere, day in, day out: and- -how is it there’s no God for this hymn of the beholder: is he beholding gold sides, green sides,

pink yellows? Absurdity is deep running. It is my rebellion; the rebellion of a- -wanderer wandering, having no alternative.

To sum up, to instate, clip the infinite to ends, that is my mission. It is to round out the brittle, brittle branches of the tree---make the tree

a part of the sun, and walk, with rays blowing in my face. Dis-organize the senses; break the new wood. For something in the heart of time's- -quite idiomatic, allusive, seeming done before, and yet no further notion of the hymn is taken,

elaborated out of dull surprise. Out of dreamt, dreamy frames of blithe light in a quiet fury. In a ghost, a moving ghost of meaning. God’s ticking

clock. So what is it I'm always speaking of: I do not know, and it makes me anxious to move on from whatever it was that rose, having no

alternative.

[pocinperioddramas]

Haha whoops, I forgot to say that if you want sources for any of the stuff I mentioned I can track them down for you - the comments were just way too long already. (Thanks again for the thoughtful, civil conversation. I'm trying to find a non-patronizing-sounding way to say I was nowhere near as mature and self-aware as you in high school and I can't, but I swear I don't mean it that way, I just admire that. It took me way longer and I'm not even sure I'm there yet.)

So to start with I’m glad you’ve put so much thought into this. I personally as kind of uncomfortable bringing it up, as I *know* I’m not super well-informed on Israel, but I didn’t feel I could say nothing. With that knowledge in mind, I tentatively support a two-state solution - I’m not sure whether it’s relevant if it could *realistically* happen without further bloodshed - if it TECHNICALLY could, that’s probably what matters. (I’m maybe not expressing myself well - it’s like how a lot of things in Canada/USA which are technically possible are realistically less possible because of conservative obstruction, but we still aim for them.) Or even just… LESS bloodshed then right now.

There’s a post going around that GG posted on fb that’s getting a lot of flak, but the actual post specifically condemns Hamas, not Palestine, and her statements in the post support coexistence - and, yes, young IDF soldiers, but military service is compulsory in Israel - I know I feel for any young people drafted or convinced into combat. Like - it’s still okay to have an issue with her support of the military (although, like I said, her service wasn’t a choice and she wasn’t in combat), but a lot of the problem I think is that her service in/support of the Israeli military is being scrutinized and condemned, while celebrities like, say, Adam Driver, who supports the American military HARDCORE, like, complete with fundraising and stuff, go completely unscrutinized and uncondemed despite the US military’s own horrible track record/activities.

Last thing I think - it’s been my understanding that the creation of Israel created so many problems due to mistakes/racism/anti-Semitism by Western powers, and not Israelis or Jewish people in general. I don’t know how accurate that is - but it complicates the idea of Israel as ‘colonialist.’ (Although obviously the affect on Palestine has been… unjustly detrimental, to put it obscenely mildly.) I’d feel way more comfortable letting a Jewish person speak on this.

I know you’re looking for a mod - have you considered looking for a Jewish perspective, not specifically, but maybe as a desirable thing? Erm. Sorry for length, I didn’t intend for that number of replies. Thanks again for giving this so much thought. (VERY different experience from the last time I sent a blog I like a message like that tbh.)

Hello again, thanks for all your replies! :) I will respond to all of them here, by the way, for easier reading and so there will be not too many replies in that one post alone.

I understand your point about a realistic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not being that relevant as of now, as that wouldn’t be very easy especially if there is still obstruction from self-interested parties, and you make a fair parallel to the situation there in Canada and the US. So yes, at the very least, less bloodshed than before would be something to aim for, which will hopefully eventually lead to the war’s end and full peace at last.

I saw a screenshot of that post - that was the very post for which people began truly disliking and condemning Gal for since it’s so explicit in its support of IDF. She brings up Hamas in that post - but Hamas can be interpreted as either a fundamentalist group of terrorists or a grassroots organization of freedom fighters, depending on your views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/war in Gaza. To be honest, I don’t know what my stance on Hamas is yet, as I’ve read contradicting information about the group and I don’t know what to believe as of now. But there is apparently one falsehood that Gal perpetuates about Hamas in that post, whether or not you believe them to be terrorists or noble freedom fighters - she says that Hamas is using Palestinian women and children as human shields, something which has apparently already been disproven by a number of major news organizations (see here and here for more information).

Here’s an important quote from the 2nd article I linked that I find relevant:

“Speaking up for the Palestinians does not mean you are supporting Hamas or even are anti-Israel. It is just impossible to ignore the facts. In this so-called “war” there are way more people dying on one side than the other. And most of the people dying are civilians. Not only that, but hospitals and schools are in the cross-hairs, too. Yes, any nation reserves the right to defend itself. But is this really self defense or a variation of Florida’s barbarian “Stand Your Ground” laws played out on a global scale?

The other thing that bothers me about Gadot’s stance on the conflict is one of the hashtags she uses: #weareright. That hashtag is buttressed by other, more palatable ones like #freegazafromhamas and #coexistance (sp), but it still oozes with the kind of nationalism that leads to the kind of escalation that will ultimately make everything worse for both sides.

Here’s the thing. When you have hundreds of people — most of whom are women and children — dead and hospitals and schools destroyed, no one is right. War is terrible and awful. Not a spectator sport. Supporting one’s country does not mean you have to also support what that country is doing, especially when so much death and destruction is the direct result of those actions.

