#Because that would unironically and ironically make him even more terrifying

[ray-elgatodormido]

Ah yes. Imagine the scary boss in his underwear they said. It would make him less scary they said.

“They” being me I um… did a thing and I’m sorry

Well turns out colouring from grayscale is much easier for me and gave great results.

and this was the file name

It would appear that my sole contributions to the Wo Long enjoyer and Three Kingdoms media fandom as a whole is “Lü Bu tibbiez”

#It would honestly be incredibly funny if Wo Long eventually gets a mod that makes Lü Bu shirtless 24/7 and removes the sexy mask #Because that would unironically and ironically make him even more terrifying #Just imagine storming through Hulao gate and be stopped dead in your tracks #By a very large shirtless man with a very large halberd just staring down at you ready to kick your ass #videogames #myart #artists on tumblr #dynasty warriors #wo long: fallen dynasty #lu bu #I’m sorry skskdhjwbs #romance of the three kingdoms #Can’t tell if Wo Long getting me into three kingdoms stuff was a blessing or a curse

[the-badger-mole]

Saw your post about being disappointed about idiots in your asks whining forever about your good taste lol and decided LET'S GIVE EM SOMETHING GOOD!

First things first, hope your staying safe, embracing what makes you happy, hating Aang is understandable & welcomed because he is unfortunately the worst and could've been a good character (still outshined by the rest of the cast excluding Ozai)

Zuko, Azula & Katara CARRIED Book 3! This is especially evident when looking at the best episodes of Book 3 (The Painted Lady, The Puppetmaster, The Southern Raiders, The Beach, The Day of Black Sun Part 2: The Eclipse, The Western Air Temple, The Firebending Masters, The Boiling Rock Part 2, Everything with Zuko & Katara & Azula in the series finale)

Seriously, it's laughable how badly Aang is outclassed by ALL his friends in terms of both character development & overall character in general.

Compare this Korra (who ironically has character development throughout the show but is absolutely destroyed over & over again by Bryke while Aang gets away unharmed and without consequences which is infuriating af)

Korra imo is the best Avatar we've gotten unfortunately Bryke are terrified of strong female characters (their disgustingly foolish treatment of Katara, Toph, killing off Suki without explanation, throwing away Azula despite her deserving a chance at redemption and being one of the best cartoon characters of all time, etc.)

As someone who's started wanting to write fanfics for Avatar & loves it with all my heart (like many others excluding Bryke who don't deserve or appreciate Avatar) All their idiocy has done is create endless potential fics, fanart, fan merch, etc. For people who actually adore Avatar.

It's depressing & maddening that so many creators fail to create a foundation for the future (which they desperately want cause they gotta milk everything for money somehow 🤮🤑🤬🤡)

They also fail at romance (which should be handled with the utmost care because it really really matters more than they realize) great example is Maiko & Makorra.

Maiko should've been the ship that ended after The Beach but showed that Mai broke up with Zuko because of two reasons (one of which is headcanon on my part)

1) would be because she believes they would be happier as friends and doesn't want to ruin their relationship by continuing this mess of an on-again-off-again relationship

2) She wants Ty Lee to be with him. Since Ty Lee knows, understands and loves him more than anyone else (other than Katara 😏)

I've always felt that Zuko having multiple wives would be a good ending for him. Every ship that I'd make canon represents balance in some way.

Ty Luko (Outsiders who understand each other and both have extremely powerful non bender fighting styles which compliment each other perfectly)

Zutara (Balance of two opposites, finding belonging & love in each other despite being on different sides)

Jinko/Zuki (both women really bring out the best in Zuko and they would really help him appreciate how strong he is for leaving his toxic dysfunctional abusive family and would love him unconditionally)

I'll even throw in Zucest because that ship is one of the best unironically & their coming together would be Ozai's undoing more than Aang's Deus Ex Machina ever could be. Aang RAN AWAY throughout the entire fight and really didn't deserve to win against Ozai. While Zuko & Azula defecting and turning against him (after The Beach) would be absolutely brilliant and really would outshine everything else.

I'd also have Ursa return after we see Zuko, Azula, Ty Lee & Mai going off to The Western Air Temple to join The Gaang. Why? Because it actually makes sense. Ursa waiting for the perfect time to strike and get revenge on Ozai for destroying her children a perfect cliffhanger and makes sense with her established character.

Imagine (wrote a short one shot scene)

Ozai "My son's a coward for not taking my life when he had the chance! I always knew he was too weak."

Ursa: "Hello, Ozai"

Ozai eyes widened almost comically how ugly and shocked he looked when taken by surprise.

"What are you doing here?!"

Ursa takes a deep breath, azure frames coming from her mouth as she dusts off her robes. She holds Ozai's glare with a spine chilling one of her own. If looks could kill, he'd be as dead as his father Azulon. She hated taking a life, but she'd enjoy watching Ozai suffer. After all he will learn respect and suffering will be his teacher not her compassionate son's. She'll celebrate his death but that'll have to wait unfortunately.

Ursa snaps her fingers, revealing a very muscular and angry Iroh.

"I've come to speak with my monstrous power-hungry fool of a husband. Iroh just insisted he come along as my bodyguard. Not that I need it for the likes of you."

She spat the last few words through clenched teeth like it was poison. HER children were victims of Ozai's lust for power. She would've killed Azulon without the threat to Zuko's life after he so readily ordered Ozai to kill her son.

Ursa acted like she was lost in thought, baiting Ozai to make a move. He didn't disappoint, she knew how cowardly and easily angered he is. He tried to shot lightning at Ursa, only for Ursa to effortlessly redirect it back at him. It hit him square in the chest and without his armor, he'd likely be severely injured and coughing up blood from internal bleeding.

Iroh looked on amused at his brother's temper tantrum. Some things never change he supposed.

Ursa doubled over in a fit of laughter that sounded like Azula's. It was cruel and mocking. Ozai grimaced in pain, glaring at the two disgraces to the family. He wanted their heads as trophies of his rule over the world as Phoenix King.

"Ozai, surely you didn't think I would be stupid enough to let my guard down around you."

"I've come to save my family from you! Know this, Ozai you will NEVER touch my children again! You've done far too much damage to them already"

"I'll never forgive myself for leaving them behind. Hopefully they'll forgive me one day..not that I deserve it" Ursa stated as tears threatening to fall, a tortured look on her face.

Iroh rubbed her shoulders attempting to comfort her. She'd already chastised him angrily for saying her daughter needed to go down and not trying to help Azula like he did Zuko. Despite both being misguided and confused. They still need their mother. She won't fail them again.

Ok I didn't mean to start writing a fic but hope u enjoy lol

I hope you keep writing your fic! I love how creative this fandom is. And you're absolutely right. Bryke have no one but themselves to blame for how dedicated Zutara fans are. But they have to thank us for keeping ATLA in the zeitgeist. If they'd made Zutara canon, the interest in the show would have died down a long time ago. Go us!

#atla #zutara #go team go!

[pumpkinpaix]

*waves* Hi! New(ish) follower, I followed for your posts about translation which are beautiful (especially the one about the imagery of "Zewu-jun") and thought-provoking; I don't have a good segue so here are some Salty Asks I'd like to know your answers to concerning MDZS: 5, 9, 10, 12, 23

oh, that’s so sweet of you!! thank you I’m really happy you enjoyed them 💛

okay salt incoming let’s see--all opinions are my own, no one has to agree with me, etc! and in true cyan fashion, this ask meme response actually needs a readmore  l m a o

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

fandom has not ruined any ships in mdzs for me, but it has made me way more critical of both wangxian and xicheng interpretations. not in the sense that like, I think they are bad! i love wangxian and xicheng, but I have very very specific feelings about them that I rarely see reflected in popular fandom interpretations. (because i am a picky bitch lol) 

wangxian tends to get the “they did no wrong and their love is righteous” treatment which I find disingenuous and believe directly contradicts the point of mdzs. i think that wangxian is fundamentally a very selfish relationship, and that that is, in fact, a good thing. i love that about them. i care so much about the assertion that your desires do not have to be perfect and righteous to still matter and be worthwhile. i don’t understand the impulse to make wangxian into a pure ship that triumphs and “deserves” a happy ending because they were right all along. I always felt like the entire point of mdzs was that--you can be the most terrible person, you can do unspeakable harm, and still be loved and deserving of that love. i think wangxian is compelling and moving specifically for that reason, and I often have to back out of interpretations that don’t acknowledge it in the way that i want them to. a lot of interpretations tend to idealize wwx and lwj in ways that I disagree with, and I’ve seen a lot of vitriolic pushback over anything that’s seen as even vaguely critical of either of them, when the point isn’t that “wwx/lwj is a bad person because he is selfish” the point is that “wwx/lwj’s choices are selfishly motivated” -- that’s not meant to be a value judgment, at least for me.

