#with both writers and actors on strike too.. i can only hope they get what they deserve and it's a turning point for the better

[flythesail]

I'm so tired of the way tv is working right now. And it's not working. Seasons are getting shorter, and shows are canceled before they even get a chance to prove themselves. Shows with new concepts often get the worst of it, and it just makes me so sad to think of all the fantastic stories we're losing because of a system that prioritizes profit over the art itself. I want to live with these characters over years. Get to know them and grow with them and not watch as their stories are crammed into six episodes or even worse, go entirely unfinished.

[cozyforjate]

What a season finale?!!!

It was a great episode, probably one of the best of the season for me but damn, i hate cliffhangers! Especially when there's a strike going on and you have no idea when the next season will air!

But it is what is… The only thing we can do now is pray for the strike to be over as soon as possible.

AMPTP, please pay your writers and actors!

*

So lets talk about Spock and Chapel (and a little bit about Pike&Batel)

!SPOILER WARNING!

*

The episode starts with Batel and Chapel helping the colonists. We learn that Chapel left the Enterprise early to start her Fellowship with Dr. Korby and Cayuga is basically her ride.

Can i just say that i love how SNW portrays their female characters? Batel and Chapel are 2 women who are really good at their jobs, love helping people, ambitious, strong, beautiful and charming!

The episode made a clear parallel between 2 relationships: Spock&Chapel and Pike&Batel.

At the beginning of the episode Batel and Chapel’s fates were unknown, both Spock and Pike were worried about losing the women that they love, but refused to give up hope and they were both ready to do whatever it takes to save them.

Both couples reunite at some point in the episode. Pike&Batel’s hug is lovely and sweet. Spock&Chapel holding each other’s hands in space is a beautiful and almost poetic moment. That scene was designed to look visually stunning and it did!

*

If we quickly remember the status of both relationships:

Batel had a bumpy relationship with Pike at first, she even walked out on him bcoz just like Chapel, Pike had issues maintaining a serious relationship. But unlike Spock&Chapel, Pike&Batel fixed their problems bcoz Pike noticed his errors, they talked, they understood each other and made up!

Spock and Chapel still haven’t done that and we have to wait for season 3 to see them properly communicate again. But there’s still HOPE for them.

*

“Hope” is one of the main themes of the episode. We have seen different characters talk about “hope” and use it as a motivation to keep fighting.

Una to Spock:

“I would never tell you not to hope.”

Pike to La’an:

“Sometimes... hope is a choice.”

Despite every single fact pointing to Christine’s death, Spock chooses not to lose hope.

“and Nurse Chapel, who I HOPE made it to the surface as well.”

“I have not given in to grief yet. Logic dictates we do not know Chapel's or Batel's fate. And until we do, the best chance we have to save them is if Enterprise takes out the Gorn's interference field.”

Hope is the thing that keeps him going. And i think, one of the reasons why he insisted he should be the one doing the space mission is bcoz he really believed that it might help save Christine’s life (and others').

*

The zero gravity Gorn fight was amazing. Spock and Chapel defeating the Gorn together was so satisfying to me!

After that, they move towards each other and have an “almost” space hug. Beautiful! And then they slowly fly up together. The filming of the whole scene is breathtaking. Feels like a space dance in EV suits. As a big piece of Cayuga falls down, they reach for each other’s hands at the same time and hold so tight! Aww. The music, the scene… You get the sense that there’s HOPE. Against Gorn but also for Spock and Chapel too.

They energize still holding hands. Chapel seems pretty shook and Spock intensely watches her. He must be feeling so many things at once in that moment.

The way Spock loves Chapel is too pure.  He would do anything for her. ANYTHING. Vulcan emotions are stronger than human emotions. That’s why they suppress them. And what happens when they choose not to suppress them? Take a look at Spock! Ethan Peck has been doing an amazing job portraying a half Vulcan-half Human in love. But perhaps his feelings for Chapel can not even be described with the word love.

I have no words for what I feel.

Bcoz it’s more.

*

Anyway, before they go Spock stops her. He wants to apologize but she doesn't let him. She tells him that they'll have time later. She smiles at him, eyes shining, holding his arm… Spock recognizes that look and that smile. Its Christine. His Christine. And he smiles back. There’s HOPE.

*

Look guys, I don’t know if they’ll break up or decide to try again. All i know is, Spock and Chapel love each other. Despite their differences, despite Boimler’s “you’re doomed” BS, despite Chapel’s struggle with relationships&deep trauma, despite Spock’s struggle with human emotions… They LOVE each other. Feelings are there and not going anywhere.

Star Trek loves “on again - off again” relationships. So i predict Spapel be the new on/off relationship that will last for as long as the show goes on.

[eisforeidolon]

Curious about your thoughts on the lawsuit against Jensen and whether or not you think it will ruin his career and prospects for producing anything else. Of course both J's fans are once again arguing over who is better than the other and who is a more competent producer. To be honest I never fully immersed myself in the fandom and everyday I know why. Seeing Jensen fail seems to be the thing now and no matter how well either of them do people will continue to hate one or the other. Only the people ignoring the drama are having fun in the SPN fandom while others continue a cycle of my fave is doing better than yours. Hopefully Jensen and Danneel will take responsibility and settle this case amicably but ultimately human beings make mistakes and he is not immune from that. I like both Jared and Jensen and if they fail and make mistakes I will either let them go or try to be understanding and hope they grow and learn from those mistakes. No one does anything perfect 100% of the time. I understand some fans bitterness towards Jensen but sometimes I wonder what does that bitterness really get you. Even if Jensen retires tomorrow and is never heard from again I'm sure he would still be talked about due to his failure to thrive beyond Supernatural. The fandom experience should be fun but it doesn't feel fun when it comes to SPN. Anyway love your blog and your level headed opinions. Sorry for the long post.

NGL, some of this struck me really weird, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume maybe you've just spent too much time listening to weird stan echo chambers.

The idea that people in general are going to be talking about Jensen's "failure to thrive" beyond Supernatural is just ... a take. Let's put aside that he's done several movies of voice work as animated Batman and pretend The Boys is totally a show no one ever talks about or talks about in terms of Jensen's performance on it. As well as that it's been only three years since SPN's finale filmed - not only do projects take time to develop often counted in years and more than occasionally get shit-canned when one of hundreds of factors falls through? Those three years have included the tail end of a global pandemic and now a writers' and actors' strike. Forget all that. It's still the case that normals don't sit around talking about what a huge disappointment the cast from, say, Friends are for not having super memorable roles afterwards - they're talking about Friends. Similarly, co-lead of a fifteen year show is a respectable acting career in and of itself. Only obsessed stans of one stripe or another desperate to make everything a competition talk like that about an actor, and again, nobody should take them seriously.

But let's move on to the case itself [X]. Immediate preface, I am not a lawyer, and definitely not a lawyer specializing in this area of law, so grain of salt and all that. However, the way our legal system typically works is that you can file a lawsuit for just about anything - whether or not you can prove your case in court (or the other side thinks you might be able to enough to settle) is the part that matters. Someone filing a case is not an inherent indication of meritoriousness to that case. I do not know the specifics of the laws regarding filming during weather - other than what has been in the articles about the case. I do not know the specifics of the weather on that day or what the production crew on the ground knew or should have known. Not all heavy rain is accompanied by thunder/lightning and bolt out of the blue is an expression for a reason. If the big players don't decide it's easier to just settle and the case is found to have merit, I do not know the generally relevant case law which might give me an idea of precedent in terms of which defendants might be held legally liable to what degree of culpability.

However, the idea that this will "ruin [Jensen's] career prospects" as a producer, let alone as an actor? That's just ... Even if the case is meritorious enough to reach a settlement or get a verdict in the plaintiff's favor? As you would expect if you know anything much about lawsuits, it names every defendant with any potential culpability. In this case, that includes Warner Bros, The CW, three additional production companies (not including CM), six individuals, and up to 100 additional as-yet-unnamed potential defendants (Does as in John Does 1-100 Inclusive). Jensen is just the one whose name gets pulled for the article text for obvious reasons. The idea it would be on him or Danneel to be making the call on whether or not to settle when it also involves WB and the CW let alone all the other parties ...

Which is not to say an executive producer doesn't hold responsibility for the conditions on set, that IS part of the gig - and why he, Danneel, and Robbie are included in the suit. But only a stan desperately trying to wish their fantasies into existence would look at this list of defendants and the circumstances where it doesn't seem to be alleged that Jensen was directly involved in the specific chain of events and be like HAHA JENSEN'S CAREER IS TOTALLY OVER, NOBODY WILL WANT TO WORK WITH HIM EVER AGAIN!!! IMO, I have doubts it'll even affect John Showalter's likelihood of working again, and he was allegedly the guy making the call on the ground.

I mean, personally, I think TW was a bizarre, ill-considered clusterfuck starting from conception, through prequelgate and the refusal to say it was an AU because ???, to current lawsuit about allegedly questionable set practices. The only way I could see it having any overarching effect on Jensen's career is if he himself decides to move away from producing, though.

[aceofnace]

I was honestly expecting the most romantic season of tv I'm not kidding bc what do you mean soulmates who are separated by a love curse that's such an incredibly good plot, the stuff of dreams ships never get. But let's be real they kinda botched it, no matter how it turns out, we had half a season where they barely interacted and we're never going to see their big moments together and them being madly in love and solving crimes together and protecting each other and moving in together and getting engaged( I had this wish that it would be Nancy who proposes bc it would be such a big thing coming from her and for ace to see someone actually want that with him, it would mean so much growth for both of them). Now all we can hope for is they don't slap us with Tristan and Nancy as soulmates, give us as many moments of them together and give us a flashforward of their happily ever after ..

I was expecting that too, especially after the first 3 swoonworthy episodes of the season. I thought, this is THEIR season. But boy, did it go downhill fast. Episode 4 had NO Nace interactions, and then 5-7 just had painful ones (how many times did they break up again?). Episode 8 seemed promising...but then 9 and 10 ruined it again with no interactions. Now we're heading into episode 11 with both Nancy and Ace seemingly falling for their new supernatural love interests and it's like WHAT? With only 3 episodes left to go? Make it make sense!