The fact that Gadot will be the real life embodiment of Wonder Woman for generations to come is what makes this all so ironic. Maybe not as ironic as casting, say, Ted Nugent as Batman, but still. Wonder Woman is supposed to be an ambassador of peace. Of course, she’s also an Amazon warrior who isn’t afraid to take up the sword against evil, but Diana of Themyscira only goes to war for those who cannot fight for themselves.

Is it possible that, were Wonder Woman real, her view of the conflict in Gaza would be filled with more compassion for the oppressed? Isn’t that the kind of justice that a character like Wonder Woman is supposed to inspire?”

As the quote points out, even though she says she supports coexistence in her hashtags, she uses the hashtags #weareright and #loveidf at the same time. I am aware of her history as a soldier serving in the IDF and I’m also aware that in Israel, serving in their military is compulsory, so I do not really condemn her for that. But the fact is that she remains an active supporter of IDF when she doesn’t have to be, because as far as I know, it isn’t compulsory for Israeli citizens to actively show their support and love for the IDF like through social media (unless it is, so please correct me if I’m wrong there - because I don’t know enough about Israeli laws and policies on that front). After her service in the military, she could have just remained quiet and not necessarily have been so public about her support of the IDF (but then that might have been a whole other can of worms as she would be condemned for her silence on the issue, for it could be viewed as being still complicit in the oppression due to her not speaking out on it).

I didn’t know about Adam Driver (who, like Gal, also served in his country’s military, although this time it wasn’t compulsory and thus it is less understandable and he actually served in combat too from what I’ve researched now), and in that area, I think you’re right. That is a troubling phenomenon, and thank you for pointing that out. I first knew of him through “Star Wars”, but I didn’t care much about him (and still don’t) because I like the lead actors - Daisy, John, and Oscar (whose character is not really a main protagonist as of now but Poe is more important to me than Kylo Ren anyway) - much better, and he really didn’t stand out as anything special to me although I suppose he was a good actor too. That’s the thing with US-centrism (and West-centrism in general) - these Americans think their country is too good and progressive to be oppressive to other nations and countries. And in this situation, I do think that it’s more likely than not a case of implicit anti-Semitism (and perhaps even a little sexism) and so-called liberals feeling high and mighty about themselves because they condemn one form of oppression perpetuated by a non-Western country while ignoring the oppression perpetuated by their own country.

I will tread more carefully now where Adam Driver is concerned, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I will boycott “The Last Jedi” and Episode IX. I have never had plans to watch any of his other movies and TV shows (and this just solidifies my stance to not watch them at all), especially ones in which he is the main character, and while he has a significant role in the sequel trilogy, the movies have been more focused on at least Daisy and John (and now Oscar and Kelly) and that is what I’m focusing on too. But I understand that would be a problematic stance to take, as it reminds me of the time people urged others not to boycott “Suicide Squad” so as to show support for the relatively unknown actors of color there for whom these people were afraid that their careers would end and be wasted if SS was a financial flop and the time people also urged others not to boycott “The Get Down” so as to also show support for the relatively unknown actors of color (mainly black, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx) who still deserved it despite people’s legitimate concerns about Jared Leto’s creepy behavior and the allegations of sexual harassment/assault against him and the issue of Herizen Guardiola being a child predator. Rest assured, I will think on that and reevaluate my stances, and I totally understand people who will not watch or who will boycott “Star Wars” due to Adam Driver’s presence and I will not condemn them for that.

For your last point, while that may have been the case at the beginning and that may be somewhat understandable (and I’m not fully convinced), that doesn’t account for all the atrocities that Israel has committed against Palestinians, especially at present. I doubt all of the cruelties they inflicted were a result of mistakes or US anti-Semitism - it’s far too many to all have been the product of mistakes, and they are still doing it now so yeah :/ However, I do understand that Israel owes a lot to US support and the US should be called out as vocally for its continued support for Israel, but there’s a line from this article which I linked to before in my previous response that I think we should consider: “Israel is an extension of US imperialism, doing its dirty work of intimidating regional enemies with periodic military aggression and a rogue nuclear arsenal. The US has no special interest in oppressing the Palestinians, but they are powerless enough to be expendable in the Great Power game.”

It may not be the best parallel to make, but this kind of reminds me (not specifically referring to you or anyone else, sorry if it comes off that way) of our current situation in the Philippines - how our president, Rodrigo Duterte, tries to deflect US criticism of his bloody war on drugs and the thousands of extrajudicial killings and murders that have happened in the course of this war by retorting with call-outs of US imperialism and colonialism in the Philippines in the past (although US imperialism still definitely affects our country at present, but Duterte usually cites things like atrocities committed by the Americans during the Philippine-American War and the American colonial period). Duterte’s call-outs are valid in that the US is still messing us up well into the present and they’ve never really apologized, and the US needs to acknowledge that too, but two wrongs do not make a right. Besides, there are plenty of Filipinos who criticize Duterte and his policies too, so that doesn’t mean all criticism of him is automatically invalid (which it’s still not, even from the US or Americans) because most of it (actually, from what I have seen, Filipinos are the most vocal) comes from the US. (And yes, for those who are curious, I am mainly anti-Duterte [but that doesn’t mean I oppose all his policies, for some do make sense, but in general, he has a terrible track record especially when it comes to actually serving his people as it seems he’s actually killing off a lot of them and violating their human rights as well] - though that doesn’t make me a yellowt*rd or a supporter of the Liberal Party/P-Noy/the Aquinos and the Cojuangcos as many Duterte fans are so fond of making false dichotomies - so if there are Filipino followers out there whom we call DDS (die-hard Duterte supporters), you can unfollow me.)