(i understand that a lot of this has to do with CQL’s influence, in which wangxian IS narratively rewarded for their righteousness, but as I’ve discussed at length, I think that positioning undermines what makes mdzs so powerful to me in the first place. not that i don’t love CQL!! i do love CQL--they have made a beautiful thing within the constraints that they had. but I think the novel is much stronger thematically.)

as for xicheng: i think that their relationship could be extraordinarily interesting if done in specific ways--I do not think they are well-suited to each other at any point in the canon timeline, but that they could be something really good maybe 10 years post-canon. I used to really like the idea of xicheng romantically, but as time goes on, I’m leaning harder into friendship. I think they have a lot of uniquely shared life experiences, and that it would be really good for both of them to have a person that they knew understood those experiences intimately: the pressures of leading a sect before adulthood, the grief of losing your family in a massacre and being unable to save them, the betrayal of someone who was once so close to you--that’s a lot. and i think there are very few people in their generation who could truly understand that. (for this reason, I also think lxc and xxc would be a very interesting relationship to see many many years post-canon, if xxc were ever revived) but during canon? no, absolutely not. i don’t think lxc has the slightest interest in jc, and i don’t think jc is particularly moved by lxc either, beyond a distant “yeah i mean, he’s the first jade everyone loves him sure moving on” kind of way. they both have their own shit to deal with, and before lxc’s seclusion and also before the core reveal, i think jc is too angry and vicious for lxc and lxc is too soft and toothless for jc. for someone to really convince me on xicheng, jc has to move towards some kind of self-forgiveness and peace and lxc has to move towards self-assertion. then I think they can meet somewhere in the middle of all that.

and like, it’s not that i won’t read silly fluffy aus or like canonverse stuff with them in a ship, but i admit that because it’s grown so popular but not at all in the ways that i personally want, I’m frustrated with and have retreated from reading it. unless it’s done in the specific way i like, it has too much of a pair the spares vibe for me to get behind it anymore.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

jin guangshan, obvious reasons, next

ok well, i guess to elaborate even slightly: jin guangshan, to me, is the embodiment of the systems within mdzs that cause tragedy. he and chang ci’an are similar in that respect? like, the callousness with which they treat people they consider beneath them. what is nothing to them is ruinous for another, but why should they care? but jgs really had every advantage handed to him and chose to use that advantage to hurt others in really insidious ways and i can’t forgive that. jin zixun is also on this list, but like, still ahead of jgs bc he’s younger. -_- i suppose in that respect, i also very much dislike chang ci’an, but that’s a bit harder to quantify, given that we know almost nothing about him.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

huh. uhhhh. i think i actually really like all of them? in the novel anyways. if we’re talking CQL, yin iron plot ugh.

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I think for similar reasons to 10, not really! I don’t see a lot of hate for any specific plot arc. Oh, maybe the incense burners? I completely unironically love those. people rag a lot on mxtx’s smut, but it’s very important to me for a number of like, personal mental health reasons lol.

23. Unpopular character you love?

xue yang! i think xue yang’s character raises a very interesting point about equivalent justice that kinda gets swept away in all the uhhhh murder. and it’s a point that has really big thematic repercussions, I think? but the way it’s worded makes it very easy to dismiss.

very briefly: xue yang is right when he says that 50 lives cannot pay back his finger, because there is nothing that can pay back that finger. no vengeance or sentence visited upon chang ci’an will ever be equal to the injustice that he visited upon xue yang. i think there’s a bit of naivety in the way xxc says “why didn’t you cut off his finger then? or his whole arm, if that wasn’t enough?” and the answer I think is very obvious--xy cutting off cca’s finger would not in any way be the same kind of trauma that xy losing his finger was, esp if chang ci’an knew who xue yang was. there would be an understanding in that: i am losing my finger because this man blames me for the loss of his finger. but to xue yang, a 7 year old? the pain he experienced was completely senseless and cruel and terrifying.

does that mean xue yang was justified? no jesus christ, but i do think it ties very neatly into the general themes of what it means to get vengeance, what it means to get justice, and how cycles of trauma eventually end. so i love him for that.

on a lesser note, but a similar one: i rather like su she, I think. there is something about like, jgy’s “all i had to do was remember his name and he was willing to die for me” that gets to me. there’s a huge tragedy in that somewhere.

wow i have no idea if any of that was coherent im very sleepy

salt asks

#cyan gets too deep in the weeds #ask meme #mdzs #rip i hate that the 5 tags thing doesn't work anymore rip to me i guess #the untamed #nice people saying nice things #ajax-daughter-of-telamon #asks and replies

[mouseonvenus-main]

Minecraft AU or whatever

(Sorry long post ahead) Nobody can stop me from combining my two biggest interests so here’s headcanons for if all the Nekoma boys played minecraft

Inuoka is obsessed with bees, collects every flower he sees and brings them back to the hive that's always by his house. Legitimately super good at building, his base is always the biggest and the grandest. His storage is always a mess though, he just puts all his chests in a shed and makes new ones when he needs them, there's no system. Gets really sad whenever he kills an Enderman, has a small garden filled with nothing but grass blocks that they've dropped

Lev prefers Creative Mode and refuses to play Survival without cheats and Keep Inventory. He has a sign outside his house that says "It's not a dirt house, it's a dirt home." Tames every horse he sees even if he doesn't have a saddle, is very invested in creating the most efficient cow crusher. He listens to all the music discs religiously, Cat and Blocks are tied for his favorite. Found diamonds once and got so excited that he accidentally jumped into a lava pit almost immediately after. Absolutely terrified of silverfish and is unironically trying to learn the enchantment table language

Teshiro owns the most cats anyone's ever seen in one place, but he just keeps breeding them. Only just started playing recently but is insanely good at parkour. Watches mcyts and drops everything to go mining when he finds a good cave. Doesn't fear anything, shoots at Ghasts from really far away just for fun

Shibayama is a true Minecraft vet, has probably played for longer than everybody except maybe Kenma. His skin is a character that he made in like 2011 and refuses to change it. He knows every song and all their names, not just the music discs but the songs that play in the background. He turns the volume way up when Sweden or Wet Hands comes on and is always inevitably scared half to death by the cave ambience noises. Really good at PVP but freezes up when he has to fight a creeper

Kuroo is not "good" at the game by any means, he played it all the time with Kenma when he was introduced to it but somehow hasn’t picked up any of the skills. He likes to watch other people play it and has never beaten it without somebody else (probably Kenma) doing most of the work. He has a crazy amount of dogs for someone who runs away from Skeletons. But the nerd is a part of the endangered population of potion masters, he knows like every recipe and has the "A Furious Cocktail" achievement (even though he's terrified specifically of the Elder Guardian)

Kai has only beaten the game by himself once and he sat through the entire "end credits." Dedicates himself to increasingly impressive farm/garden designs but doesn't bother with huge houses. Chronically addicted to campfires and lanterns, the people he plays with have to hide their torches. He's also really good at redstone and his contraptions confuse and amaze me. He is always willing to share his supplies (unless he doesn’t have enough for himself, then he’ll challenge the person to fair duel for them) and he always partners up with/spares people doing the crouching thing in PVP. Really likes Iron Golems and builds one for any village he finds that doesn’t have one

Yaku makes his career in failed speedruns and surprisingly good build designs. The huge amount of achievements he has is suspect at best (Kuroo is half convinced he paid Kenma to get half of them for him). He is the unofficial defender of Drowneds, Strays and Husks and has a deep respect for Baby Zombies. He blows up his friends' houses for fun (Lev is his main target) but will start a war if anybody else does it to them. Cried when the Moobloom didn’t win the 2020 Mob Vote