Obviously, they were hoping for a season 5, and they wrote the season with that in mind. But that tells me if we had gotten a season 5, this still would've been dragged out well into next season. So the only solace I can take with all this is that it's a good thing they found out the show was canceled before they finished writing the final episode. Because if it had been canceled after, then the series would've ended with Nace not together. And even if it had been renewed for a season 5, with the writers/actors on strike for who knows how much longer, there's a chance next season would've eventually gotten cancelled anyway, or it would have at least extended a Nace endgame for another year or more. This way, although it's going to be rushed af, we're still going to end the series with the knowledge that Nancy and Ace are together and in love.

I am hopeful we'll get a little flash-forward epilogue that might show Nancy and Ace married, or at least engaged. Bonus points if they show us one of them proposing. I'm just not sure how they would fit that into the finale, but it's really all I want at this point. I'm so sad that so many opportunities were wasted this season (that should have been NACE slow dancing!). This was supposed to be their season to shine. And it started out so promising! I have no idea how or why they lost sight of the plot so heavily, but they did. And I know some people will say, "You know, this show isn't just about Nace" and while that's true, once you make your titular character and another main character star-crossed lovers and add in something like a curse keeping them apart, you're kinda making them the main focus—especially when you drag it out until the very end. So, it's understandable that a lot of us are solely focusing on Nace and how disappointed we are. We expected more. We deserved more. But that's just my opinion.

[falselyprofound]

Assorted thoughts from seeing Groundhog Day live tonight yeehaw

Phil's opening video is a lot shorter than the Broadway version, presumably so they don't have to refilm the damn thing any time they switch cast members. "We can't all have good weather because we're not all good people". First up - nice thesis statement there, writers. But also damn Phil all right I guess that's an improvement over "if you live in Altoona, just shoot yourself"

(Yes, Pennsylvania is still spelled incorrectly.)

Normally when broadway shows come over here it's like, one American actor in a sea of heavy Australian accents (Our version of Legally Blonde was an experience, lemme tell ya). And I guess that was still technically true since only Phil was a returning cast member? But the rest of the cast were damn good in my opinion. Felt very natural.

God. How do they manage to strike such a good balance of Phil being entertaining and utterly reprehensible. Phil "just kill me now" Connors. Phil "wait your turn" Connors. Phil "wanna hear my personal masturbation record" Connors.

Tiny background detail that fucked me up: when Phil's climbing the ladder in Hope, the onlookers start to panic and flag down more people in an attempt to get him help. Debbie can be seen waving down Freddie. Freddie waves back, clearly just happy to see her. He doesn't understand what's going on until Phil drops.

(The house lights coming on after the impact to Phil in full costume, at the front of the crowd, really is fucking wizardry. That man be teleporting)

Props to Larry's actor for playing the morgue scene relatively straight. He actually sounds upset Phil's dead, and it's just the right balance of "in denial" and "actually he kinda fucking sucks" to both be heartbreaking and fucking hilarious

phil's frustration in the diner is still so fucking funny to me. "Freddie keeps chickening out because he thinks debbie wants a diamond. JUST CLOSE THE DEAL, FREDDIE" like yeah i'd fucking snap if i had to watch the same will-they-wont-they play out for all eternity too

Seeing fake snow through the doors of the theatre when the show was done has me feeling very good very natural

very normal

this has been my use of my annual Theatre Kid Posting pass. thank you for your patience.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Getting a lot of mixed reports on MOANA 2's casting.

When it was a Disney+ show, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Auli'i Cravalho didn't come back to reprise their roles. They must've gotten good soundalikes... However, they are both apparently "in talks" to come back...

This movie opens in NINE MONTHS... That's gonna be crunch for the animators...

However, the other day, when Disney surprised us all with this announcement... It had appeared that The Rock and Cravalho *were* back? Now they're "in talks"? Which is it?

I hope something worked out... If not, they should really delay this thing to like spring 2025 or something. No crunch, but you know how these corporations go about these things.

It's like how the other day, Universal immediately inked a July 2025 release date for their fourth JURASSIC WORLD movie. The movie has a script, and they apparently got David Leitch to direct. Right away... Then within days, he left the movie, and the release date appears to be in limbo as well.

I dunno, maybe this whole model of "announcing release dates to whet the appetites of shareholders" thing is no longer conducive? I know it's a lot to ask for, but when something's truly ready, THEN announce its release date.

This is why you have, say, the problem with MCU movies being slotted for dates and then pushed back a ton of times. One movie just domino'ing everything backwards. Or BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE being set to come out less than a year after ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE only for it to be revealed that it wasn't even in production to begin with, voice work largely hadn't commenced. Then the movie got removed from the release schedule during the Writer and Actor strikes.

I know shareholders and such want to know what to expect for a future fiscal quarter (when most people don't even know what they'll up to in 2 days, lol), but the thing's gotta be ready... In the case of JURASSIC WORLD 4 (or Jurassic Something Movie #7), it sounds like they have a script... But they're not sure how to execute it. So, get the director FIRST... Then schedule the release date. Forget fiscal quarters, just tell shareholders "Oh yeah, we have another JURASSIC WORLD movie coming." But you know, time and money...

This reminds me of when Edgar Wright departed ANT-MAN, a move which sent reverberations throughout the superhero/geek movie kingdom. The film was always aiming for a July 2015 debut, and the abrupt exit right before filming was supposed to commence sent everything into a flurry. Everything just blew up. This was sometime in spring/summer 2014, off the top of my head. Barely a year away from its projected release date. Marvel luckily got Peyton Reed very quickly, filmed the thing, and didn't have to push the movie back. Even though they should've, just to allow more time. It wasn't like the autumn frame was booming with big movies or anything. But they made it, all to keep that mid-July release date.

Or hell, how about when Lucasfilm booted Phil Lord and Chris Miller off of SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY and got Ron Howard to re-film maybe 3/4 of what the duo had already completed... In mid-to-late 2017, while its Memorial Day 2018 release date held... Yeah, uhhhh... That was certainly a unique case, but again... When it's READY, ya know? The date might've made the crew work harder, whereas having it up in the air would've possibly made for a smoother production. I also feel like releasing SOLO so soon after THE LAST JEDI hurt it somewhat, not to mention having it sandwiched between Disney's too massive summer hits that year - AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR and INCREDIBLES 2. SOLO probably would've probably fared way better later on in the year, hell, Disney could've experimented with late summer/early fall. But they wouldn't do that.

So to tie this back to MOANA 2, I need the record to be set straight before I can say much. If The Rock and Cravalho have been back for some time and there's some misreporting going on, then I think it could feasibly make the Thanksgiving 2024 frame with no fuss... But if they aren't back? Delay it. If WDAS has to miss a calendar year, that's fine. The animators and conditions all come first. As long as a movie is made and all's well, that's what matters. Not like WDAS hasn't missed a year before. 2006, 2015 and 2017 anyone? 2020 narrowly missed because COVID. In fact, them skipping 2017 and not having two movies to release in 2018 meant that we had to wait 728 days for a new WDAS movie. MOANA came out Thanksgiving 2016, RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET came out Thanksgiving 2018. We were supposed to get a WDAS movie for March in 2018, so the wait wouldn't have been so long, but that didn't happen. The delay and subsequent cancellation of the movie GIGANTIC partially caused that massive gap.

Holiday 2024 for Disney has stuff like THE AMATEUR (a 20th Century release, it's a spy thriller) and that CG LION KING prequel. They'll probably make some room for a Searchlight movie or two as well. Okay, they don't need to have a bona fide blockbuster every quarter (this is assuming that MUFASA doesn't do very well, which is a strong possibility), even if it's what the shareholders demand. STRANGE WORLD and WISH were Thanksgiving-frame releases, and they both bombed. MOANA 2 is guaranteed to be a hit, but if it misses November? So what.

It should be on a clear path before a date is inked. I know that's a radical thing to say, and an unrealistic thing to ask for, buuuut... It'd be nice.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

hey M, before you left your blog I wanted so much to ask you about cinema and I didn't get a chance back then but since you are back I'm glad I have an opportunity to do so and here I go.

Who and what do think played a huge role in the rise of independent filmmaking in the 70's that helped breaking boundaries within GP and against major studios whether in concept, scenario/story cinematography..etc. and do you think such movement might be accomplished in our era knowing how technology is so advanced - AI in particular- to the point it removed many aspects that define the art of cinema?

I know Tech is a double edged sword but these days I feel its negative impact more than ever and imo, the amount of remakes is a huge sign that we have reached the ending line, and I hope that going back to the roots is a possible feature that is yet to be invested in.

I feel my questions are little bit thick lol, so sorry in advance.

Hi @astutejiminie! Thanks for the question, this is something that I'd love to talk about.

In short and in hindsight as well, it's almost like it was inevitable if we look at the situation the studios were in the 1960s, but also at the socio-economic and political factors. It's all tied together.

By the mid to late 60s, it became obvious the big Hollywood studios weren't making money anymore. Television came and that affected the way the usual movie goer behaved. Since it was new, it had a success quite from the beginning. The studios were also investing a ton of money in a few select genres thinking it's the magic formula that can bring audiences back. Musicals and epics in technicolor. Most of them failed critically and also didn't make any profit. Only a few did, like The Sound of Music for example. Another aspect was that Hollywood played it safe in the 50s-60s, the Hays code was still on until 1968 which was restrictive and puritanical. And now we're getting to the bigger picture. How would a young audience in the late 60s could possibly be interested in that anymore? When they could easily buy a ticket to some European film that showed them morally ambiguous characters, sex and less conformism? There was no way Hollywood could survive if they didn't adapt. And they saw early on that some of the films obviously inspired by world cinema (especially Europe) were actually worthwile (see Bonnie and Clyde). And from that point on, filmmakers, writers, were given freedom and means of production, without the studios being completely in control of a film. The director was. And a lot of them were young people high on European and Japanese cinema and they helped bring in a new era. One that had a huge effect and still has on the way contemporary American film looks like. They owned the 70s.

And then the era of blockbuster came in and that has had a major effect as well, until today. Jaws made a lot of money. Star Wars too. The box office success was huge. The 1980s focused again on investing money, an easy plot to follow, a story that looked spectacular and so on. And still, those filmed looked better made than some current Hollywood super hero movie that is not bringing a wide variety of audiences back to the cinema.