But it is in no way the fault of Jewish people in general at all - only the fault of the Israeli government, the IDF, and the people who actively continue to support them. Not all Jewish people are Israeli and there are in fact plenty of Jewish people who are anti-Israel (I’ve found more websites now like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and Jewish Voice for Peace), so if anyone is blaming them for what is happening in Israel and Palestine right now, they can sit their anti-Semitic asses down and shut up.

I think we could also consider that Zionism may be to Jewish people as the Q word is to LGBT+ people and the N word is to black people - it may be an inherently flawed ideology that is only theirs to reclaim and call out if necessary, so as I said before, this means we should be more careful when it comes to using the different terms involved in this issue.

Finally, for the mod/admin thing, I am considering it - that’s actually a good idea. Preferably Jewish people of color would be good, but if there are white Jewish people who wish to join and contribute to this blog, I will consider them. I will be editing my PSAs about admin applications soon in that case, but that isn’t final yet.

Also, I understand that there are people who do tend to respond to criticism like that aggressively, and while there are some situations - depending on the issues being criticized - where that’s an okay way to go, it doesn’t always help.

And yes, sources would be good too, so thank you in advance :) Thank you for that too - I’m rather flattered. I do think I could be even more mature as I don’t consider myself that mature yet, like if you knew me personally, but thank you anyway :) I hope I was able to make more clarifications too, and that we understand each other.

-Admin Dawn

[aviewfromtheclouds25]

Haha I admire your comittment to the theory, I stuck with it for a long time but I've been really down the last few days. I've been here from the beginning and I've never before been this worried that Robron would get over something, I mean I'm sure they will but will it be in a way that still makes me see them as the Robron I know and love. I'm praying for any theory right now tbh haha. -Puts in gif of Castiel praying for ages-.

Hi, anon. Haha thanks! I will happily admit I may just be in complete denial, but there is still logic there so until the time it becomes completely illogical, I’ll keep clinging on. I’m sorry to hear this storyline’s making you feel down, though. I know a lot of people are feeling this way, and I have to admit I was feeling pretty down after Tuesday’s episode myself. Although I haven’t been on tumblr that long, I’ve been with Robron from the beginning too (lifelong ED viewer and Robron are my favourite characters individually) and, as you say, it’s not the worry of whether Robron will make it through - because we know they will - but how. And how it will feel to us, because it has come to mean so much to all of us. I feel like my own positivity has been revived after tonight’s episode, though, so I hope at some point the same can happen for you.

The main reason I’m clinging onto hope of The Theory (or some variation of) is because I refuse to believe ED has suddenly become this uncharacteristically predictable, clichéd and messy. As I say, I’ve watched ED for a long time and this just doesn’t feel like them. There’s a lot of holes in the plot, as so many people have pointed out, but more than that it just feels like it’s lacking the depth and substance that we’re used to. It’s almost like the whole storylining and writing team couldn’t agree on the direction of the plot so they went on strike, and were hastily replaced with people who are now having to get to grips with that and the characters. Because that’s how inconsistent it feels right now, as much as it pains me to admit that. It doesn’t make any sense, and that’s why I just can’t accept it. Not yet, anyway. But I completely acknowledge that it may just be my long-term loyalty to, and love for ED in general that means I have too much faith in them, maybe. (I hope not, because I find that prospect more disappointing than the actual storyline, really.) But that still doesn’t change the fact that there is something missing, and just really random things - clues, even - that must surely be connected..?

There’s the silence. The silence is odd.If the storyline was really going the way the narrative is leading us to believe, and the fandom was falling into disrepair with many choosing to stop watching the show altogether, surely there would be some message to placate the fans? They were more than happy to put a placating tweet out when the fandom was stressing over the spoilers, so why not now the storyline has actually become fact? Unless it isn’t fact… Unless there is something more… Unless there is a twist… And the fact that we haven’t had any quotes from Emily or Ryan, or even Danny, is extremely odd. All right, maybe there will be quotes from Danny and Ryan with the reveal - but that would imply the reveal is the big part of this storyline, not the pregnancy. I honestly think it is this silence which is making us all find this situation so perturbing. We’ve grown used to ED interacting with the fandom. And maybe it had become too intense and the lines had become somewhat blurred, but to go from continuous - almost non-stop - interaction with the fans to nothing? That’s a major factor in why we’re all finding this storyline so unsettling. And I can’t really understand the two extremes - unless something big is underway?