Kenma doesn't even need an explanation, we all know that he's been playing since Java Edition and definitely has more merch than he knows what to do with (I like to think he has at least three creeper onesies). He would be one of the best speedrunners out there if he didn't despise the Nether. He has his own Manhunts and his rages are the worst for this game, he's probably broken a few controllers because he fell in lava. Once beat the Ender Dragon with a diamond hoe

Yamamoto wouldn't even be playing the game if it weren't for his mcyt phase in like 2014 (he would have been crazy for PopularMMOs, prove me wrong), probably used to pretend that he didn't so that he could look "cool." Participates in the said Manhunts for the sole purpose of beating Kenma (and he probably has at least once). Went insane when the Nether Update came out, has since been trying to live there permanently. Jumps off buildings and down ravines even though he can't do the water bucket trick and is convinced that he can shoot an Enderman if he tries hard enough

Fukunaga is an unprofessional chicken farmer. Has the skills to beat Kenma in a 1v1 but prefers to spend his time collecting every dye in the game for his sheep army. Shockingly good with a bow and arrow but doesn't understand how to use crossbows. Doesn't scare very easily but he likes to go in places where people can't see him and shoots them once before leaving. He's not very good at building but he's dedicated to The Craft so he watches tutorials to make his farms look nice. Could kill the Ender Dragon at a moment's notice but he refuses to out of respect

Thank you for your time

#why is it Nekoma specifically? idk #i do not control what the brain thinks of at midnight #also when you people going to tell me that making headcanons is so fun like what #i might make a part 2 if this goes well who knows #mc #minecraft #haikyuu #haikyuu!! #oh god i have to tag all these characters #nekoma #hq hcs #kuroo tetsurou #kai nobuyuki #yaku morisuke #yamamoto taketora #kenma kozume #fukunaga shouhei #inuoka sou #teshiro tamahiko #haiba lev #shibayama yuuki #PHEW #welcome back to me screaming

[shy-marker-pliers]

High school AU thingamabob

Dark

17 year old senior

class president and is kinda high and mighty about it tbh

“yes i know student council can’t really make any changes without the input of the superintendent but IM THE PRESIDENT AND YOU’RE NOT SO SUCK MY DI-“

does sound/lights for all the shows the school puts on

dating wilford and no one knows how or why they’re together

had a deep as hell voice and a beard the second he hit puberty

takes every ethics/psychology class he can

wants to be a lawyer

that one kid that everyone fears but is actually kinda chill if not a little surly

wears a collared shirt and tie to school every day and would totally get made fun of for it if he wasn’t terrifying

listens to classical music unironically

“oh my god i’m so going to fail this test” *proceeds to get the highest grade in the class*

protector of the gays™️

person: *says something mean to a student because they’re lgbtq+*

Dark: *teleports in front of said student* omae wa mou shindeiru

Wilford

19 year old senior

Yes he still has the mustache

doesn’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks of him

deadass wore a dress to school after one of his friends got made fun of because she wore a suit to a school dance

b u f f a s h e l l

could bench press a teacher if he really tried

on the cheer team

“no i’m not wearing pants, this miniskirt makes my ass look great!”

everyone’s bodyguard

usually attracts a crowd of nervous underclassmen

has mild dyslexia

tol

gives his friends piggyback rides

president of the drama club

works hard enough in school to pass his classes but that’s pretty much it

sleeps in class

Bim

15 year old freshman

vice president of the drama club

wilfords shadow

first freshman to help run the drama club and shoves it in everyone’s face

shouts his gayness from the rooftops

secretly super insecure

loves plants and helps out in the schools greenhouse

named all of the plants but if you tell anyone he’ll stab you

gets mostly B’s and C’s

has mild ocd but not enough to affect him severely

talks like a game show host cause he thinks it makes him sound attractive

it doesn’t

Google(s)

16 year old juniors

identical quadruplets

they have to wear different colors every day or else no one knows which one is which

they’re called the googles because their backpacks match the colors of the chrome logo and they’re super smart

straight A 4.0 GPA students but Oliver has to try a little harder than his brothers

all of them are in the robotics team except for ollie

Blue works on programming and red and green are on the build team

Ollie is the sweetest day of sunshine to ever exist and everyone loves him

he’s basically adopted Eric as his lil bro

tutors people in the library every tuesday and thursday

the other googles disapprove of his relationship with bing but he makes ollie happy so they don’t do anything about it

they all work in a supermarket and they’re saving up for college

ollie wants to be a vet, red and green want to be engineers, and blue wants to be a web developer

Bing

17 year old junior

mostly A’s, a few B’s.

his full name is zachary bing but people call him bing because he’s always trying to one up the googles

dudebro

was pining after ollie for months before chase finally felt sorry for him and told ollie how he felt

they’re dating now and it’s adorable

so soft for his boyf

a really good skater and wins a lot of local competitions

doesn’t study but still gets p good grades

wears sunglasses all the time because he has light sensitivity

Has ADHD

s t r o n k

always challenges people to arm wrestle him

can sing really well and plays gitaur

shares a youtube channel with chase where they skate and to challenges and stuff

Dr. ipiler

18 year old senior

Everyone calls him doc because he helps the school nurse and takes every single biology and health class there is

all A’s

really wants to be a surgeon

best friends with Schneep

huge star trek/harry potter nerd (ravenclaw if you’re wondering)

almost always at schneep’s house studying or just chillin’

kind of a control freak

thinks he’s charismatic but he’s actually kinda annoying

but annoying in a funny way

has a pet ferret that he sneaks into school

feral

espresso and sugar flows through his veins

“i actually got a good sleep last night.” “oh really?” “yeah bro i got a whole half hour!”

super dark bags under his eyes

Host

17 year old junior

all A’s except for in gym class

he has eyes in this

his real name is Simon Charles Teller (there are specific meanings to those names btw look them up) but he’s called The Host because he does morning announcements every day.

has gold eyes and a lot of people find it unnerving

“hey i have a podcast you should totally listen to it”

nocturnal

spends all of his free time in the library

always reading in class but the teachers don’t really care bc his grades are good and he does his homework

wants to be an english/poetry teacher

crushing on the cute shy kid from his english class

doesn’t talk much but he’ll still be nice to you

that one kid who’s always correcting the teachers

Runs the D&D club (he’s the dungeon master)

Eric Derekson

16 year old junior

Mostly high B’s, a couple of A’s.

lives with his uncle mark after he ran away from his abusive dad and is living a happy life

the guy that always volunteers to take care of the class pets over the weekend

animals love him

has anxiety, mild paranoia and autism.

animals, harry potter, and pokémon are his hyperfixations.

he also really likes gardening

crushing big time on hostioli

spends his entire english class staring at him and blushing

is seriously considering joining D&D club just to be able to talk to him

he’s in the art club

wants to be a vet and maybe do some freelance art stuff on the side

Ollie keeps yelling at him to just ask host out already but he’s too nervous

my poor bb boi

Wears sweaters all the time

wears headphones to block out noise if it ever gets too loud at he goes into sensory overload

disaster bi

Yan

18 year old senior

gets C’s

non-binary

has a makeup tutorial channel on youtube and has a pretty decent following

That one weeb

dyes their hair a new color every week

also has a new crush every week

everyone knows who their newest victim is because they never stop watching them

draws anime or cute animals for every art class

wants to be a a fashion designer

does MMA

everyone kinda stears clear of them

writes their first initial along with their crush’s on every notebook they own

has gotten suspended for beating kids up on multiple occasions

doesn’t really have that many friends but they don’t mind

spends their lunches watching their crush

in the drama club and the art club

Randall Voorhees

18 year old senior

C’s and D’s

Eric’s cousin/bodyguard

they have a lot of the same classes and walk everywhere together

loves animals and has like 10 pet rats

he doesn’t really care about his grades because he knows that he wants to be a woodworker/construction guy

makes little houses out of scrap wood for his rats and Eric thinks it’s adorable

always sneaks his rats to school and lets them have play dates with dr. iplier’s ferret