We've been stuck with remakes, sequels and prequels and cinematic universes and countless shows on streaming platforms. A saturated market that offers nothing. We need good Hollywood movies. A diversity in genre films. What Barbie and Oppenheimer are doing this summer is great. Both are films that don't insult their audience, are mainstream but also cater to audiences coming from different backgrounds and people are excited. The tickets are sold out. But I do fear it's but one singular example and it will take another 10-15 years until something similar happens again.

For now, the situation looks bleak and the rise of AI used in the industry only makes it worse. Which is why the actors and the writers strikes are so important. They need to fight against it and gain some control. The big studios and streaming platform CEOs don't care about cinema and television. About the craft. They want to get rid of extras and replace them with a digital version. They will make more and more use of technology to write the scripts. As long as they spend less money on actual people, then that's great for them. Which is why the negotiations are so difficult. It's scary and I find it daunting that this dystopic scenario might happen in my life time.

As much as the movie and tv business is entertainment, it is also art. Simply because it involves people creating something. No AI can replicate what a person can do. Their emotions and intellect that is reflected in what they make.

Yes, going back to some formula of the 1970s sounds good but on a big scale, that's not possible because we live in such a different world. Some smaller studios are still releasing more quality works, like A24. But an entire industry is a lot more. Hollywood is the studios that make it. What's important is how those studios adapt and negotiate with the people that also keep Hollywood running and not lose its meaning. It won't disappear. But over time, people get replaced, new business ideas come in and the dream lives on. Hopefully on better terms than presently.

[quitereal]

thoughts on the Ark season 1, there will be spoilers, it will be long

I’m gonna start by saying I like it. It’s a bit campy, the science is not all there, there’s some stuff that bugs me, but overall, I like the show, I’m gonna watch season 2. 

I do hope they get a writer with a basic understanding of science for season 2 though, because even if the sci fi rule is “it only needs to sound legit” I don’t feel like this passed the bar? I’m sorry, treating an FTL drive like a USB you can just plug and play from ship to ship is just... not it. And they did have the temporal problems but even the solution for that was not great, in my opinion. I need the crew to be more competent too, there’s just too many instances where it feels like they got screwed because they didn’t bother to test something before trying to use it in the field. For instance, the FTL bubble shield. They literally pulled a mutiny on the basis that the shield was going to protect them, and they didn’t even turn it on once before they needed to use it? Like you’d test a used car more than that before you’d buy it, and yet we have a ship full of supposed experts who didn’t think to test it ONCE before counting on it to save their lives.

The biggest thing I want, though, is for them to make the villains LESS INSANELY EVIL for no actual reason. Seriously, the human race is dying out and instead of just threatening the other Arks (which are carrying some of humanity’s best and brightest) to get into line and follow her lead, Maddox just destroys two thirds of humanity on the off-chance she might kill Trust along with them? I need a real explanation for why they hate one another so much, because two people who are supposed to be the smartest humans in existence should be able to get past it in order to save humanity. I know the point is like “people like them are the reason we were wiped out” and they want Garnet and the others to show there’s a better way, but I just need their evil to make some small amount of sense.

As for ships... I’m all in for the slow-burn, enemies to lovers with Garnet & Lane. They have chemistry, the actors are both great, I really like that Garnet has a second in command who doesn’t just agree with her or trust her blindly, I love the mutual respect they seem to have established. Looking forward to seeing some consequences of a Captain/Subordinate relationship, really hoping they don’t do a Janeway and make it so Garnet can’t have a relationship with anyone now that she’s the Captain. 

I really like Brice & Ava as individual characters, and I do ship it, but I wish it had gone a bit more slowly? All for them jumping into bed right away, it’s in character for Brice and I feel like Ava needed it too, but they went straight in for a committed relationship a lot faster than I would’ve liked. Ava’s boyfriend literally just died what, a few months ago? So while I could see her jumping into bed with Brice, her admitting that she’s fallen for Brice so quickly really struck me as forced. Coupled with the fact that she really betrayed Brice in a very bad way --like, she didn’t JUST drug him, she had sex with him THEN drugged him-- I don’t think he should’ve forgiven her so easily? It really strikes me as a violation of trust, if nothing else, and I wanted them to hash it out more, build the trust back before they admitted their feelings. But seeing the ending, I get that they wanted to finish the season with a very much in-love couple so they could tease Ava’s death as a high stakes cliffhanger, but I feel like this diminished the whole ship. That said, they totally give me B’Ellana & Tom vibes (sorry for all the Voyager references, if you haven’t watched it, you SHOULD) and I love them for that, so I really hope that Ava isn’t dead and that in Season 2 we’ll get to see the consequences of them getting together so quickly, maybe have some trust issues from Brice come up, basically, I want some more angst over here.

Alicia and Angus really don’t do a thing for me. It might just be that they seem so young, or that the idea that the nerds have to fall in love is boring to me, but I don’t see the chemistry. I do like the character development we’ve seen so far; Alicia coming from someone who was smart, but obedient, to someone who will disobey orders she doesn’t believe in and can think outside the box to save the day, I hope to see her become a really strong character. As for Angus, I’m glad at the end that they seemed to hint that he has some lasting trauma from his experience with Kelly; if they just write off his being kidnapped and sexually harassed by her I’ll be pretty disappointed. I’m not mad they didn’t get into it more, there wasn’t time for them to do it justice and I really want this to be well-handled, but we need to see Angus getting to process what happened to him.

I love Felix, but honestly, I cannot understand why they gave a white man a samurai sword. Swords in space are cool, but if you want a samurai in space, they should be Japanese. Like this isn’t hard guys, basic diversity 101. That said, I love that Felix is a gay man who isn’t effete or any other stereotypes, I love that he’s the character that has a child he’s been separated from and feels guilt for it, although it does bother me how abruptly they killed off Robert. I’m really hopeful that they have something more interesting in mind with Katherine, since we don’t know what happened to her yet. I’m hoping they do something with time travel here, because I don’t really want them to bring an eight year old onto the ship, but I definitely want more family-angst for Felix.

Kabir is a fantastic character, in my opinion. I love her relationships with literally everybody, how Felix helped her with her addiction --and how the addiction is being shown as an ongoing thing, not just a one and done issue-- and Cat betrayed her trust later on. I like that she’s a mentor-figure for Alicia, and just a confidante for everyone. She’s the character that’s everybody’s best friend, and honestly I can’t even hate her for it. It would be so easy to have had her be the perfect maternal role, but they threw in the addiction and it really fleshed her out, in my opinion.

I really hope they stay completely away from anything further with Cat & Trust, to be honest. I like Cat, I find her really interesting and compelling and I love that she lets people think she’s just a vapid celebrity when in actuality she has depths that she hides under that blonde wig. I don’t like Trust, but I realize we’re not supposed to like him. I do want them to get more into what exactly the “Juno Project” is all about, it honestly sounds pretty eugenics-y so I’m hoping they’re real careful with this.

Honestly, the show’s got a lot of potential from here. The characters all have room for growth, the ships have room to go places, they set up some hooks for future plots and I’m very hopeful. It really reminds me a lot of other sci fi shows, like Star Trek: Voyager (as evidenced by my references) but also Stargate: Universe and I just love the vibe of it. This got real long, I won’t blame anyone if they don’t want to read all my thoughts, but I don’t have anyone to talk to about this show so I just wanted to get them all out while they were fresh. I’m really looking forward to season 2, and so grateful they already announced it’s renewed.

[mikkythehamster]

GOOD OMENS 2 SPOILER RANT

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED by church crowley ! (ALSO JFC PEOPLE THE SHOW CAME NOT EVEN A WEEK AGO AND UR FILLING THE INTERNET WITH SPOILERS LET PEOPLE SEE THINGS AT THEIR OWN PACE I HATE YOU ALL)

I can't stand people saying the "breakup" between crowley and azi was out of nowhere or that is was badly done. BITCH they are the living proof that gays be having breakups without even dating. I LOVE IT! i think it's perfect, neither of them have expressed directly what they want and sure you can say "what about the kiss", well crowley only kissed azi when he was surely to depart, that seems like a desperate declaration rather than a good hearted developed confession and discussion about love. It would have been very cheap if they just solved all their issues with one kiss.

Besides come on, you have been swallowing heterosexual misunderstanding/breakup stories for years and now the gays do it and it's suddenly wrong? shut up. Besides clearly metaton had something to do with azi's mood change, many people have pointed out that metaton can influence people's minds, control and also AZI DOESN'T DRINK COFFEE! and you could say he accepted due to fear of metaton but what if he was counting on that and put something in his coffee? in the scene before the elevator we hear a miracle queue sound and suddenly azi's face change. Other theories point out to OMELAS (oat meal latter with almond syrup) "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"  is a 1973 short work of philosophical fiction by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child. <-. tho i must admit this was very obscure lmao

Azi was heavily promoted with TEA! i feel it was a weird thing he just accepted coffee like that and how much emphasis they put on the coffee

So idk i feel it was all too in the nose to be just a coincidence personally. BESIDES neil said that this was always had planned to be more than just 2 seasons so honestly if it ended here it would have been shit, like oh just a kiss and its done? NO FUCK THAT. we didn't watch centuries of mutual pinning for it to just suddenly get together like that NO SIR. that would be boring as shit, there is so much more to develop and i am happy with how things ended, i am a sucker for hurt comfort so the next season will truly reveal if i am happy with the story or not cuz so far i am very happy.

idk why you all mad idk man you want fiction to be boring and predictable or characters to not have growth. CROWLEY finally did the first step now they need to develop that romanticism , that human love. they must otherwise its just cheap and easy. Azi didn't say "you move too fast for me crowley" for you to want him marrying him after 1 desperate kiss god damn. anyway i love aziraphale stop slandering him, why do you think this was out of character for him? THIS IS SO IC FOR HIM! (i am only a series watcher i haven't read the book so i will base him off that only). Aziraphale has always had issues verbalizing feelings,needs and understanding underlying wants. What me and my friend call the angelic autism of aziraphale. He won't sit there and take a "there is no nightingales" as a sign that he hurt crowleys feelings and neither can he say i love you too so instead he says i forgive you. It was perfectly in character for him to do and react the way he did. I love them i am very happy personally i am just sad we have to wait so long for another season because ofc you must respect the writers and actors strike and production takes long anyway.