The pacing is just ridiculous - are we honestly supposed to expect a storyline this fast-paced to go on for months? I can’t see it, myself. Then there’s the actual narrative itself. We could discuss The Theory and what even may or may not have happened on the night of The Incident until we’re blue in the face. The fact is, things still don’t add up there. And probably won’t until the final pieces of the puzzle slot into place - if they do. But even beyond that, there’s holes. Rebecca’s adamant it’s Robert’s, fine. I’m not even going to bother discussing that. But we’re slowly getting to see more of what’s going on in her head, but vitally, we have never once been shown any of the action from her perspective. There’s a complete difference between seeing her emotions and seeing her point of view, and I’m wondering if this is intentional? We’ve found out about what she’s been through in the past; it’s now abundantly clear that there’s more than one reason she can’t just let go of Robert. Crucially, aside from Rebecca’s scenes with Ross and Vic, we’re seeing the whole of this storyline from Robert’s point of view. And that gives me hope - that potentially this is leading to the breakdown that so many of us want to see because it’s what he needs for his emotional development as a character. And that fills me with even more hope about what I believe is the whole point of this storyline. Because the one thing that has been indisputably clear throughout this storyline while the rest of the plot has become hazy, is the reaffirmation of Aaron and Robert’s overwhelming dependency on each other. Their entire happiness and wellbeing depends solely on each other. We’ve seen it in so many ways, even the counselling session where Aaron couldn’t stop looking at Robert. He needed him, he takes his strength from him, and the suggestion of doing something he enjoys or which makes him happy simply made him think of Robert. Because his happiness is entirely dependent on that man. And while I know many are unhappy with the inconsistent writing of Robert and feel like his wondrous character development is in jeopardy, I have to disagree with some of the thoughts on this. Yes, I have some concerns at times because I love this Robert, I love Aaron’s Robert. But to me, what we’re seeing with his behaviour now is his dependency on Aaron. The idea that Robert might lose Aaron? The one person he’s ever needed himself? The one person who enables him to be himself and like himself? It’s unthinkable to him, and he’ll do “whatever it takes” to stop that from happening. Because nothing has ever mattered more to him than Aaron. And he does keep trying to change, to be better, because he wants to be the man that Aaron makes him feel capable of being, truly the best version of himself. And fundamentally, I believe this is the point. We’ve seen the boys can’t cope without each other, at all. We’ve seen that they’re both literally only half a man without the other. I believe the point of this whole thing is to break them down and establish who they are on their own so they can then work out who they are together. They’re both incredibly complex, multi-faceted, three-dimensional characters, but I believe the difference is the audience (general, of course) is able to understand Aaron better. They’re able to sympathise and empathise with him. With Robert, it’s not that easy. Aside from his own idiosyncrasies of bottling up his emotions and never allowing his true intent beneath all the layers to match what we see on the surface, Robert’s characterisation has been inconsistent since his return in 2014. He was, essentially, brought back in as a two-dimensional villain. The show has gradually - and authentically, I feel - fleshed him out as a three-dimensional character. However, a certain level of inconsistency remains in that we’ve primarily only ever been allowed to see one side of Robert at a time. So I genuinely believe - whatever direction this goes in - the aim is to break Robert (and probably Aaron) down and rebuild him, showing us that all of his complexities co-exist, just like Aaron’s. To make them equal as individuals, characters and within their relationship. And then to rebuild that relationship on stronger (and healthier) foundations than those built during an affair, marking the beginning of a whole new era of Robron 2.0.

I don’t know how the Rebecca thing will go, whether there will be a baby or not. We can argue a case either way - because there are still options (yes, multiple) for twists. Like I said, we haven’t seen anything from her perspective. We didn’t see her take the test - could she have faked it? We didn’t see her inside the clinic, but we saw her outside so why not show us that scene?? Unless there’s something else going on… The month comment was weird, I don’t know how it works but having seen this situation portrayed in ED before I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case with Kerry or any other female character… Maybe she isn’t pregnant. Maybe she’s further along than she thought. Ross made a comment to Pete “You’ve never been good with maths” while looking at Rebecca’s name on his phone - maybe this was a sign? And then there’s the Adam theory if anyone’s still into that… Out of the three young couples, the only person who wasn’t there for the reveal, who doesn’t know, who happened to find the test and think it was his wife’s, whose said wife hasn’t yet told him that the test wasn’t hers and is actually Rebecca’s, who we’ve seen apologising to his wife etc etc., is Adam. Who knows, there might be something in that yet. Particularly now Ross is out of the equation, so it would actually be a triangle…

There’s so much more I haven’t even mentioned, but I realise this has got ridiculously long and I don’t even know if my ramblings are remotely helpful to you?? So sorry haha! All I would say in regards to the future of Robron is that while my faith may waver occasionally over ED and the plotty storylines, I 100% believe in the magic that Danny and Ryan create. And I wrote a post to this effect after The Incident, but while Danny and Ryan are still doing what they do best, I don’t believe that magic is going to go anywhere. And I do believe Robron will get through this, stronger than ever. Ultimately though, we all have to do what’s best for ourselves - whether it’s taking a step back from the fandom or the show in general, surrounding ourselves with like-minded blogs on here, draining ourselves by trying to work out what on Earth this plot is, or just plain old living in denial and theories. And if this ramble hasn’t been too much, you’re more than welcome to message me again. Even if you just want to discuss daft theories because laughing about the mess makes us all feel better. I’ve recently ventured into sci-fi parallel universes and time travel to try to make sense of this plot, so pretty much anything goes really. :)

[oranges8hands]

It's Morphin Time! (Power Rangers review)

spoilers for Power Rangers (2017)

side note: I only watched a few episodes as a kid so I’m not going to pick up on inside jokes/won’t be pointing out comparisons. // I’m white and not autistic so when taking about representation keep that in mind  // cw (lite): rape culture, suicide

much more enjoyable than the original breakfast club.

property damage

that was... a lot

and I’m not even referring to the big battle at the end; arguably they could have played it differently (and I mean that on both a watsonian and a doylist perspective) but Big Boss Battle, I give those passes, (superhero) movies tend to think they need them. (and are only so-so wrong.) But before that (and superpowers in general) we have: a damaged school/cow, a car chase at the school, a car accident, a mine blasting, a car chase at the mine, and a car-meets-train accident.

and while we see, yanno, happy survivors at the end, I’m wondering if they are going to address the major damage done to the town.

good thing they have masks. and knew to ditch out of there while still in celebration mode.

this was small town america, dependent on mining and fishing. (which - interesting choice of location because it made the movie very compacted, and it also stressed a lot of the push-pull of teenagers and their struggles. this should definitely become a theme as the franchise goes on - the desire to leave with the duty to stay and protect)  

I know! use all that fucking spent gold Rita left behind!