“nO IM NOT RELATED TO JASON VOORHEES HES NOT EVEN REAL SO SHUT THE HELL UP-“

used to live in nyc in queens and still has a pretty strong accent

completely incomprehensible when he’s excited or angry bc of the accent

everyone is jealous of his hair

spends like 100 dollars on shampoo and conditioner and stuff but it’s worth it

acts like the straightest guy in existence but could not be more gay

his boots are always muddy

Yancy

16 year old sophomore

his name is Yancy Bird

g...get it? like jailbird? ahaha...ok i’ll stop

permanent resident of the detention room

but he gets to just chill out and read for an hour so he doesn’t really mind

mostly gets detention for beating up kids that bully others

fuck the system

always wears a leather jacket and blue jeans

“hey, the 50’s called and they want their-“ SMACK. “shut up.”

takes a lot of criminal justice and psychology classes ironically

in the botany club but if you tell anyone they’ll never find your body

everyone is surprised when they find out he’s friends with Eric and ollie

pan but in denial

“i’m not gay guys, that ain’t me, i’m just comfortable with my sexuality. so i can admit when i see a guy with a handsome face and pretty eyes-“

that song is great btw you should listen to it

anyway

always makes really dark jokes and everyone is like “are you ok?”

except for his friends they just laugh

“lmao wouldn’t it be funny if everyone like...died”

#markiplier #markiplier egos #darkiplier #eric derekson #the host #wilford warfstache #yancy iplier #randall voorhees #bim trimmer #high school

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: General Hux

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Oh boy.

I think that Hux is a character who, more than anything, is emblematic of every single problem the prequel trilogy had. He had a great setup and first appearance, followed by one where he was just made a complete ass of, and then finally haphazardly thrown into a story where his entire character was betrayed for no apparent reason other than the writers just seemed to forget what the hell they were gonna do with him.

Motivation/Goals: This is where Hux really falls apart, and why he utterly fails as a villain. Ostensibly, Hux should be the loyal space military man we’ve seen done well before in characters like Tarkin. It’s a simple character type we’ve seen a lot in the franchise, but it’s tried and true. And to his credit, he seems to follow that in The Force Awakens, where he is actually set up extremely well, as most things in that movie were.

But then came The Last Jedi. This film marked the bumpy slide downward for the sequel trilogy, but Hux had smooth sailing all the way into the pit. In this film, he is treated less like the high-ranking official e is, and more like a complete and utter JOKE. He gets dragged across the floor and just belittled by his superiors at every turn, and by the film’s end it is abundantly clear he hates Kylo Ren. So this is going to set up some awesome internal power struggle in the First Order, right? WRONG. All that ends up happening is there are a few scenes where Hux looks pissy at Kylo, then it’s revealed he’s betraying the First Order to the rebels because he hates Kylo Ren that much, and then he is unceremoniously blasted away in the very next scene.

Literally nothing about his betrayal makes any sense because if nothing else, Hux has been established as loyal to the First Order. Much like everything in The Rise of Skywalker, they might have been able to pull this off if they bothered to explain anything, but his pouty, whiny little bitch-boy response of “I don’t care who wins, I just want Kylo Ren to LOSE!” is such an utterly demeaning and pathetic excuse that it just tanks his entire character and makes it a relief when he is blasted away.

Performance: Domhnall Gleeson is a good actor, and at least in The Force Awakens he’s really giving it his all, bringing a terrifying intensity to that scene where he gives a speech to the gathered First Order before Starkiller Base is activated. But after that first film, his performance just feels… almost phoned in. Hux is just a very dull, worthless character after that.

Final Fate: Hux’s death is fitting, seeing as he is a cowardly bastard with no dignity whatsoever; Pryde just immediately executes him on the spot without a second thought a single scene after Hux has revealed he is the mole in the First Order. It honestly saved the Resistance the trouble, because there’s no doubt Hux would be executed for war crimes after the war was over anyway. Kinda makes you wonder what the point of him being a mole was in the first place, to be honest.

Oh, right, there was no point.

Best Scene: The solitary moment where Hux manages to achieve greatness is during his terrifying Nazi-esque First Order speech in The Force Awakens as he revs up the Starkiller Base to blow up the Hosnian system. In fact, Hux really is only as bad as I think he is as a character because not a single film afterwards even attempts to try and emulate or match how Hux is portrayed in this scene. If they had ran with this characterization, we could have had someone on the level of Tarkin, Pryde, or Krennic instead of the idiotic slapstick punching bag who gets crapped on by his superiors every scene.

Best Quote: Just turn the subtitles on for his speech up there, that’s his unironic best quote. In an ironic sense, his petulant, whiny little reasoning for betraying literally everything he stands for despite being an unrepentant war criminal who would be executed at war’s end is hilarious for how absolutely stupid, awful, and juvenile it is: “I don't care if you win. I need Kylo Ren to lose!”

Final Thoughts & Score: Hux is, without a doubt, one of the worst villains ever, and unlike Palpatine he doesn’t have much to fall back on. Yes, Domhnall Gleeson is a good actor, but he is no Ian McDiarmid, that’s for sure, and he is entirely unable to salvage the character when things go south. It doesn’t help that, unlike Palpatine, who has three or four movies under his belt where he was hilarious and awesome as well as several other appearances in stuff like the animated shows or that one Kinect game where he straight up gets off his throne and busts a move (which is totally canon, I promise), Hux really just has three films where he just steadily gets worse as the series progresses, culminating in a third appearance that just cements him as one of the most dumbass characters conceived for this franchise.

It’s really baffling to think what they were trying to do with him. They set him up as a really cool and threatening military villain in the first film, then have him survive unlike his betters Tarkin and Krennic, and then just spend an entire film treating him like a complete and utter joke only to have him, in his final film, pull an utterly nonsensical and counterintuitive betrayal out of his ass that completely spits in the face of everything that was established about the guy up until that point. A 1/10 almost seems too nice for him, but let me tell you something: a 1 isn’t merely for a villain who sucks, that’s what 2 is for. 

No, a 1 is a villain who has utterly botched potential AND ALSO sucks. Malekith could have been cool, as his comic counterpart shows, but they squandered him; Dudepeel could have been an awesome cinematic Deadpool as the Ryan Reynolds performance earlier in the film showed, but the character was intentionally sabotaged; Rowan from Ghostbusters could have been an actual fun and funny villain while still being a jab at whiny entitled dudebros if the writing was any better; and Hux could have been a cool and threatening military villain if they didn’t just turn him into an utter joke and then totally mischaracterize him for no good reason. It really just is a fact that everyone who went in to The Rise of Skywalker came out infinitely worse; maybe I should be glad that Phasma was killed in The Last Jedi, because instead of being disappointing wasted potential she could have ended up like Hux.

But hey, while we’re here, let’s talk about the character in The Rise of Skywalker who is Hux done right:

Psycho Analysis: Allegiant General Enric Pryde

He’s ruthless. He’s efficient. He sees through lies and he gets things done. Enric Pryde is an utter badass and the exact sort of evil military commander Star Wars deserves as a villain.

Motivation/Goals: The Rise of Skywalker keeps things really vague since it is a film incapable of expanding on any idea, no matter how good it is, in a satisfying way, but what we do get is that Pryde is as loyal as they come, having served the Empire back in the day under Palpatine. He is just here to execute the will of the First Order and then the Final Order, no matter what, be it under Kylo Ren or Palpatine. Sweet, simple, effective, and never once betrayed by the story. Take that, Hux!

Performance: Richard E. Grant portrays Pryde, and he is just completely and utterly dead serious. There’s no jokes at his expense, nothing to mock, he is completely and utterly committed to his evil actions. I really don’t think I could possibly say it better than TVTropes did:

Final Fate: Of course, he gets blown up when that whole random CGI fleet that showed up with Lando comes in. Characters either went into The Rise of Skywalker and came out crappy or they died. There’s really no in between.

Best Scene: When he kills Hux, of course! It’s just a perfect showcase of his character, and it rids us of one of the sequel trilogy’s biggest embarrassments.