-- edit

if there is one complain i have is that i wanted to see more of beelzebub and gabriel i hope s3 gives us more of them because that i felt it was too quickly resolved i need more.

[deviantaccumulation]

final thoughts on the obi wan show

Unfortunately, enjoyment did not improve after the first two episodes for me.

Once more, am very glad to see that many people enjoy the show and are living it, but it is not for me

So many plot contrivances, so much potential that was discarded

It felt like we kept rehashing the same struggles again and again, oh no people are suffering because of obi wan wait actually it's fine oh no Obi-Wan is depressed wait actually he's fine repeat three times

At some points it felt like they almost wrote obi-wan as an asshole too? in that flashback with anakin it felt more like he was a notoriously picky teacher who just kept giving unconstructive criticism, instead of a brother and friend as well; his interactions with the refugees also felt so stilted, the adresses felt shallow and there just didn't seem to be a moment where he actually connected with them

The only good thing was the final talk between Vader and Obi-Wan, because both actors got to strut their stuff, and the mix of vader's and anakin's voice was actually a cool touch

And then they ruined it with Obi-Wan just... walking away? and Vader letting him? no thought spared on whether he should kill vader or not, he just... leaves???

There was so much potential to be more philosophical in this show, to show the struggles of people having to bend under the empire or break, the compromises that have to be made

Giving Obi-Wan the choice to strike down Vader and him just utterly ignoring it feels like such a betrayal of how dutiful of a jedi he was

Someone who has seen the death Vader is bringing all across the galaxy, but i guess it's not his problem? what the fuck

Also Reva's arc was a) utterly predictible and b) had such a weird ending? her attempt at killing vader was so stupid, you're telling me she takes a decade of planning, explicitly tells obi wan that she can't just try and swing at him without him seeing it coming, and then that's exactly what she does? It could have been her and Obi-Wan working together, but no, she gets defeated almost as an afterthought in the episode

And then she just casually survives getting stabbed through the stomach by vader again which... the show doesn't even fucking bother to explain that plothole, and fucking shame on them. I try not to get mad at the show, but that was just a brazen show of shitty writing that it takes my breath away

And then she tries to kill Luke, because??? if she had at least known that he was vader's child i could have seen it kind of make sense, but she doesn't know because the message doesn't say so... what the fuck. She just tries random child murder because we have to see her sloppily change her mind. I would have preferred if the writers had actually let her stay in her moral dark grey at that point, instead of that ham fisted Woman realises that murdering an innocent child for no reason is, actually, bad, I THINK SHE KNEW THAT BEFORE

sigh

there are so many more things i could complain about with this show, and i just might when the need to rant strikes but ah

I am ultimatedly left disappointed. I knew this was going to be a tightrope walk, and i didn't have high hopes, but i also thought they could write a show that's decent and not makes me want to turn my brain off every two minutes

The only good thing i can say is that at least they didn't bash the order, but aside from the Jedi Were Here they also extremely ignored all force philosophy or otherwise connecting it to the story.

2/10, please don't use your first draft for your flagship show

[sonoda-oomers]

i think it was shanspear on youtube that raised this point that really stuck with me. it might be impossible to have productive conversations about AI when there's still so much profit incentive behind it.

like people are not that naive. they can acknowledge how exciting it could be to make an image from their imagination with the help of a machine. they can see the interesting and thought provoking potentials of machine generated art. i doubt i'm the only one who thinks the AI art = evil mindset has a bit too far especially when it's led to more kneejerk reactions against machine calculated tech that has existed since forever like video game npc behaviors. all of the conversations online feel so jarring when real world consequences actually happen like adobe kneeing in on the topic to tighten the noose on copyright laws to profit corporations even more. when it comes to the everyday person arguing on the internet, both sides are being played

and then somebody who heard about the adobe bullshit sees the writers and actors strike demanding against AI and opposes that bc now suddenly anti-AI is bad

and the thing is i can't really blame that person nor the anti-AI artists who probably supported the adobe bullshit before they knew the outcome. bc like. AI rapidly taking over really came out of nowhere to the average person and i think it's really unfair to expect people to immediately know the ins and outs of it. it's like when nfts were popping and artists were suddenly expected to navigate ideas from fields they have no knowledge of to legit culty mentalities, they're expected to know so much just to argue with some guy who doesn't know the first thing about what makes a drawing nice to look at. can you really blame every artists for not being able to write dissertations on how AI works and why they think it's illegitimate and should be regulated? they're busy actually making art and managing 14 social media accounts at once to keep themselves relevant and in the eyes of potential client so they can affording fucking rent. if they're presented copyright laws as a crutch to get this problem out of their mind of course they're going to take that as an argument, and may even support it.

like hell back in the nft days japanese artists got sold the system as a way to really combat disrespectful usage of their art by other people when in truth it did none of that, the market in fact encouraged theft.

ignorance is objectively bad, but at the same time can you really blame them when these techs keep seemingly pop out of nowhere and spawn societal issues and artists feel like now they have to have a stem degree and become a fucking humanitarian to tell people to Stop. when the simple fact is it really fucking sucks to work on your craft for so many years, to actually put in effort and spirit to do a good job, and then find out your potential clients would be fine with what a machine took 5 seconds to spit out. while artists are arguing with little twitter gremlins gloating to them about how artists are nothing compared to AI, some publications are already using AI instead of commissioning illustrators, and in every industry people are legit getting replaced by AI bc it costs less and it saves the suits at the top from having to treat people like people. and then you realize you can't really argue against the fact that human CAN be replaced. but you know just because it's true doesn't mean that it's good and should be allowed to continue. and no matter what opinion you hold there's corporations and agents and pr people left and right waiting to weaponize your feelings because there's money to be made money money money. the money that artists already weren't making before fucking algorithms could do their job for much less in return.

like i just wanna fucking draw man. and i think i'm allowed to hope to make a living from the skills i have. a few months ago posts kept coming out about how to watermark your art and use services to make sure really sure 100% sure this time that their art won't be added to a dataset. people delete their art after hearing about the theft, not knowing it's already been included in the dataset and there it will remain. do you know how fucking exhausting that is? there's a reason not everybody became a scientist or a programmer, we can never not live in a reality where we're not depending on other people to excel in what we can't and trusting that they're doing their job well. and then one day some guy in tech decides we're actually done depending on artists for being artists now, we want to make the money that they could make. every AI user can't help but think people with anti-AI criticism are attacking them personally. and it's not even those AI users that directly caused hollywood to want to screen actors' likeness to make a robot do their job forever and make execs so much fucking money.

[drxwsyni]

show me heaven, take me to hell︱okkotsu yuuta x f!reader

“Going so long ensuring that you wanted him and nobody else ended up having adverse effects, all this time spent putting you first had turned him selfish, and he didn’t quite care anymore. He needs you—all of you, anything less for any longer and he might just go mad.” a/n: this is my part for @seita’s corrupt-a-virgin collab! i was really excited to write a fic with this prompt, and this collab was super fun so pls go check out the other writers involved!!! words: 3.7k warnings: ALL CHARACTERS AGED UP 18+, noncon, somnophilia, virginity loss, rough-ish sex, oral (f. receiving), fingering, choking for a quick moment, creampie, a little praise, heavy stalking & obsessive behaviour, gen. yandere themes

Yuuta liked to think he had control over his emotions—but peering down at you, he knew that was far from the truth. How those emotions manifested was what he could control, because if it weren’t for the steely expression cemented into his face, he’d be sure you’d know of all the debased things running rampant throughout his mind.

And yet, he doesn’t fear the falter in his masquerade right now.

You’re fast asleep, none the wiser to the looming figure of your boyfriend, locked onto the way your chest slowly rises and falls in a rhythmic manner. How his eyes nearly gloss over as they travel down the curves of your body, half exposed as you’ve only pulled the sheets up to settle around your waist.

Yuuta reminds himself to breathe, exhaling a little too shakily, wondering to himself how he’s made it this far. He was a damn good actor, and he knows that fact currently stood as the only thing that’s gotten him to where he is today.

If he thinks back, it’s hard to even find one moment out of all the time he’s spent with you in which he’d shown you his genuine self. Hell, the very first time you spoke to him wasn’t even honest. He remembers asking you your name after introducing himself, lying through his teeth because he already knew what your name was. Yuuta knew what rank you were (well below his), your cursed technique (too weak to really protect yourself), how long you’d been working alongside Gojo (two weeks―starting the day after Yuuta had gone overseas). But he still asked, enamoured with the way you bashfully looked down at your feet when he praised you for being able to put up with the white haired sorcerer so far.

Another lie―how he claimed he’d love to team up with you and show you around, when it was just to keep you as far from any real danger as possible.

But you didn’t know that, going along with each and every falsehood that left his mouth. Lie after lie, he’d draw on the knowledge of you he’d spent months gathering, gradually molding his character into whichever form earned those soft little gifts of affection. Becoming the person you wanted, the person you needed, slowly until you recognized him as someone special. Yuuta did everything right—only to be completely overwhelmed now that he had you alone.

Because of course suppressing himself wouldn’t work out in the long run. Burying the desire that felt goddamn near insatiable, ignoring the feeling of it festering, growing into something ugly and uncontrollable—the kind of thing he saw in others, and exactly what he was trying to protect you from. But Yuuta wouldn’t let himself believe that what you really needed protecting from was him, even though standing over you now, proof of that reality was finally beginning to surface.

Just for a second, maybe not even that, it crossed his mind—just a taste couldn’t hurt, right?

The bound passion he could never let see the light of day unraveled in the dead of night. You were just so tempting, blissfully unaware of the danger towering over you, a vulnerability that tore away at the seams of his self control.

Yuuta felt the first thread snap, a barely there fracture to spur his irreversible descent into self-destruction.

Moving without really even thinking of any future consequences, long fingers that were calloused from battle and endless training reached to where the sheets atop you rested. White, silken and gleaming under the moonlight, he carefully, calculatedly pulled them down your body. Letting it pool at the foot of the bed, he slowly appraised your sleeping form.