I mean the jewelry store can at least provide receipts but what’s the mine gonna say? “yeah, that chunk of arm definitely came from Shaft 37″

speaking of - they are so damn reckless!

so reckless!

and I mean it’s kind of great because a) how fitting for teenagers in general, like this movie is 95% of the time going “they are teenagers!” (with all the middle finger to mortality and boneheadedness and earnestness and finding your place/friends/family that comes with it), and b) because it comes in various forms to fit the specific characters well, and c) its great tactic for skipping over the whole “wtf superpower freakout”

but also - thank bob they got some magic healing stones cause they all almost die a few times before the whole superhero gig even kicks in. that car chase at the mine (both the recklessness and the loyalty of helping each other) is an excellent establishing intro to them cause wtf power rangers

like arguably the least reckless is Billy, who is introduced as bribing a kid to drive him over so he can blow up a mine in the growing dark that almost kills another kid (how did Trini survive that fall with barely a bruise? magic). and he’s the LEAST reckless. 

the real question - did he just happen to learn how to disable the tracker before this, has he actually done this before, or did he learn how before Jason came over that night?

but I say least reckless because the majority of his recklessness comes from love/loyalty - the mine visits originally for his dad, everything else for his friends

but we have Zack - taking care of a terminal ill parent and so his things are about pushing limits, that more, more, more (or out, out, out) feeling, being wild, flirting with that “death wish” - because that’s a way to act out his fear, that’s a way to be out of control in a controlled way (he can’t control that, but he can control this), that’s a way to say fuck you to death, that’s just part of his personality of ‘I’m gonna touch it’

100% he is the person who presses the red button that says ‘do not press’

also its funny that he just hangs around the mine; full assumption on my part but it fits if his mom got sick from the mine, and he - to avoid finding out if she dies during the night, if the last of his family is gone - visits the root of it

Jason: I think there’s arguably a few ways of looking at it:

the growing pressure of familial/town obligations of being the golden boy are too much, and he‘s acting out to blow off steam

how he touches his knee made me wonder if he was getting an injury, and (sub)consciously wanted to get out of playing more football, either because he’s afraid of damaging it more or because he thinks it’s better to get kicked off on purpose than have it fail him/have to leave for something he can’t control

small town football stars are the weirdest mix of celebrity/adoration* and teenager, and some people don’t handle that well and turn to other means to get that attention, and adrenaline

* adoration that is temporary and/or dependent on their skills

some combo of the above

but anyway he’s “dumb stunts” reckless, and brings other people (and cows) into it, and his arc as leader means figuring out a balance for that, bringing them to necessary danger but not getting them killed

Trini is “outsider” - and the movie supplemented that with actual queerness (more on that below); like she runs from the group, she questions whats really bringing them together (are we friends?), Rita pinpoints that as her weakness, her character arc/turning point is when she immediately tells the others. and her recklessness is towards the self, esp her body - like she trespasses into the mine to practice stretches/meditation, the train run (IIRC she’s the one whose like “eh, hope we make it”), she uses her powers to get away (did she know she could make that jump before she did it because her powers became apparent in less the ‘destructive of an item’ way and more like Zack’s in which it was pushing physics?)

I think its arguable she’s had issues with drugs. like the movie stresses three years for her (her growing distance/quiet coming with her sexuality questioning), and her mom just happens to have a pee cup on standby? that’s a long time period to keep testing a kid who never shows up as positive. I mean maybe her mom’s just reacting in more and more extreme measures and this is the latest version... also the way her dad intercedes with her mom’s questions, I wonder if that’s his natural role in the family or if that came out of therapy.

I really don’t think she’s presented as suicidal in the film, but I think there’s an underlining implication that can be read where AU this superpower thing didn’t happen she goes in that direction (she is isolated by her “other” status within her family, by being the new kid at school, and so on)

Kimberly is self-destructive; its thoughtlessness and impulsiveness (and meanness) coming out to swallow her and take who she can with her. cutting her hair, diving at night at the quarry, her “revenge porn” (and way more on that below), even breaking into Jason’s room to tell him about why she was in detention  

there’s no “is it superpowers??????” which I immensely appreciate; it’s “something weird is happening and we need to figure out what.” 

they killed Billy. and yeah, happy they bought him back, but they still killed him.

and since I hadn’t actually watched the trailer all the way through, and I feel like a Power Ranger died in the original series (no clue if that’s accurate), and Billy’s Black and on the spectrum, yeah, I thought it was going to last. 

his death was used for Zordon, Jason, and Kim’s character arc

I understand it was so each of the other four could carry him together, but the Jesus pose is still in way too many superhero and/or teenage protagonist movies

yeah yeah he was the heart of the team I get it; still could have done it without his death. or frankly Jason works, since he’s the leader (and its interesting that the heart of the group and the leader of the group are two different people) and everyone pulls together for the leader. but again, no death works

it made no sense that she killed him and left the other four alive. also I’m assuming she was powering the ropes to keep them in place but did it completely drain them of power? cause as we saw earlier, they can breathe underwater