Final Thoughts & Score: Pryde is not the most deep or complex villain, nor is he utilized to his fullest potential; his past with Palpatine is largely unexplored, and he was just created for this movie, meaning he had absolutely no buildup whatsoever. Despite all that, though, he still manages to be cooler, more efficient, and more ruthless than any other villain in the whole sequel trilogy. He’s got limited screentime, was made entirely for this film, and is pretty much the bare minimum for what a great evil general should be in the franchise, but Richard E. Grant’s stoic and dead serious performance combined with the character’s crowning achievement – killing Hux – makes him a 7/10 in my book. 

The sad thing is that he’s probably the best major antagonist in the sequel trilogy, which is frankly kind of pathetic. And even more sad is how utterly he outdoes Hux, simply by being what Hux should have been all along and what The Force Awakens was clearly building him up as. 

#Psycho Analysis #Star Wars #Sequel trilogy #General Hux #domhnall gleeson #Enric Pryde #richard e. grant

[hatekuhnradiated]

Holy fuck, I actually drew something

Anyway, I actually drew some Death's Sickle characters, still have ten more characters to draw,,,, but hey, at least it's a start.

If you have any questions about them, or about this universe, feel free to ask!

Bio time!

Donovan Afton

Killer name: Ravenous Primeval

Nickname: Rav, Prim, Don

Sex: Male

Sexuality: Bisexual

Age: 37

Job: Works for the Chaotic Order

Personality: Aggressive, Demented, Psychotic, Obsessive, Confident, Relaxed, Cold

Weight: 190 lbs

Height: 6'7"

Weapon of choice: Anything, mostly BATS.

Attractions - William Afton, Ass, Big titties lol, Short people, Someone with a stutter

Relationships - Cassandra Davis (Ex Girlfriend), William Afton/Crazypurple (Obsession/Friend), Tanner Foy/The Mangled (Best Friend), Clyde Bunnell/Agile (Friend), Candy Chavis/Nitroglycerin (Friend), Teddy Bearden/Pressure (Acquaintance), The Doctor (Boss), Maple Snowflake/Frozensolid (Friend)

Related - Dane Joe/The Chef (Brother)

Stats:

Strength - 10/10

Defense - 6/10

Agility - 9/10

Speed - 8/10

Intelligence - 7/10

Skill - 10/10

Facts -

-He's very obsessed over William Afton, and even changed his last name to Afton.

-His idea of love is very warped, he never actually loved anyone before. Before he became a killer, he had a girlfriend, although after he met William, he left her to join Will on his twisted adventures. He isn't in love with Will, although he believes he is.

-He will do absolutely anything for William, it doesn't matter what it is.

-He's a cannibal, and the only confirmed cannibal by the police.

-He always leaves one thing missing on his victims.

-He's an artist, although only draws William, weapons and gore.

-He usually lets Will take advantage of him.

-He's pretty good at deepthroating if you ignore the sharp teeth.

-He likes being called "Master".

-He licks William every chance he gets.

-He hates people who say/type "OwO" or "UwU" unironically, or ironically,, he just hates "OwO" and "UwU".

-He doesn't logic correct, and usually resorts to needless insults or violence if he doesn't understand something.

-Hates being called "Dono".

-Hates being called "Ravioli" more.

-His fangs are natural.

Maple Snowflake

Killer name: Frozensolid

Nicknames: Frozen, Frost, Frozie

Sex: Female

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Age: 29

Job: Works for the Chaotic Order

Personality: Erratic, Loud, Fearless, Reckless, Energetic, Outgoing, Passionate, Intelligent

Weight: 118 lbs

Height: 5'6" (with her hightops)

Weapon of choice: A liquid nitrogen gun she made herself (she has smart)

Relationships - The Doctor (Boss), Teddy Bearden/Pressure (Other boss), Clyde Bunnell/Agile (Friend), Candy Chavis/Nitroglycerin (Friend), Tanner Foy/The Mangled (Friend), William Afton/Crazypurple (Teammate), Donovan Afton/Ravenous Primeval (Friend), Dane Joe/The Chef (Teammate)

Related - -Family not found-

Stats:

Strength - 8/10

Defense - 5/10

Agility - 8/10

Speed - 6/10

Intelligence - 8/10

Skill - 10/10

Facts -

-Snowflake isn't her original last name, she instead changed it when she moved out of her parents house.

-She has always preferred the cold.

-She enjoys irritating Don by calling him "Ravioli".

-She made her outfit herself! Using the fur of animals,,,

-It takes her an hour to brush her endless amount of hair.

-When she was small, her parents would take her to Fredbear's pizzeria, and she loved the white wolf animatronic, in fact, that's one of the reasons she joined the Chaotic Order, because her favorite animatronics mask was available! That and she likes killing..

-She doesn't kill in her hightops, because that would just be impractical.

-She really enjoys storms, snowstorms and thunderstorms mostly.

-She is terrified of The Doctor, always making sure to do orders properly when they are given from him.

Frozensolid is extremely loosely based off of @arcticwolf15 's persona Arctic. Like, REALLY loosely. The only similarity is that the mask has almost the same color palette as her persona,,,,,, other than that, she is so different that I could easily get away with calling her a different character entirely, because she basically is one, lol.

#Hates-DS #Death's Sickle #Ravenous Primeval #Frozensolid #Donovan Afton #Maple Snowflake #The Cannibal #The Cryogenic Killer #FNaF AU #Not Canon

[hellsparadiseessays]

Little details from chapter 80

A fight ends, and now we reach a new exposition chapter. I tend to have the impression that these sorts of chapters tend to be less appreciated (though it’s probably coming from me being an ASOAIF fan and noticing there’s a hit or miss because of all the exposition in the books), because they aren’t action-focused, but I personally appreciate them precisely because we get to see the build up for the events to come. There’s something very satisfying about exposition chapters, it’s like seeing an incoming storm and being powerless to stop it, like “aaaaah well shit is about to go down and it’s gonna be ugly”. Well, maybe that’s a bit twisted, but the catharsis is appreciated. 

More under the cut!

We finally get to meet Gui Fa, the last Tensen to be fully shown! And I’ll say it right now, Gui Fa is - oddly enough - the only Tensen I stan, because of the whole “yeah whatever, just let me read in peace” thing going on. It’s oddly relatable. Plus Gui Fa is presented as very introverted and not the biggest people person, which is also quite relatable. Dammit UG, first tricking me into changing my opinion about Ju Fa and Tao Fa with a single chapter, and now making me unironically like a Tensen with a few panels. And that’s without mentioning Gui Fa’s obvious lack of motivation, which has a real “I’m gonna do the bare minimum” vibe. And it’s exactly what happens. 

Despite the obvious reserves, Gui Fa gives an explanation of the ritual they’re watching over in Rien’s stead. Cue to more death flags put on Shion and every Shion stan sacrificing chickens to whatever god they believe in for our Blind Dad to be safe. As a complement to Rien’s explanation regarding the fabrication of the ink and the paper to Chôbe, Gui Fa reveals this ritual makes it easy to follow someone’s status by using their name - and iirc names are important in Japan, to the point in past ages it was common to have a secret name and a public one. The secret name would be the real one, and would be secret as to not be used against the person. Though that’s on top of my head, I need to do some research to back this up properly.

Following that, we get a much awaited face reveal as well as a demonstration of Gui Fa’s power. Spoiler alert: Gui Fa is definitely top tier (check that multi-tasking out, using Tao to keep Sagiri in place without even moving the nose off the book) and cute af I love that pixie so much, just look at that.

In reaction, we get something really cool yet unsurprising from Sagiri: diplomacy. It’s unsurprising because since the start of the story, she’s been showed as having a real knack or the soft/strong dichotomy that’s necessary to the mastery of Tao. Her non-aggressive stance and attempt at negociation is commendable, it even throws Gui Fa off. Even Mei, a fairly peaceful person, is taken aback by Sagiri’s sudden decision.

And it works on more than one level! Not only does Sagiri manage to get Gui Fa’s attention, it even feeds her Tao, making it swell and grow bigger without even needing aggression (a nice change of pace compared to Chôbe and the rest of Team Fuchi). This very stance makes Gui Fa back down, and I’m really enjoying how UG explores many different options with his cast. 