An almost inaudible curse left him, whispered under his breath—he didn’t even notice the way your sleeping shorts were discarded onto the floor before peeling back the sheets, but he couldn’t miss it now. Maybe...you wanted him to find you like this?

No...he knew you weren’t that daring. The two of you might be dating, but all those past insistences of not wanting to move too fast, dancing around intimacy like it was the bane of all evil alone told him that this naivety was genuine.

There was that, and the fact that you were staying in his guest bedroom. Too shy to sleep in the same bed, how cute. He was all too understanding just a few hours ago, leaving you for the night and planning on retiring to his room. Only he was drawn right back to where you lay, realizing it was yet another subconscious lie to tell you he was fine with taking things slow, giving you your space.

He wasn’t even supposed to be in this room—there was absolutely no way you planned on Yuuta finding you like this.

A voice in the back of his head warns him, tugging at his subconscious to leave you be. Yuuta ignores it for the first time, crossing a new boundary, knowing that it won’t be the last.

You’re sprawled on your back with the hem of your oversized shirt riding up just a little.

A little too much, he thinks, eyes travelling lower and lower until they land on the lace trim of your panties. Thin, adorned with a small bow at the top. His fingers itch, wanting to feel the fabric for himself, likely soft in comparison to his rough hands.

Yuuta props one knee up onto the bed, the mattress sinking slightly with his weight. With one more glance, just to make completely sure you’re still fast asleep, he allows his fingers to trace up the inside of your leg. Gliding along your calf, then meeting the soft plush of your thigh. Your muscles don’t even twitch, unmoving as his hand gradually creeps higher, higher, higher.

All he needs is to be closer, something to tide him over until you’re willing to let him in. He wants to know just what it feels like to have you under him, little weaknesses you hold that nobody else knows of.

Just a taste, he reminds himself.

Yuuta peers down at you, relieved and on edge at the same time when the tips of his fingers brush against the cotton fabric of your panties. Ever so lightly, his ring finger dips lower, gently pressing against your clothed slit.

The heat between your thighs makes him shiver, warmth pulling him in impossibly closer. Your legs are spread just enough for Yuuta’s hand to fit perfectly in between them, almost invitingly so. He feels like all of his nerves are standing on end, vibrating as just the simplest touch has such a large effect on him.

It’s a familiar feeling, despite always looking at ease, he frequently had to mask these turbulent emotions inside him so that he didn’t scare you away, just as so many others did. This new sensation, not having to worry about constant control, it was unimaginably refreshing. He didn’t want it to end.

You don’t seem to be stirred in the slightest, which is good, because he’s not quite satisfied. The both of you did have a tiring day to be fair—now making you a heavy sleeper. Yuuta deems it a saving grace, curiosity unquelled in wanting to know how far he could push his luck.

That same singular finger travels along the dainty fabric, gently dragging up your folds until stopping at your clit. Experimentally pressing into it, Yuuta spots the way your brows just barely draw together for a moment. The sound of your breathing meets his ears, turned airy as your lips part when he begins rubbing back and forth, a light friction that makes your sensitive, untouched body react unconsciously as you continue to sleep.

Yuuta thinks for a second of how you touch yourself when you’re alone—if you do as he is now, teasing your clit, making you squirm at the light stimulation. You’re not waking up, but your body is still reactive even in this state. With how your panties hug the curves of your body, how he presses them into your heat, it’s not hard to see the small patch of your arousal already leaking through.

It’s cute, you’re so much more honest when you’re asleep.

An idea strikes him, coming more as an intrusive thought than anything helpful, but it’s dangerously enticing nonetheless—if he could make you cum without waking you up. Earn a glimpse of what he hoped you’d let him see eventually.

You look like you want it, chest rising and falling a little heavier, and when he pointedly nudges your clit with the smallest increase in force, your breath hitches.

It would be cruel to leave you like this—Yuuta isn’t a cruel man.

He’s doing this for you now, not himself. It’s repeated in his head, words reassuring as he slinks onto the bed. His grip is delicate, pushing your thighs apart a tad bit more, just enough to make room to lower himself between them.

Eye level with your heat, the scent of your arousal washes over him. He can’t help but place a few ghosted kisses on your inner thighs, a quick nip at the supple skin that leads to a trail of the same before his lips hover over the seat of your panties.

Through long lashes, he focuses on your face, almost shuddering with you as his tongue comes into contact with the patch of wetness, dampness growing as he licks a slow strip up over the cloth. Yuuta repeats the action—once, twice, three times, then loses count. His movements are slow, soft and steady, taking what he can get but soon becoming frustrated with the barrier in his way.

The hands placed on your thighs twitch, and it only seems logical that if he wants to finish what he started, he needs to make things a little easier for himself. An unnatural strength imbued with cursed energy flows through his palms. He’s eager, doing it without thinking, not realizing the force he puts behind his actions until the seams of your panties tear with almost no resistance.

Yuuta’s eyes widen slightly, because his plan was to merely push the fabric aside. But that problem can wait, especially when he can’t.

The offending fabric is casted aside, and Yuuta knows he wants to take his time. Testing the waters, his thumbs come up to spread apart your soaked folds, taking in the way your hole clenches around nothing as he gently blows cold air against it.

He’s not shocked to find your muscles twitching so easily now, reacting to every little thing he does. Not shocked, but it does make him greedy. It makes him want to abandon caution entirely. Taking his time turns out to be a lot easier said than done—when his tongue places a few kitten licks onto your clit, the near sinful whimper that escapes you has his lips latching on and sucking instead.

You’re always so quick to flee from him, Yuuta can barely get a lasting kiss in before you push him away. To hear that leave your mouth, intentional or not, it’s dangerous. He’s starved for intimacy, starting to lose sight on why he’s worked so hard to become close with you, drowning in the thoughts of why he instead wants to rip that safety he provides from you entirely just to see the things you keep hidden from him and everyone else.

There’s his own personal heat building, hips grinding into the mattress now and then to relieve the ache you don’t even know you’re causing in him so quickly. It doesn’t do much, if anything it only makes his resolve weaken, low groans making their way up his throat and sending soft vibrations onto your sensitive nub.

His tongue darts back out, flattening as your hips buck against his face, trying to gain more friction.

And all it tells him is that you want this—just as much as he does. You’ve never told him, but you don’t need to. Your body speaks for itself.

The wet muscle pushes past your entrance, Yuuta’s nose bumping your clit every time his head jerks when his tongue curls against your walls. From how your body tenses, the feeling unmistakable under his large hands, he can tell you’re getting close.

All the breathy sighs and whines leaving you, the overwhelming taste of you on his tongue and in his mouth, it clouds his judgment more and more as each second passes.

Yuuta forgets about the hard work he’s put in to keep you safe, to make sure you ended up choosing him over everyone else. You’re intoxicating, and he can’t get enough. There’s no such thing as just a taste, not when he’s stopped trying to hold back and instead starts trying to devour you.

You deserve more, he thinks, coating his ring finger with your slick, teasingly swirling it around your entrance before letting it sink into your heated pussy. It reaches far deeper than his tongue, and with a few thrusts, curling his finger inside you, Yuuta finds what he’s searching for as you tense hard around the slender digit. His mouth returns to your clit, sucking and flicking it with the tip of his tongue.

Yet no matter what he does, it’s still not enough. He wants to watch you finally fall apart, wants you to stop pushing him away.

And he realizes, it’s not a want, but a need. One that can’t be satisfied as easily as he thought when he first removed the sheets from your unsuspecting body. Going so long ensuring that you wanted him and nobody else ended up having adverse effects, all this time spent putting you first had turned him selfish, and he didn’t quite care anymore.

He needs you—all of you, anything less for any longer and he might just go mad.

Yuuta can’t think straight to save his life, he’s hooked on the way your body shakes beneath him, adding another finger pumping in and out of you, groaning against your clit as he desperately ruts against the bed.

You’re responding so well, it only confuses him more as to why you haven’t let him take care of you sooner, as clearly you needed him like this. He can practically hear his name fall from your lips, airy and begging him for more.

His eyes are screwed shut, and yours are open.

“Ahh—Yuuta...wh—ngh”

Those calloused fingers know just how to make you shake in pleasure, not relenting as you suddenly cum around them. He feels your swollen clit throb, over and over against his tongue.

When you start to convulse, near pained whimpers leaving you, he finally stops.

He’s frozen for a moment, your full awareness dawning on him.

A sheen of sweat clings to you, chest heaving, heartbeat going a mile a minute and hammering against your ribcage. You were falling back down from the high that made you see stars, the closer to reality you got, the more you understood what had happened.

The fear would hit you first, and it’d be fast—you’d scream, fight, try to leave him.

Yuuta knew this, he knew you, and so he moved faster.

Before you could make another sound, panic rising in your throat, a firm hand clamps over your mouth.

And god, you look fucking terrified. Both hands flying up to push him away, nails biting into his wrist while tears begin to well in your eyes. Irises swirling with fear, confusion, betrayal.

It should make him feel guilty, it does—but it’s not enough to stop him from wanting to make it worse.

His palm stays cemented over your mouth, muffling your cries. “Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

It’s not, all your squirming does is grind against his aching cock. And he’s so far gone that he might as well go further—he doesn’t even try to stop you. The hand over your mouth pins you down well enough, your body so much weaker compared to his.

“M’sorry, just—fuck…”

You’re not calming down, struggling harder with each second that goes by while Yuuta fights to hold you still.

“It’s alright, baby, you’re okay.” With everything running through his mind, the only thing consistent and true is that he has to be inside you. 

His free hand grips the waistband of his sweats and boxers, hastily pulling them both down at the same time. He hisses when the cold air of the room meets his cock, slapping against his abdomen. He’s already in between your legs, and you’re still trying to get away, hips lifting off the sheets as your legs helplessly kick. Your movements are uncalculated, frantic—it’s an accident when his cock brushes against your heat.

You squeal at the contact, but there’s nothing you can do to stop him from rutting against you, length sliding between your folds and coating him in your slick. A slight shudder runs through you as the tip of his cock catches on your puffy clit, repeatedly nudging it with each thrust.

It’s not enough. Not before, not now, he can’t seem to satisfy whatever want inside him has broken loose, and you’re forced to deal with it all because he couldn’t keep himself in check.