David Christopher Bell pointed out that since The Dark Knight, villains need to a) not just kill the heroes but break their spirits and b) get caught as part of the master plan. and while the latter is the “reason” behind the scene - she needs to find the location, she somehow knows Billy knows (like she somehow knew Trini felt like an outsider) - the former ended up feeling like the motive for the scene. 

actually she hits a couple more on the list - we don’t actually know her motive for turning (beyond “feeling like an outsider”) and the narrative treats her like she’s “unhinged” for no reason.  

weirdly Zordon is not part of her motive? like him being “alive” is barely a sidenote to her

representation

well done Black Autistic Hero! like Billy uses the actual term (which is already more than a lot of characters do), he exhibits behaviors of it (speech patterns, special interests, joke recognition, touching, stimming, etc), and he’s a friggin hero (and no one questions his capability to be one)

so Jason is the main; he has more screen time, his emotional arc is devoted the most space, he & his are the the inciting incident - a. his introduction into detention is the opening change that starts the story and b. his dad brings Rita out of the water (though maybe she could only be brought out after the gems are found?) - and he’s the leader of the team. however, Billy serves as the heart of the team, and the movie (usually through Jason, non-negatively) points out several times that he is behind finding the gems, and he’s the one who brings Jason to the mine. so Jason is the main but if they had tweaked the script a little Billy would have been.

Zack is not stereotypical/usual. (first off he’s played by an actual Asian actor, ba dum tss). but he’s poor, small family, while he wasn’t given a romance he didn’t come across as desexualized, he exchanged just pure slugging it out punches with Jason (instead of the “all (East) Asian (men) know martial arts” trope), he’s not nerdy or an airhead (the two extremes for school tropes), he loves his mom and outside of caretaking we also see them enjoy each other (high five over their chess game), he’s super f-ing reckless (let me just jump on this speeding car wtf Zack you didn’t know you had powers at that point), when established they speak Chinese together they don’t suddenly switch to (accented) English because that’s too many subtitles for an American audience

Trini: queer Mexican girl. like, I’ve seen the arguments for both sides of this - on the one end: she’s questioning (and feels so alone in it) so it fits she doesn’t have a label for herself, and on the other there’s been a growing trend of movies getting points for the tiniest overt queerness. because this is an introduction into a franchise and she’s a main character and the crew/cast are vocal about it and while she didn’t have a label it was connected to her arc (outsider status/isolation -> group friendship), I felt more on the ok end of it, though I would have definitely liked at least a little more vocalization. And this is definitely dependent on how they deal with it going forward, and I also agree with people who think it was not enough, especially since they chose to have her character in the early stages of questioning her identity and while that’s a legitimate storyline it’s not the only one. 

a really good solution would have been to have Zack say he’s pan or bi.

more queer rep always

like, did you watch him? (flirting mode towards everyone: activated)

it means we see someone with a labeled identity and someone questioning, and it enriches the scene between them, and it gives more weight/overtness to her sexuality (aka the movie itself isn’t shying away from labels, this specific character is cause she’s still figuring it out) 

the start of queering them all. all of them.

Kim is played by a biracial (Indian & white) actress. I can’t really speak to how that fits into the romance trope - she’s not white (the “Girlfriend Role” works differently for WOC), but Asian women are hypersexualized (the gratuitous bra shot, with Jason looking on without her knowledge)... basically I’m not familiar with how Indian women specifically fit into this conversation and it’s really not my place to say. I personally felt they erred too much on the romance for her, because the scenes with her and Jason together felt much more tied to Jason‘s arc* than hers or both of theirs, and she felt sexualized in the movie in a way the rest of them didn’t, so overall I wish they kept it a little more subtle than they did. but again not my judgement to make in terms of representation.

* the hallway walk, the quarry scenes... those feel like the Manic Pixie Girl/Girlfriend Role (”let’s run, right now”) and since her arc was a little less clear than the others it feels like the problem with that stems from the romance, even if it didn’t necessarily.

However let’s talk about her backstory, the biggest twist in a movie I’ve seen in years.

raise your hand if you thought she was getting the ‘sexually assaulted and fought him off and former friends/mean girls attack her for being a slut’ story. *raises hand* and instead she leaked her friend’s nude to a dude with a sex-shaming comment (who spread it to the whole school and/or besides to the dude Kim sent it to the school). PLOT TWIST.

except lemme say - this is a huge violation. HUGE. leaking nudes is not just a mistake or a bad choice, its a violation and it affects the leaked person for the rest of their life and its a well deserved criminal offense. (at least Jason’s ankle monitor suggests there’s some kind of police punishment that came with the huge amounts of damage he did - though talk about a light sentence good thing you’re a football player/white dude - but her punishment is just detention?) and I definitely need a lot more on the redemption arc beyond ‘stops being a mean girl who doesn’t recognize her actions for as damaging as they are until the consequences are shoved into her face’, esp because she’s only partly sorry. She’s sorry about what she did, yes, I believe that, but there’s also several instances (like when their cafeteria dishes melt, or the car gets smashed) where she smirks when they get in trouble. (That she’s the victim in this situation.) And with that, the narrative smirks at them too, because they’re mean girls and they cut her out; except she’s in the wrong! she completely violated Elizabeth! they’re allowed to be petty/mean back to her! It’s implied she basically leaked the nude because ‘why not,’ she deserves to get some shitty treatment back at her!

one of the main rules was “don’t use your powers for personal gain.” IDK if this is going to come up in the franchise, but if it does I’m assuming - if it’s not the whole group -  it’s going to be either her or Zack. Zack because of his sick mom (external force), her because of her personality (internal force).