I’m even sure had it not been for the VR Gui Fa does by showing off their abilities, Sagiri could have gotten away with everything because of that peaceful, diplomatic stance. Still, spilling the full beans could be perceived as a show of good will from Gui Fa, who remains pessimistic in regard to the entire situation. Still, Suddenly finding myself in front of Rien would make me very uncomfortable, and it’s a double surprise for Sagiri since it’s the first time she sees his face. Gui Fa also holds some powerful juju, being able to create such illusion with a simple clap of their hands. In hindsight, Sagiri did well to pick the diplomatic way. 

We even get more Fashion Jigokuraku, Rien edition. I may have a strong dislike for that character if Chôbe could have a hand in his demise, that’d be great, what a sense of style! Just look at the patterns of birds (maybe phoenix? It’s a common pattern after all) and plants, I’d like to see that animated, it must be hella pretty with colours. 

Yet, we also learn about the Evil Plan, which is meant to spill on Japan. While Chôbe did well to gather all the info he could, he also has a hand in that by providing them with the lacking elements to the Elixir of Life. That Gui Fa VR is some real shit, if I were Sagiri I’d be terrified as well. 

It’s interesting that they call the Banko flower a “divine beast”. Though it does feed on people, so it’s appropriate. And it also makes the Shogun’s plan even more pointless: the thing he wished for is coming to him in a horrifically ironic manner. Not that the Shogun has ever been depicted as a brilliant mind of the century in the first place anyway.

And thus the chapter ends with a clear shift in the goal: the race for the Elixir of Life is pointless, Rien is the real danger and needs to be stopped.

#地獄楽 #jigokuraku #hell's paradise #sagiri #mei #tensen #rien #gui fa #chapter 80 #spoilers #the illustration was Christmas with the Tensen #it was super cute #never forget Ju Fa the Reindeer

[romancevsreality-blog]

the bachelorette, season fourteen, episode one: i have opinions on greek yogurt

So they had to go and start this season by salting the wound of Becca and Arby’s breakup, didn’t they?

Welcome back to Romance vs. Reality, I’m your lead and only blogger, Amanda. Kill me now, we’re here for the fourteenth go-around of La Bachelorette, a carousel made up of social media participants and erectile dysfunction specialists. Our princess this season is Becca Kufrin, a last name I struggle with for no specific reason other than I just feel like I’m emphasizing the wrong syllable. Coming after Rachel, The First Black Bachelorette and Resident Queen Regnant of this blog1, and her, well, disaster of a season, I’m terrified.

I’m going to do a full analysis of our Mantestants later on, but I’ll put it frankly: I am not excited. I am newly single, and man. Pickings are slim out there. It’s dangerous waters, y’all. And I live in a city of like, seven million people. I can understand now why people find the first person they can in high school and piss on their legs for forty years2. Becca, however, dodged a bullet in this case, because Arby remains and always will be human trash. Oscar the Grouch literally lives in a trash can and is looking to get rehomed because of the association, maybe somewhere not on Sesame Street.

Arby’s legacy has impacted Sesame Street. And Oscar the Grouch is notorious for loving trash. I mean... same? But I do not love Arby. Arby is the human embodiment of Garbage Island, the island that is floating in the Pacific Ocean, collecting all of our plastic bottles and general other garbage and polluting our waters. Honestly to call Arby garbage isn’t ruthless enough. It doesn’t get the point across. Even calling him Arby, a restaurant that probably doesn’t deserve such a harsh association, feels cruel.

Arby is rubbish.

I mean, I know a lot of things about myself, but:

And Arby is the Standard of Trash To Which I Now Hold All Men. I will be ranking the men this season on the Rubbish Arby Scale.

Note: I am not even a full minute into the episodea, and I have a lot of feelings.

We have to relive the torturous final moments of Becca and Rubbish Arby’s relationship again, because ABC is basically going to milk this moment for everything it’s worth. We see Becca walking through some snow, searching for her future or whatever metaphor the powers that be are going after this season. She thought she had found her future, but nope! That future is off getting married to the human embodiment of an unflavored Fage Yogurt3. Becca is ready to find love because her parents were in love until her dad’s untimely death and guess what? It’s her turn now.

My favorite part of every season is the girls who are like, “I can’t believe I’m The Bachelorette? All I had to do was unleash a ton of my personal trauma on national television and ABC will pay me to wear sequin dresses and shank dudes’ hearts now!” I do love that Arby is actually banned from Minnesota, though. I mean, I don’t think he’s running to go to Minnesota any time soon, but the fewer options Arby has to spread his rubbish sludge, the better. We see Becca go through her Bachelorette Photoshoot4 and show how she’s a Strong Woman in both demeanor and physical strength at a acrobatic silks class.

I’m tentative.

Becca arrives at The Bachelor Mansion, where our three past Bachelorettes, all engaged but none married, are waiting for her with mimosas. Honestly, I would like to hang out with these three girls. Rachel and I could just... you know, be black together and I would ask Joelle about home design and Kaitlyn and I could dance. Tag me in, Becca. TAG ME IN. Rachel tells Arby to go fuck himself and basically is a queen the entire time. They all rave about the experience and how great it was for all of them - take away the fantasy and really consider real life. Rachel and Joelle talk about the fact that the women have a better track record on The Bachelorette (true) because they approach the situation with more nuance than the men do. And that’s true. To me, the men of The Bachelor are looking for someone to project their dreams onto, and the women are approaching it with a real sense of opportunity.

Rachel proceeds to sage the entire mansion, Becca’s ring finger, her vagina, and they’re never going to get rid of the stench of toxic masculinity, Axe body spray, and desperation. That’ll be there forever. That's in the fibers of the couches.

Okay, let’s talk about Becca’s first night dress. I know people are divided on it, but I think it’s a banger, okay? I mean, I wish it wasn’t ivory, but the all overbeadwork and the art-deco style is gorgeous. I also love the neckline, because Becca has great shoulders. The pairing of that with those dramatic teardrop earrings was stunning. It sparkles in the light, it’s a dress meant to be on television, not caught in a still shot.

LET’S MEET THE MEAT, SHALL WE?

First up is Clay, who is 30, and is a pro football player. Great, because now I have to worry about you getting CTE and argue with you about standing for the national anthem? Oh, Clay played for Detroit, though. I can’t be mad at him. Also, CLAY IS A DREAMBOAT. We see him at dinner with his family and his cute grandma. Clay is there For Becca, for sure.

We met Garrett, who starts with a Chris Farley impression. In 2018. A Chris. Farley. Impression. Chris Farley’s corpse is turning over and over and over in his grave. Oh my god, of course Garrett is from Reno. Reno gives me such Second City vibes. Not like the improv group, but like, the city you go to when you don’t have anywhere else to go, like Cincinnati or Tallahassee. Garrett is active because of course, but he wants a companion to do outsidey things with.

Oh god, we meet Jordan, who is 26, and a professional model. I already am going to safely call him this season’s Robb(ie). Jordan is the kind of guy who’s hot in certain lights but then other times you’re like “man, give some chin to other people!” He has a lot of chin, and his meticuliously carved “scruff” isn’t helping matters much. Oh god. Jordan starts out talking about his Brand, a phrase I only say ironically. I am literally shaking with rage. Jordan’s an unironic Derek Zoolander. He considers having to be tan and using salt spray to be “taxing”. He’s excited for once to finally be focusing on someone else for a change, and all he wants to do is sit on a couch with a box of chocolates with Becca in sweatpants and watch a chick flick. Jordan claims a lot of models don’t do that.

Someone want to notify Jordan that a good number of male models are gay men who would definitely do that? Anyone?

Next up is Lincoln, who we’ve already met on After The Final Rose. Lincoln is from Nigeria and he’s #blessed to be in the United States. He’s ready to get married and ready to settle down. That’s all. Boring. Joe From Chicago owns a grocery store, and as soon as this comes out of his mouth I’m in love with him. My full on Type is Man from Chicago Who Owns A Grocery Store. Joe’s ready to settle down and knows when he finds the right one, he’ll know.