“Just relax, okay? Gonna make you feel good...promise you—”

Yuuta practically chokes on his words, lining himself up with your entrance, unable to stop his hips from pushing himself inside you all in one go. Blood rushing behind his ears drowns out the sound of your whimpers, lost in the way you keep sucking him back in when he goes to pull out. So goddamn tight—Yuuta’s glad he’s made sure he was the first to get to you, despite the circumstances.

He’s a mess, you’re a mess, it’s sloppy and it’s perfect, because the quick back and forth of his hips goes so deep that he’s grinding against your clit with each thrust. Your whines are in tandem with his movements, pain mixing with the building warmth spreading throughout you.

The body draped over yours is so much larger, broad shoulders blocking out the moonlight as Yuuta keeps himself propped up above you with a hand beside your head. The one over your mouth disappears, lightly wrapping around your throat for better purchase instead.

It’s too easy to lose himself now, letting his guard down—and you jump at the chance.

There’s a shove to his chest, and then he’s being kicked down the bed. The door is on the adjacent side of the room and so to make quick time you scramble across the bed sheets. Of course, a hand too cold clamps around your ankle, and it feels like he’s about to crush the bone beneath when Yuuta drags you back.

All your pleas go ignored, and he’s suffocating as your body is pinned against the bed by his own.

A lanky yet toned arm snakes around your waist, lifting your hips to meet his. “Just a bit—” there’s a pause, groaning as he drives his cock right back into your pussy, “—bit longer…”

Yuuta hasn’t completely forgotten why he decided to take things this far, his free hand reaching down to toy with your clit. With the new angle, his cockhead hits that soft, spongy patch that has your walls fluttering around his length.

Your fighting spirit diminishes more and more, not much strength to begin with in how you were woken up, only worsened by the way the coil in your stomach keeps tightening. When you go to shove the arm wrapped around your body, it’s not genuine, not completely at least. You’re overwhelmed just as much as him, and letting it happen doesn’t seem all that bad.

Slick is dripping down your thighs, the sounds of skin slapping against skin echoing throughout the room alongside his grunts and your airy moans.

There’s a shake in your body, legs unable to keep themselves up as your voice breaks through the noise. “Yuuta...p-please…”

It doesn’t matter what it is you’re begging for exactly, but he tries to console you anyways. “I’m right here, baby. Just let go for me…”

The pads of his fingers press harder circles around your clit as the cant of his hips picks up.

You’re reaching your end, unmistakable in the way you tighten around his length, your muscles contracting and releasing. Yuuta is right behind you, thrusts growing erratic, barely pulling halfway out before sinking in again.

“Ah—that’s it, cum for me, good girl—”

There’s a moment where you go quiet, body locking up and mouth opening into a silent scream. It’s enough to have Yuuta’s body reacting much the same, a harsh ‘fuck’ leaving his lips before painting your walls white. There’s no thought to pull out, just that he wants to relax with you in his arms.

You’re trembling, aftershocks washing over you in waves, especially when he slowly drags his cock out and past your g-spot before leaving you empty.

Yuuta finally releases you from his hold, watching as you slump pitifully into the mattress. There’s a trail of his cum leaking down your slit, a little pool of it forming on the sheets. You look absolutely ruined, face turned and smushed against the bed—he can see the tears heavily wetting your cheeks, mouth agape as your chest heaves.

And he just...stares. Somewhat out of breath himself, hunched over, unmoving otherwise while realization crashes down on him.

You’d never forgive him, you’ll leave the second you get the chance. What Yuuta’s done to you is irreversible.

...As far as you know.

It’s always been like this, he thinks. Yuuta keeps you endlessly in the dark, meticulous pre-planning to make sure you’re protected always. And so he steps away, tucks himself back into his boxers, pulling up his sweats and grabs his phone. It looks like you’ve pretty much fallen asleep, which makes his job easier.

Plan A through Z, Yuuta has something to fall back on no matter what.

The screen illuminates his face, fingers swiping until Inumaki’s contact shines back at him. The cursed speech user owes him a favour, and there’s no time more perfect in Yuuta’s mind than now to cash it in.

A deep sigh from him sounds throughout the room—you won’t remember this happened, none of it. Yuuta will clean you up before Inumaki arrives, use reverse cursed technique to handle any wounds you may have, and then he’ll have his friend make you forget anything past going to bed.

While he still wants to keep you safe, keep you pure—it’s no longer for the same reasons. 

Darkened eyes land on your weakened form, and Yuuta knows this won’t be enough for him. You’ll push him away, he’ll get impatient...the rest is predictable, to say the least.

His message sends, phone turning black. 

Somehow, he’ll need to find a way to earn more favours.

[zodiyack]

Rude! (3,000+ Follower Fic Special 1/3)

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Female!Hopper!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Billy stuff, lyrics, fluff

Song: Rude by Magic!

Words: 1,798

Summary: Billy's love for Hopper's daughter is too strong to be stopped by the tough Chief Jim Hopper. Despite being told "not in a thousand years", he plans to love her regardless.

Note: Thank you so so much! I love you all, and writing your ideas, as well as sharing mine with you, has been so fucking fun and amazing! I'm sorry for my lack of words, I wish being an author came in handy with writing this, however, all I can say is that I love you all from the bottom of my heart. I've seen people do shout-outs, and ask-related stuff with their follower things, and I may do that, I'm not sure. For now, I hope you enjoy this... Thank you all, again!

Also 1/3 means that there will be two other fics released for the 3,000+ follower present!

Taglist: @urie-bowie-mercury, @matth1w, @redspaceace-writes, @fandom-puff, @darling-i-read-it, @simonsbluee, @sebastianstanslefteyebrow, @dpaccione

Masterlist | Stranger Things Masterlist

"Saturday morning, jumped out of bed and put on my best suit. Got in my car and raced like a jet all the way to you. Knocked on your door with my heart in my hands, to ask you a question, 'cause I know that you're an old-fashioned man. Yeah."

Billy was freshly graduated, working as a lifeguard whilst his girlfriend worked her own job, both saving up for their chance to ditch Hawkins and move to California. Sweet Cali. Billy was excited to show the love of his life around the place he called home. Though, physically, he left the salty ocean and windy beach behind, the place never truly left him.

You could see it in his eyes. The waves crashing in his blue orbs. He swore the scent had just barely clung to his belongings; the smell of the tangy air that followed a majority of the state. Working at a pool was the closest he got to the memory of California. Chlorine was most certainly not the salted ocean waters, but with the circumstances, he decided it'd do.

The way his face lit up whenever he talked about his home...it made Y/n more and more excited to see it. His girlfriend had grown up in Hawkins, stayed there her whole life. Never once did the Hoppers leave Hawkins.

But the second that was introduced to Billy, he knew it had to change.

Although they were saving for a big move, Billy had...other things in mind with what to do with his first large pay-check (or series, rather. Working as a lifeguard didn't pay well with just one check). He began to work more shifts to make up for the money he'd spent, and one day after calling in for a day off, he decided to put his plan into action.

"Billy, stop messing with the tie."

"It's annoying." Hands slapped away his attempts of adjusting the black silk tie.

"Well it won't stop being annoying if you keep fucking it up."

For the first time in a long time, Neil Hargrove was calm. Not happy, not amused, not pissed off for some unjust reason- just calm. He wasn't wreaking havoc and he wasn't being an asshole to his son. Billy hadn't seen this side of his dad in quite some time, in fact, he thought something important was going on and he was about to fuck it all up. And then, Susan retreated to the living room with a camera and a freshly ironed suit.

"You're not putting me in that."

"And who asked for your opinion?" Neil deflected with a raised brow. One heavy sigh later and Billy was leaving the bathroom, dawning the whole black and white getup.

Susan clasped her hands over her mouth, a tear leaving her eye, "You look so handsome! Just like your dad!"

Billy rolled his eyes, "Great."

However, his careless attitude was swept under the rug when the blue Camaro pulled up to the police station, interrupting a clearly distressed Chief Hopper bickering with his daughter. Billy had to get himself together before stepping out of the car, jaw slack after seeing the beauty he got to call his date.

"Hello Mr-"

"Don't even try play nice with me, Hargrove. She's not going anywhere with you. End of story." Hopper kept his eyes trained on the blond, body tense like a snake preparing to strike it's prey.

Y/n grabbed Billy's arm, slowly directing him to the car, "And in the sequel, we find out I am going with Billy. End of that story."

"There is no 'sequel.' The writer got drunk and lazy." She paused, turning to face her father who stood tall, arms crossed and face unamused.

"So his daughter picked up where her father left off, and then the sequel was published and the two lived happily ever after, the end."

While her dad attempted to search for a line that would better hers and force her to stay, she pushed Billy toward the driver's side and slid into the car as fast as she could, rolling down the window as Billy started it up. "Bye! I'll be back before midnight!"

The two drove off toward the school, leaving behind a trail of dust and very, very, pissed off Hopper.

Prom was better than Billy thought it would be. He didn't want to go at first, but after Max found out and spoke to her mom about it (the little redhead a cupid-in-the-making), Neil pushed him to go (as he was "doing something else besides being a lazy-no-good rebel"). It was then that he called Y/n and asked if she'd be going.

The suit came in handy. Clashing with his rocker aesthetic, he put it back on once more. The once-annoying tie proved to be somewhat okay in the end.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend, but the answer is no!"

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude?

With a deep breath, he ran-over the conversation in his head once more. Like a script for an actor, he had thought of every possible outcome and every possible line for him to face it with. He almost chickened out as his fist rose to the door, but it was too late, for his knuckles rapped against it before he realized he was even knocking.

El opened the door, eyes wide when she saw the familiar mullet and button-down. "Papa..." She muttered as she backed away and out of view.

Hopper traded places with her, his lazy expression sobering up instantaneously, replaced with a grumpy scowl. "Hargrove."

"Mr. Hopper, sir."

"What are you doing on my front porch?"

He swallowed roughly, palms sweaty against his sides. "I was wondering if I could talk to you."

"You seem to be doing just that right now, Hargrove." Hop crossed his arms and clenched his jaw.

Well, this was certainly not something Billy had thought of. He was on panic mode internally, attempting to find any response that could save his hide and accomplish what he set out to do. Unfortunately, the word-vomit button seemed to be misplaced under the button labeled "help".