eta: in a convo with clari-clyde she pointed out that Jason tells her she’s not a bad person when yeah, she was a bad person. ("i would‘ve liked it better if jason said, you chose to be a bad person, but you can also choose to be a good person. you can make poor bad choices, building on that bad choice. or you can start making good choices, and start transforming yourself.”) and I agree.   Kim didn’t do a mean thing, she is a mean person (the photos just being the latest and a REALLY BIG DEAL), and the narrative both understands that weight (her self-hatred/angst is about it) while treating it as less damaging than it is (how it somewhat tries to victimize her, and by virtue of getting the stone/superpowers.) once we learn Kim’s backstory her power walk (after cutting her hair) back into detention takes on new meaning, and not in a good way; she’s apologetic in the scene with Jason, but we don’t really see evidence of that in her treatment of her actual victims. (its the common redemption arc of tv white dudes - the idea that feeling bad is enough to redeem them, as opposed to them actually doing something to redeem themselves.) and one of the reasons her arc fell a little flat to me is because her backstory (leaked nude) and her end result (being a power ranger) are really not connected, both in context and through the group. everyone else’s arc was interwoven into them becoming a group, while her arc was interwoven with Jason only.

and in addition to that, Jason “forgiving her” gets tied back into their romantic undertones (removed kiss or not), so that it comes across more as “I like you, therefore you are not a bad person,” instead of acknowledging she was actually a bad person, but she can make actual steps into changing that.    

Zordon & Alpha 5 downloaded the English matrix and can converse fine but “teenagers” is the one word to throw them off. which a) suggests Zordon and his group/people don’t distinguish that grouping - which makes sense, the term is only like a 100yrs old, but more importantly b) is beautiful shot at Marvel. I mean, I don’t know if that’s why they did it, but after that Civil War nonsense I’m reading it as one anyway. feel free to join me. 

music - a little uneven. like for the majority of the film it was unobtrusive, with “HandClap” during the training montage brought into the narrative with Billy and Alpha 5 clapping, and then at the end there was the tv theme song (fair enough) but it cut off quick, as did the other (loud) song during those scenes too, and the one after the other nature of it was abrupt sounding.

I liked the training montage.

ok, so Jason can fight, we see that (dodge the bully’s fist), plus he’s an athlete. and Kim is an ex-cheerleader (and apparently recreational diver), aka an athlete. (athletes in football and cheerleading tend to have: body strength, quick pattern recognition, inclined towards multitasking & teamwork, can take a damn hit, etc.) we see Trini doing a stretch routine and taking out Zack in the pit and both she and Zack are suggested to have some parkouring. Billy is probably the least experienced, esp when it comes to fighting (and notable he’s the one that gets the basic boxing/punching routine), but he runs around a mine and like the others seems to be a good swimmer. so it comes across as less unbelievable that they can pick this up, esp because for the most part their fighting strategy is to hit the dirt monsters until they fall apart and we see them practicing (over and over again) the specific move that took Rita down. (also I was literally thinking ‘what, they can suddenly move as one with no training’ and then the final evolution of their robot trips. I’ll give the movie some leeway on how they can control the dino bots so well - plus handwavy they’re plugged in and figured it out - because of that trip.)   

they also show injuries.

ok except for Kim and Jason’s shirtless scene, the camera (and clothing department) treated them like teenagers, like they shouldn’t be needlessly sexualized for (adult) audiences. it’s fucked up that this is special enough to note, but its definitely special enough to note. (and they still did the ‘guy looks at half-naked woman without her permission’ thing, which is not ok, yes not even to the same girl who leaked the nudes.) there was Rita - she shows more skin the “prettier” she gets, her outfit at the jewelry store was esp “where did she get this?” - but at least she wasn’t playing a teenager. (and I don’t remember her actions towards them being sexualized, but I may just not be remembering it. eta: she definitely does have the sexualized vibe going with her adult victims though.

it was a fair job with the product placement and shoutouts (like Bumblebee and Ironman/Spiderman - those are franchises it can be assumed their audiences know).

like Jason, you fucked over your football scholarship/college options, your family probably has to pay for the school damages, you have a police (though possibly just juvenile) record... they’re allowed to question your decisions. and your dad still ends up giving you a chance to have a car again. (after you smashed two in less than a month.)

this was a mix of parental awareness and not. like Billy’s mom* is there greeting (and noticing the school social group differences) at the door, but not that the missing (smashed up) van may be his fault. Trini’s parents are aware if ineffectual/ridiculous. we just get a glimpse of Jason’s mom and sister but we spend time on his relationship with his dad (whose paying attention to his kid and tries to rescue him), but he still sneaks out of his house (with ankle bracelet) and is gone past his curfew at least twice, if not every day of training. Zack’s mom is trying to keep track (checking if he’s going to school) but (assumed) doesn’t know he sometimes spends nights away from home (assumed after giving her her pills.) unless I’m totally blanking, we don’t know about Kim’s family, though she goes swimming at the quarry at night and cuts her hair etc without recognition. and they all spend at least one night (though is bonfire night and them meeting at the bleachers the same night?) away from home. and they all spend almost two weeks coming home with bruises/etc. 