Jean-Blanc comes on screen and I can hear my mom yelling “THIS IS YOUR HUSBAND AMANDA” from the six-hundred-something miles away that she is. Jean-Blanc collects “accoutrements”, and oh my god, my mom might be right. Jean-Blanc likes stuff. Watches, ties, cologne, all the extra shit no one really needs but it’s nice to have. I mean, I hate wearing perfume, but if a man can find a blend that works for him and isn’t overpowering? Great. Dope. Totally down. We see him opening Viktor & Rolf’s Spice Bomb, a Curve cologne??? And others from the Checkout Aisle From Marshalls and TJMaxx Collection. He’s going to “blow her nose away”, a phrase I’m shocked Jordan didn’t use because you knnnnnnoooow Jordan loves a little nose candy. Sorry, it’s true.

Colton is another football player so this season is full of men with experience getting concussions. Also, can we stop making men named Colton football players? Colton got injured in his last season, so he decided to give up football forever and now runs a charity to change the lives of cystic fibrosis sufferers. Okay, I can’t even talk shit. Damn charity.

Becca heads in the limo to meet Chris Harrison and the 29 other garbage men that will create the Advent Calendar of Regret that is The Bachelorette. Chris Harrison is on screen for the perfect amunt of time - like, thirty seconds, before our first limo full of mediocrity arrives. First out? Charitable Colton, who is firmly placed in the top two, officially. He wants to celebrate Becca being bachelorette and brought confetti poppers, which is actually not the worst initial interaction for these two people to have. It’s actually... cute?

God, help me.

We meet Grant, who both tells Becca he respects her for what she’s gone through but also wants her to forget all of it - way to help with THAT, Grrrrrant. Clay comes out and talks about football and makes a football pun and is cute and everything. Jean Blanc has a French name and teaches Becca some French, which is a mess. Of course, he has her translate “Let’s do the damn thing”, and god I hope it’s the last time we hear that this season, but that’s not true. Connor is a fitness coach and gets down on one knee in front of Becca. Don’t retrigger the girl.

Oh god, not even two mintes after I said I never wanted to hear “let’s do the damn thing”, here comes Connor with it all over again. God damn this show.

Another limo arrives and out comes Joe From Chicago Who Owns A Grocery. He immediately forgets what he has to say as soon as he sees Becca and JOE I WILL TAKE YOU. John walks the wrong way into the house, and Leo arrives looking like he was trying to do a Miss Geist from Clueless costume and forgot to do his hair before leaving the house. It is not a good look, I literally slid to the ground and cackled when he came out5. He proceeds to take his hair down and swish it around like he’s fucking Fabio.

Jordan comes out of the limo and Becca says hi, and he doesn’t respond. Because that is the kind of person Jordan is. He’s the kind of man who wants to say hello first. Jordan wasn’t expecting Becca to be wearing ivory, which is just a weird thing to say. His shoes are loud as fuck, too. Jordan spent six hours on his outfit and is like, “I’m wearing a grey suit, it’s daring.”

No, Obama wearing a khaki suit is daring. Klein Epstein and & Parker Suits are daring. A heather grey suit with a blue tie is like putting a jalapeno in your guacamole. You’re not exactly living on the edge.

Nick arrives dressed like a racecar driver because only assholes wear outfits like that. Nick is... god, I can’t figure out if Nick is hot or not. I do appreciate Leo being ike, “yeah, reminding this girl of her ex? NOT A GOOD LOOK.”

So of course Mike, the other long-haired dude with a fucking man bun in god damn 2018, comes in with a cardboard cut-out of Becca’s ex. STOP TRIGGERING THIS WOMAN. That isn’t charming, that’s weird. I didn’t look up my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends until like, a solid year into our relationship. I mean, it wasn’t the same way on his end6 but I think if I were to lead this show I’d specifically ask them NOT to mention my ex, if possible. Like, at all.

Garrett arrives in a minivan, and it’s full of soccer balls and a baby bag and he’s just trying to set the correct tone. I literally sat grimacing the entire time he was on screen. I hate Garrett already.

My second favorite part of the season premiere is the men being like “wow, there’s a lot of dudes here”. What did y’all expect?

Blake arrives on an... ox? After already meeting Becca with a horse at After The Final Rose? Becca’s right in wondering where he’s getting all of these animals from. I feel bad for the poor intern that needs to take care of Blake’s animals. Lincoln, the other guy who met Becca at After the Final Rose, and he brought Becca cake. Lincoln and Blake are both feeling confident because they’ve already met her before. We see a bunch of other dudes we’ve met before - Darius, Chase, Banjoist Ryan. The 24 other guys are intimidated because clearly they have some sort of leg up in the competition because they’ve been with her for ten seconds four months ago. I’m sure Darva Conger would agree with them that this is a solid grounding to form bonds over. It ended so well for her.

They basically show all the black guys back to back and a bunch of other nonfactors meeting Becca.

And then there’s Kamil, who is wearing sneakers with his suit and his job is “social media participant” which is effectively like putting “Air Breather” as your job in 2018. He only walks halfway to Becca and makes her come the other half to meet him, and then moves back further and is like “yeah, what about 60/40?” And honestly, this is the best depiction of heterosexual dating in 2018 I’ve ever seen and Kamil is literally telling Becca Who He Is in their initial interaction. 60/40, my ass. Becca is unamused by this and tries to turn it around on him, and he won’t engage.

Ya donzo, Social Media Participant.

Jake shows up, and Becca knows who he is. He’s an acquaintance and she’s confused because... Oh, okay? That’s super weird. I totally get why that’s weird. Production comes in with morbid music as a hearse drives up. Trent pops out and says he literally died when he found out Becca was Bachelorette, and I cackled. I can’t help it. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever witnessed.

Jordan is here to show off his sartorial choices and doesn’t understand the other shlubs who showed up. I hate that I kind of agree with him? But then again, I intend my wedding attire to be Elevated Black Tie. I want the men to show up in basically butler’s uniforms and the women to look like Lady Gaga. Just put a little more effort in - Becca’s standing there in a backless beaded gown, the least you can do is put on a god damn tie.

Oh, of course someone comes in in a chicken suit. David is both a chicken and a venture capitalist, which is my least favorite thing. He has to wear that suit all night long. Jordan is #unamused, which is hilarious. I do appreciate the “bekaw/Becca” wordplay. Chris arrives with a fucking choir who sings about getting a rose, and I’m just... Okay. This would be teeeeewwwww much for me.

Okay, we’ve got twenty-eight men. And none of them are winners. Good LUCK, Becca. Becca makes her first toast, and immediately Connor is the first one to whisk her away. The guys are genuinely shocked but y’all, that’s how the game is PLAYED. He opens a bottle of champagne with a kitchen knife, and it’s impressive, but not a saber like is to be expected or standard. Color me unimpressed, Connor.7 Clay and Becca play with Clay, and I love that. I mean, who doesn’t love adults playing with play-doh? Clay is from a small town and talks about his values and how they grew from growing up where he did. He talks about how excited he was to meet her, and I smile. Clay is too good for this show.

ONE OF THE DUDES MADE THE APP FOR VENMO AND WHAT IS HE DOING HERE? DAMN, ABC.

Chris uses the fact that his grandparents got married after two months and have been together almost 60 years to get Becca to believe that Chris is all about this. Chris looks far too much like Perez Hilton for my liking and just for that, I hate him with a firey passion.8 Christon is a former Harlem Globetrotter and so he’s gonna show her how he can dunk a ball from her own hands. He DUNKED Becca, jumping OVER her head, and it...

It’s actually marvelous. Like, damn. I mean, he’s a Harlem Globetrotter. He better be able to dunk on command.

Blake and Becca are on the same page, which is shocking because Blake is basically dressed like Hugh Hefner. Chris Harrison comes in, drops off the First Impression Rose, and walks out to go put his pajamas back on. All the guys are immediately shooketh by it.

Lincoln brought Becca a bracelet from Nigeria, and we get a montage of the stunts these guys are pulling to impress Becca. David the Chicken Venture Capitalist leads Becca in the chicken dance and we’re supposed to be impressed by him becuase he’s literally in a chicken suit but he has a Serious Career.