"I'd like to marry your daughter, sir."

Hop's eyes grew just as big in size as El's had when she opened the door. He choked on his own surprise, coughing it off, then glaring at the boy in front of him. "Over my dead body, Hargrove. If that's all, I'd strongly advise you to get off of my fucking porch while you're still alive."

I hate to do this, you leave no choice; can't live without her. Love me or hate me, we will be boys- standing at that alter. And we will fly away, to another galaxy, you know. You know she's in love with me, she will go anywhere I go-

"Billy, he's just stubborn."

"No, no, I don't think he likes me."

Y/n sighed, rubbing her boyfriend's back. He hadn't told her of his proposal plans, only that Hop seemed to have it out for him. "It'll take time, but he'll warm up to you!"

"It's been how many years since he's met me?"

"To be fair, your reputation wasn't doing you any good until now..."

"It's not like that was fucking obvious." He slouched further down in the front seat of his Camaro. To Billy, all hope was lost. If he couldn't get Hopper to give him his blessing, he was sure he'd lose his goddamned mind.

Y/n frowned. Her frown flipped around as an idea popped into her head, her lips finding Billy's knuckles and quirking his attention. "Even if he never likes you, I'm not going anywhere."

Billy laughed softly, "he'll fucking kill me if you go against him."

"Eh, that's only if he can catch us."

"You're out of your fucking mind, Y/n Hopper."

"I know."

The rest of the night was spent in the Camaro, of course, doing one of Billy's favorite pastimes. By the time the sun rose, Billy was sneaking a kiss to a giggling Y/n before dropping from her window in the cabin and running to his car, parked far enough that Hop or El wouldn't notice. He blew her one more kiss, which she pretended to catch, then he broke into a sprint.

Maybe, he thought, just maybe; there was still a chance.

His knuckles hit the door again, shifting on his feet nervously. It swung open to reveal Hopper, an unimpressed look bringing no surprise Billy's way. It was quite expected, honestly.

"What." His tone made it clear he wasn't up for fucking around.

"Mr. Hopper, if you just give me one chance to prove to you that-"

"No, no, no, no, no. Let me make it very clear to you that I want you to have nothing to do with my daughter whatsoever. No marriage, no friendship, I don't even approve of you guys fucking or whatever-"

"We're in a serious relationship, sir. It's nothing like you think it is."

This made Hop laugh. He continued to do so, holding his stomach, until he realized Billy was unamused. "Oh, you're serious?... My answer is still no, Hargrove. My answer will always be no. Go find someone else's daughter's heart to break. You're not hurting mine."

"It's not like-"

Before he could even get the words out, he was met with a door in his face. Turned down, again.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend, 'cause the answer's still no!"

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude, rude?

Again, again, and again, Billy incessantly pleaded with Hopper. Different tactics were all met with the same answer; rejection.

He held up a sign outside the cabin, only for Hopper to close the curtain and chuckle as he sipped his coffee.

He asked at the door again, only for Hop to threaten to give him a black eye (which was met with "aren't you the sheriff? Isn't that illegal?").

He raced past the police station, Max leaning out the window with another sign, only for Hop to threaten them with holding cells.

He even went as far as to ask Max and El to help, but Hopper had none of that, and sent Max home with a rant full of nos.

However, if Jim Hopper thought any of it would get it into Billy's head that getting his blessing was just not happening- he was as wrong as Nancy when she claimed not to have feelings for Jonathan.

Billy had another plan in mind, and this one was impossible to say no to.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend- but no still means no!"

"Hopper." Billy stood before his desk, interrupting his nice date with a delicious doughnut, and earning a very annoyed glare. "I got Miss Byer's blessing. Aren't you two a thing?"

"You son of a-"

"I got Eleven's too."

"Hargrove, I'm gonna-"

"Before you cuss me out, I think you should know that I've got a stable job, an interview with a mechanic so I have a job when the pool closes for the winter, and I've got a house on the market I'm looking at. I'm devoted to your daughter and she's devoted to me. You may not like me, but I think you're a great dad, better than the one I was unfortunately stuck with. You raised a strong and amazing woman. She's incredible and I admit, she deserves better than me-"

"You don't have to say that twice." Hopper huffed, crossing his arms.

"I know she deserves so much better than me, I'm surprised she's even with me too. But she loves me, and I think you can see that. I love her too. I would never, in a million years, break her heart."

Jim stayed silent for a few minutes. The silence brought uneasiness to Billy, but that was intentional on Hopper's behalf. He finally piped up with a cough, clearing his throat, before his piercing eyes met Billy's blue orbs.

"I'll hold you to that, Hargrove."

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude? Why you gotta be so rude?

Bonus:

(after the wedding)

"What was that about a no?" Billy quipped with his infamous smirk.

"You're lucky I'm sheriff, Hargrove."

Why you gotta be so rude?

[dreamylyfe-x]

Your trevor meta is making me realize how weird it is that the writers and cast were so insistent that mickey wasn't coming back, because I don't think theyve ever really known what to do with ian's story without him. They put him in these lukewarm relationships and tell us they're so much better and healthier, but then have ian straight up admit that he still loves mickey and nobody else has made him feel the same way. How do they set that up and then have him go back to trevor? They set up ian moving on with "I'm not that person anymore" and follow up with season 8. It's like okay...who he is now is gay Jesus? Lmao. He's always been the shows forgotten middle child and after they wrote mickey off "for good" they could have taken him in a million directions but they chose one so shitty it basically made cam leave lmao. Sometimes it feels like fan insistence kind of forced mickey back but in actuality, the seasons where he's gone just hammer home that he was always the inevitable end to ian's story. So bizarre how little the showrunners understand their own story sometimes.

Ok. I’m going to be a little more Doylist here than I usually am, because we’re talking about what the writers are thinking. And I’m also going to take this opportunity to share this fascinating article from the AV Club in 2016: When Fan Engagement Goes Wrong. Everyone beware, it contains significant spoilers for The 100. But it’s also largely about Gallavich, the fact that online promotion of Shameless leaned hard into the popularity of the couple, and were up against it when Noel left. I’ll quote: 

“[Supervising Producer Shelia] Callaghan’s choice to be honest and straightforward when engaging with fans is admirable, and yet also on some level futile. She can’t tell them exactly why Fisher chose to leave, she is (logically) unwilling to spoil future storylines outright, and she can only speak her own mind as part of a collaborative process over which she holds only some influence. So while many fans respect her effort to maintain the connection to this now marginalized community, others attack, reinforcing that attempting to manage these situations is a full-time job that no one has been properly trained for.” 

This article links some tweets and the one I find the most interesting is this one:

“But the actor left.  So...what to do? Have them just break up?? Felt way less true to me than a forced separation!” 

That tweet is from Krista Vernoff, who wanted to convey that they tried really hard to come up with what they do with Ian now that he’d lost Mickey. And I’m sure they did try really hard. And.... People hated it. Mostly. 

Here’s what I think, based on what I’ve read and the interviews I’ve seen, on deleted tweets and Tumblr rumours and YouTube clips: The show didn’t want Mickey to leave the canvas. At all. Noel wanted more money. The show could not come up with both that money and the money they needed for everyone else. The show let him go. And hoped they could solve the creative problem their budgetary problem had dumped in their lap. 

I actually think Ian’s story in season six is decent. I miss Mickey, of course. I find the last scene with him really painful -- but it’s not painful because the show is trying to diminish him. They write and then cut together a scene where Mickey is DEMONSTRATIVELY still deeply in love with Ian. He’s carved his name in his chest. He is looking at Ian like he’s the most beautiful creature ever given breath. And Ian can barely meet his gaze. They tell us Mickey is being sent away for 16 years but when we see the last of Mickey Milkovich in season six I think “God, this is so sad. They love each other so much and this is so fucked up.” 

I do NOT think “We are NEVER EVER EVER getting back together.” 

The show always knew what it had with Ian and Mickey. They leaned into it promotionally. They gave meaty storylines to the characters, particularly given that Ian was the fourth lead on a family dramedy built around six children. John Wells replaced Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing. He knows how hard it is to follow a phenomenon. 

The more I think about it, honestly? I don’t think they tried. I think they knew that they couldn’t bring in Mickey Milkovich, the sequel in season six, so they brought in Caleb. And maybe they meant for him to be a LITTLE more viable than he was... but I think there’s a pretty good chance they were just throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck, while being fully aware that the important storyline in season six was getting Ian from despair to a fulfilling career. Caleb was just there as a catalyst. 

Season seven if more interesting, because Trevor is brought on and it’s very much... “Hey, let’s do something new. Let’s bring on a transmasc character and put him into a relationship with Ian and explore those complications.” 

“Great! Put it up on the board!” 

“Also. Let’s call Noel Fisher’s people and see what we can work out because we can do better with Mickey’s send off and people are yelling at me on the street about it.” 

Quite honestly, these are not equal tasks for his writer’s room. You have one story -- Create a whole ass new character. The only thing we know is that he’s trans. Figure out the romance from there. You have six episodes to get them together as an established couple. 

Then: Bring back the well-established and beloved character for an epic romantic two-episode arc where he reunites with his true love and they run away together and then ultimately realize it cannot be, and say goodbye and it all feels like I Will Always Love You should be playing in the background. They actors worked together for five years. They have a great professional partnership. They like working together. They have a ton of history so there’s lots of juicy subtext. The longing and sexual tension comes pre-established. See what you can do. 

HOW do you make both those things work out so that they are equal? You need lightening to strike. And that already happened on How I Met Your Mother. They squandered their good luck and now there is none left for Shameless. I do not disparage Elliot Fletcher at all when I say that for Trevor and Ian to really work he’d have had to have come with scorching chemistry with Cam, rich material that really gave them a good opportunity to build rapport between the characters, and A wizard standing by to cast spells in the wings. They had SIX episodes, a pretty average connection between the actors, and the “these are the LGBTQ+ people in your neighbourhood” scene. 

I just can’t believe that someone with as many years of TV writing under his belt as John Wells has expected that to work. He hoped the Trevor story might be good, and was certainly going to break some ground in terms of telling trans stories. And the Mickey story was going to be the highlight, because he knew people wanted it and he also knew that they’d had something pretty special to start with. Which is why people were yelling at him at Comic-Con. I DO think he hoped it might placate fans a bit. But... he wasn’t going to completely close the door on Mickey this time, either. 