* ok I thought he said both parents died in the car accident when he first tells Jason but then later he just talks about his dead dad so was that his mom or his guardian? (I’m trying to remember if he shouted ‘her name’s Trini’ with a relationship term at the end.)

they had some really great moments but: Trini and Kim fighting over the last bite. Jason slapping the bully (that was so fucking cutting.) Billy on the spaceship. Zack and his mom hanging out over chess. Trini with her brothers. etc etc.

so the time jumps - the gems keep them alive and put them to bed, but they don’t do things like fix the van.

I’m so glad Trini immediately tells the group about Rita’s deal, and the narrative doesn’t even try to have some possible betrayal shit, and Jason’s speech (we suck, but we should do this anyways) was a good choice

all the death and injuries are close up, within the group. even with big battle the ‘helpless citizen’ was shown through Jason’s dad. the group itself receives extensive (if sometimes recklessly self-inflicted) damage.

boob armor. (Trini’s brothers could have guessed Yellow was a girl considering that.)  

the actors did a good job, esp Billy’s

??? I always forget obvious stuff when I do these.

overall, I liked the movie more than I thought I would (ok not saying too much), and it had some great moments, but Billy’s death esp was cheap, there was some incongruent scenes that affected the rest/tone of the film, and the final fighting battles - esp in the dino bots (though let’s be real: I want one) - was a little ridiculous. but the movie did a good introduction, and it felt like it recognized teenagers in all their stupidity and grace, and I’ll definitely give the next one in the franchise a try.

[hxoulirbsual-blog]

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My View About

By and by loosen up, listen to some music, watch some YouTube accounts, create a coffee. Just don't close that site and support happening relentlessly. According to the creators, dependent upon the gift weight upon Instagram API servers, this methodology can endure wherever from several minutes to 15 or even 30 minutes in the most unprecedented cases. It's not occurring to them. It's arrival and end stirring to Instagram and their servers. The impact of web based systems administration and stalkers upon our lives. Who is stalking my Instagram. Web based vibrancy have forced a modify in structure social bonds and energetic how to see who viewed your instagram video taking place relationship bearing in mind every other people. realize you taking into account gone people observe constantly? In deed genuinely, you should maintain a strategic make unfriendly from this entry. Who views my Instagram in any case, you can use the application we assessed above in order to see who saw your Instagram profile and square everyone whose username you don't see. I'm not your parent, therefore I won't uncover to you what and to whom you can share, anyway I will presumably melody to you that some dreadful insane people can watch photos of your teenage years or yours. They can unveil to you where you undertaking and behind and where you travel, or what new deeds your child is visiting or charmed by. I don't object to siren you, anyway I have to exhort you that there are various alarming people on the planet. The use of get into settings could be recommended to the people who genuinely ought to be evident and acquire no opportunity to get out. The most big event is that it does take action and it works snappy. It ought to exhibit to me who proverb my Instagram profile and it did. There is straightforwardly unintentional to doing signs of improvement, the UI is especially something that stands out as underneath typical and should be unconditional going on to ensure that this application is less hard to use for your everyday customer. Regardless, you ought to consider warily. We have assessed distinctive different applications who are always highly developed as "the fundamental real plan" that empowers customers to see who has visited their Instagram profile. In any case, this isn't the primary business that they portion for every goals and reason the mutual factor of these applications would be the make public in which that a great portion of the period they truly don't occupy in as announced. After some time, it worked out that their usage influences for as far afield urge on as we can recollect. This is particularly felt today by adolescents, for whom online informal communication is only an necessary bit of their lives. Specialists have for quite a though been contemplating whether (and gave this is valid, how) the usage of online vivaciousness impacts our eager wellbeing. Sometimes there are analyzes that portray, notwithstanding exchange things, how the usage of further advances can be aligned behind point issue, paying tiny mind to whether it damagingly influences association past friends, or it impacts the individual fulfillment and the level of euphoria. Likely the most enormous risk we point by means of online systems administration media stages are stalkers which are a allocation of the epoch hard to perceive and most stages don't incite us in the same way as this thing back we can't check who is seeing our profile, photos or accounts. This is the explanation it's noteworthy for people to right of entry applications, for instance, the referenced above in order to bow to who viewed my Instagram. This is the topic of what might be on the horizon, and as such we are besides delineating supplementary research upon this issue. Online vivaciousness now and once again have all one of the reserves of brute a basic stage for youths and a crucial sort of retrieve gone the world who perspectives my Instagram. It isn't only a appearance wherein one circulates self or comments, still besides a sort of correspondence, tone stirring associates afterward people whom the see who views your instagram puberty does not see, anyway who call cronies or associates. The force of online enthusiasm and the faculty of their effect are then negative. We ought not ignore cyber-bullying, stalking and new harsh experiences and inoffensive individual to individual correspondence districts that impact people's inclination that anything is great following the world, veracity and gymnastic condition.

Highlights

We have viably explained a lot on passwords most noteworthy business to remember is that you have to fine-tune them from time to period and never reuse them. Undeniably similar to most by far, look who perspectives your Instagram you how to see who viewed your instagram really obsession to consent to those you genuinely know. So, can you see who views your Instagram in court case you have to save your Instagram book secure, look who points of view your Instagram private folder in the options menu. I significantly recommend this motion to every watchmen who appropriate photos of their kids to stay in be next to next associates and relatives concerning the world. Grievously, this does not shield your photograph album from everyone. There are instruments out there that empower stalkers to look your private profile without later it. The reality of the concern is that one organization can be a way in to extra relational relationships or email accounts, and past it is totally critical for casual networks to use the proportional usernames, passwords should be mighty and unique. Is it real that you are a superstar?