So... I don’t really think the show every intended to write Mickey off “for good”. I think they wrote him off “for now, and we’ll see what happens...” -- and they did that with Karen, Shelia, Jody, Steve and Fiona, too. They only brought a few of those people back... They brought Mickey back three times. They ended Gallavich FOUR times. Noel is in ever season except eight. I don’t think they wanted Mickey gone -- but I KNOW the fans also made it pretty hard for them not to know his value, so absolutely I think that played a role. But when you create something people love and you get that lightening in a bottle like they did with this story, I think writers are always going to be excited to get that back. They like praise! They like people to be excited about their show. And Gallavich was always one of the things that got people excited about Shameless. 

I think they also wanted Gay Jesus to be a great story. But that’s why the lightening in the bottle is so valuable. You can’t just get it anywhere. 

[theravennest]

Let’s Talk: The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion

I finished all 40 eps about two weeks ago, actually. I enjoyed it for the most part, the 1st half especially, but there were several things near the end that took me out. 

But first some of the good bits...

The cast chemistry was immaculate. Our four main lead actors were a lot of fun together. Not just Zhang Zhehan and Ju Jing Yi, but also Wang You Shuo and Xu Jiaqi (Loved them!). The four of them have such obvious ease with each other after their previous work together in Legend of Yun Xi and it made scenes with any combination of the main four really pop. 

I was especially drawn to the sisters’ relationship and the Prince-Vassal bond going on between Prince Su and Little Marquis. (Y’all know I’m a sucker for both sibling stories and stories about fictional royals and their loyal vassals.)

Most of the ancillary characters were interesting, actually. As y’all know from my last post about this one, I was crack shipping like crazy all the side characters. 😂 This cast made it easy for me.

Except for Prince An. (Sorry to hit the bad so early.) Good god, I hated that man. His character was poorly drawn in pretty much every way, which is unfortunate cuz he’s the main antagonist. Any story with a main antagonist that just doesn’t work is always gonna be weaker.

Also, no offense to people who like that actor but he was the only cast member who did absolutely nothing for me in terms of performance. So much of the story was focused on his weaksauce motivation and dry acting like, my god, put me out of my misery I do not care.

Anyway, the set design and costuming was top notch and I even enjoyed the broader story ideas the show was trying to put forth. The sitcom vibe of the first 20 eps or so was SOOO good. Our four mains’ comedic timings were pitch perfect. 

Unfortunately, the writing took a sharp nosedive in the back 3rd or so and it had a rough ending. (The lightning strike on the tower scene, the fight in the underground temple, the return of Prince An’s mom...all of that was trash. let’s be real.)

I mostly blame this on three things: the missteps with the Prince An character, the lack of development of Rong’s prophetic dreams even though that was the main premise of the show, and the jump-the-shark moment that was the wedding night and its subsequently underwritten fallout. 

Now to clarify, I don’t mean to say the wedding night event shouldn’t have happened at all but rather the execution of it within the story was poor and it negatively impacted 90% of the other character motivations/progressions and the overall pacing. 

You know, it felt like that thing you do as a writer where you wake up and have a specific scene in your mind. It’s evocative, impactful, fun, or otherwise intense. But you just have that scene and it’s something that would have to happen in the middle of your story. So you work your way backwards to try to get to that scene and you do your best to get the characters to make decisions to get there but when you sit down to write nothing works out. It’s clunky or OOC for the scene to still happen so you end up having to either scrap the evocative scene or keep the clunky lead up and hope no one notices. That’s what that wedding scene and everything that happened after felt like. They wrote themselves into a corner and just struggled to recover until the bitter end. 

The main pairing suffered the most because of the poor writing choices. No matter how much chemistry ZZH and JJY have together, even they could not completely salvage Rong’s yo-yoing behavior with Prince Su. They started off so wholesome and then dove into such toxicity and miscommunication for no reason. 

Don’t get me wrong. I can very easily enjoy angst. But Fu Rong consistently broke this man down. After ep 25-26, it stopped being good angst and became so awful to watch all the emotional manipulation and turmoil. There’s something broken in the writing if 9 out of 10 times Prince Su cried or fell into depression it was because of something Rong did or said to him after jumping to a conclusion with only part of the puzzle pieces gathered. 

I could forgive some stuff because Prince An was manipulating things but some stuff was just all Rong not giving Prince Su the benefit of the doubt or plain old not doing her due diligence in investigating. She is supposed to have inherited the most prolific and successful spy organization in the show and she still got 90% of her conclusions wrong. It was like she was determined to always think the worst of Prince Su no matter what despite how often he went above and beyond to help her. Despite the fact that he literally had a reputation as a general for being a harsh taskmaster but fair and just. 

I think what broke me was when she did the bare minimum investigation into her own father’s death and just fully blamed Prince Su without confronting him honestly or even considering his personality or their relationship up until that point. She really believed a single street seller’s entire testimony over the man she lived with and supposedly loved for months. Girl...

And this is after she’d previously mistakenly accused him of killing her mentor with very few facts to the point where she stabbed him on their wedding night.

There came a point where I actually wanted Prince Su to finally, truly divorce Rong and settle down with someone who could love him right. Maybe give him time to heal from the repeated heartbreaks, betrayals, and the literal stab wound in his chest but he was so fucking in love with Rong, he just couldn’t escape.

(If there were behind the scenes production reasons for the clunky-ness of the back half, I would not be surprised at all but ultimately they don’t matter cuz the story we got was the story we got.)

Imagine if we had gotten a Rong who used her prophetic dreams to navigate the cut throat world of royal politics. Or imagine if we’d gotten Rong as a true apprentice to Ruyi who learned both metalsmithing and spycraft in the first half and took over the pavilion as a competent leader in the second half. As it stands, it just felt like wasted potential.

I’m glad they had the modern day special AU eps tho cuz those were great. Zhang Zhehan and Ju Jing Yi had the opportunity to really showcase their incredible chemistry but in a modern setting and with better writing than the back 3rd of BRYP.

Now let’s talk Zhang Zhehan since he was the reason I started this in the first place. I loved him in this. I truly did. He was stern and serious but also playful and sweet. He was romantic but awkward, badass but vulnerable. He really delivered a nuanced and charming performance. I loved every second.

I think my favorite moment wasn’t some badass fight or even a super romantic moment. No, it was when he got drunk and started crying like a little baby cuz Rong was constantly doubting him no matter what he did. It was simultaneously sad and hilarious. Like gut busting funny. Y’all can watch it here:

I laughed so fucking hard at this. Oh my god, guys! This shit was too much.

Random Thoughts:

The romance between the 2nd leads was A+. Truly an adorable affair. Though I think they should’ve gotten together officially earlier around ep 25 or so and we should’ve seen the rest with them as a couple.

The costuming was so good y’all. For all the main four characters but I was especially drawn to Prince Su’s outfits.

The ghostly pale look with the bright red lips and eyeshadow makeup for Rong did not bother me at all. I actually liked it for her though I think it would’ve worked better if she’d had more explicit prophetic abilities.

I could’ve used more actual war scenes with Prince Su and Little Marquis.

The OST for the show SLAPPED!

That one kid spy in Ruyi Pavilion was voiced by the same actor as Chengling from WOH and I have never double-taked harder. lmao

Even though there were things I didn’t like in this show, I appreciated how gay I could make it in my last post. Truly it was a bisexual’s dream aesthetically.

[archivingspn]

The Star Online “Jensen Ackles enjoys doing Supernatural”

(...) In 2005, his face went global when the first season of Supernatural was aired and people liked what they saw.

The series revolves around the Winchester brothers (played by Ackles and Jared Padalecki) following in the footsteps of their father to rid the Earth of demons, evil ghosts, monsters and the bogeyman. Armed with salt, their father’s journals on how to banish demons, and boyish charm, they travel across the United States in their black 1967 Chevy Impala, hunting down demons ... hoping to one day kill the yellow-eyed demon that took their mother.

It’s the kind of show that would have immediate cult following – it has classic rock tunes featured in every episode, good-looking leads, excellent character development, scary stuff, comedic moments and engaging plots.

Still, Ackles is also aware that Supernatural, which spends equal time on the relationship between the brothers and that of demon-busting, is a series enjoyed by a wide diversity of people, “... from the little 12-year-old screaming girl to grandfathers and grandmothers,” says Ackles. (...) He says that it is also one of the luxuries that come after shooting for three seasons now – not only do they understand each other, both he and Padalecki can afford to take more chances with the characteristics of their respective characters, allowing them to read a line a bit differently from what’s written.

At the same time, he humbly admits that “the writers are the brains of the operation” and that Supernatural creator Eric Kripke keeps the two of them on their toes and guessing what’s going to happen next to their characters.

The notion that Supernatural could be cancelled after one season seems ridiculous now as the series has proven only to get

better and better with each season. (...) For Ackles, five seasons seems to be the magic number for the series to run – not too long and just enough to end it well.

On the other hand, one thing that appears to bear heavy on Ackles’ mind is the great amount of time he spends making the series. Since he and Padalecki are in every scene, both the actors work every single day spending nine months out of every year in Vancouver where the series is filmed. This hardly leaves room for a social life or to get a couple of movies under his belt.

So when Supernatural added two female characters in the third season, Ackles thought: “This was going to be our ticket to a little bit more time off. But unfortunately, they can’t be on the show without being directly involved with us, so if they’re on the show we’re on it with them.” And, he’s back to square one.

Not that he’s complaining; the man obviously loves his job, admitting to missing it greatly during the writers’ strike that happened earlier this year.

He says: “I really like the process of television. I like the fact that you can get months and even years of developing a character and finding the different nuances and different relationships with the different characters.

“I enjoy the process of television. I also enjoy the speed of television. I get on a film set and I’m like (snores) because I’m used to working at such a rapid pace with television because we’ve got deadlines.

“I like that pace, but there’s also something to movies that is really fascinating to me as well. I don’t know. I would like to do movies if it works into the schedule, but the show has a pretty demanding schedule, so it’s hard.” (...) [source]