We get to watch the Anxiety Set In for the men who haven’t had a chance to talk to Becca yet, especially Jordan. He pretends like it doesn’t bother him, he’s just playing it cool, but come on. Garrett shows Becca how to fish, and if a dude did this to me, I’d yawn. Garrett reminds Becca of home, of her dad, and she thinks he’d totally fit in with her family. Oh no.

Chris / Perez Hilton / Ben Stiller in Dodgeball has realized someone is There For the Wrong Reasons. Chase, who met Becca on After the Final Rose, is suspected by Chris. I’m suspicious of both of them simply because they’re both from Orlando, Florida unapologetically. Chris knows Chase’s ex-girlfriend and apparently she told Chris that he’s just there for publicity. They all think Chris needs to confront Chase. I can’t tell you who told him this because we’re still at the point of the season where all the men kind of look the same. I think it’s Christon and Blake, but I’m not sure.

The drama has already begun. I'm sad it's not someone getting black out drunk like it usually is.

Chris takes Chase aside to tell him what the deal is, and Chase of course denies all of this. I mean, what’s he going to do, stand there and admit do it? He confirms he’s there for the Right Reasons, and he’s there for Becca. My favorite is that he admits to have been watching this show for years with his mom, so of COURSE he’s NOT THERE FOR FAME. I don’t understand this thought process as a defense.

Chase immediately runs to Becca to tattle on Chris for being skeptical. Chase, who looks perpetually constipated, never found out what this girl told Chris, but he’s vehemently denying whatever it is and isn’t That Guy, whatever guy his ex he only dated for a month told Chris he was. Like damn, Chase. You musta done something. Becca doesn’t really know what to do with any of that information because Chase is leaving out the part where he’s the asshole.

Chase goes and grabs Chris (????) because they’re settling the drama right then and there. Chase denies ever dating this girl with any kind of seriousness and they’re both... gross. Becca clearly doesn’t know what to do because the story doesn’t add up. If it was two years ago and someone he only a dated a month, what’s the issue at hand? It’s so weird. Becca is as turned off as I am, and this mostly reminds her of someone she met earlier that she was turned off by initially.

She comes to get Jake, because his intentions are watery at best. They have the same group of friends back in Minnesota but have never interacted, and so it’s super weird that he showed up here trying to date her. Like, dude, you actually had a chance before to at least try to. Becca doesn’t think he showed her any interest in the previous times they’ve met, and Jake doesn’t remember meeting her more than one time. He remembers one time they met, but not... multiple times.

I scoffed so hard a little bit of phlegm came out. TMI, I know. But still.

Jake is excited to be there and get to know her, but Becca isn’t on board, and rightfully so. I’ve had people meet me multiple times and have zero recollection and I’m offended. Here comes Jake, having met Becca multiple times and admittingly having no recollection of doing so, coming onto this show to try to date her? Really? When in real life he never tried to in the first place? Most people aren’t as transparent as Jake is with their intentions, but it’s so clear that Jake thought he’d be able to parlay the fact that they knew each other before into a relationship.

But if we’ve met before and you didn’t show any interest then, how am I expected to take you seriously now that we’re on TV? Becca all but says as much but tells him she knows what it feels like to have someone question her relationship with them and she’s not going to do that again. Jake tries to be like “but what about meEEEEEEE and MY FEELINGS” and Becca shuts that shit right down because she is not here for his whataboutism. Neither of them did anything when they met before, and it’s not about who did what in this scenario. She’s holding the god damn key and him coming on this show in the first place was fucked up. She doesn’t want to waste his time and knows she doesn’t see a future with him. She’s sending him home ASAP.

He tells her that he’s not the same person she met at some mysterious Christmas Party and has had a “transformative year” - uh you’re telling this to the woman who got dumped on national television, your transformation is nothing compared to hers - and he’s a different person. He thinks if they met again, it would have a different result. I’m sure it would, Jake, but you lost your chance. Sorry. He says he respects how she feels and he’s going home.

Jake was one of the most attractive men there, but man, this was G R O S S.

Becca announces to the men that Jake is going home first, and they’re all terrified.

There is a grown ass man with an “expecto patronus” Harry Potter tattoo, and yeah, he’s got some nonsense “it’s different in Latin” translation, but I’m just happy the black guy doesn’t have a Death Eater tattoo8. Colton talks about his charity, and the First Impression Rose is still there.

But not for long, because here comes Becca to grab it and offer it to...

Garrett.

All the guys are visibly gutted. I don’t know why, the best thing about Garrett is his tie. I love a pink and blue tie. He gets the first kiss of the season, too. Garrett’s thrilled.

Back inside, Chris Harrison has changed back into his suit for about ten minutes to gather Becca before the first Rose Ceremony. At this point, I also see a guy who I haven’t seen thus far, and went “PHOARRRRRRRR” because he was so hot. WHO ARE YOU, ANONYMOUS HOTTIE? I love that Jordan’s like, “It wouldn’t be fair to Becca if I didn’t get a rose tonight.” I’m on my third season of saying this, but I love when the contestants think their feelings matter at all in this scenario.

The Rose Ceremony begins.

Lincoln, Blake, Rickey, Jean-Blanc, Christon, Clay, Wills, Connor, Jason, John, Ryan9, Alex, Nick, Trent, Colton, David The Chicken Venture Capitalist, Jordan, Leo, Mike, and Chris all accept roses.

That means Chris’s plan to get rid of Chase worked. Which it never does. On The Bachelorette, The Messenger usually gets shot.

Bye to Chase, Christian, Darius, Grant, Joe, and Kamil, all to face the cold light of day. Y’all stayed up all night for this.

BUT NOOOOOOOO, NOT GROCERY STORE JOE, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I’ll keep you warm in those Chicago winters, Joe. Now that My (ex)-boyfriend Wells is dating someone far more famous than I am, I’m in the market. Call me.

This Season, on The Bachelorette: This season isn’t the most dramatic ever, according to Chris Harrison. This time, it’s an adventure. Lots of beach kissing! All the guys are like “Arby’s dumb for losing this girl.” Colton, Jean Blanc, and Nick all tell Becca they’re in love with her. And then - TEARS. LOTS OF THEM. Someone did to Becca what Arby did, and whoever it is, I AM COMING FOR YOUR EDGES. Lincoln is a liar and a manipulator? Jordan, who is clearly there to boost his modeling career, takes it very personally for people to attack his character on television. That… doesn’t help with people thinking you’re just there to boost your modeling career, Jordan. Colton, of course, is a virgin, and apparently this may or may not be a lie? Who lies about something like that? Becca’s pissed. She just wants honesty from these fuckboys, and girl, you better have stocked up in fuckboy repellent. All she wants is their honesty from here on out. And then someone’s getting taken off in an ambulance. But it’s all going to end in an engagement that has allegedly already been spoiled by TMZ/the Powers that Be at ABC trying to scoop Reality Steve, so that’s what we have to look forward to.

See you next week! It’s great to be back.

Random Assessments from the Desk of Amanda:

Becca is only a year older than I am, and this is really sending me spiraling. I know we’ve had girls younger than I am on this show, but I never really contextualized that until I saw 1990 next to Becca’s name. I am so OLD.

This season’s batch of men makes me never want to be The Second Black Bachelorette™. If these are the best options, I’ll barf.

I know she’ll be on Paradise because come on no brainer, but man - I am so happy The Bachelorette is not Tia. Oh man, am I happy it’s not Tia.

I know everyone talks about how amazing Joelle’s hair is, but Becca. Gorgeous hair.

How tall is Becca? She looks like she’s my height.

Jordan is going to be this season’s Chad. At least we’re going back to the Douchebag Villain and not the Racist Villain again.

I really loved that all the guys were like “if the guy in a chicken suit gets a rose over me, life means nothing.” Oh, to have never struggled a day in your life.

Jordan, are you really a fashion model if you’re from Crystal Ocean Spray, Florida?

All of these men look like 90s Teen Film Villains. Like, this is a cast of Andrew Keegans and Paul Walkers.

Elizabeth who? ↩︎

I mean, kind of? No, I don’t. I really don’t. Can someone explain this to me? I feel like that’s resigning yourself to a lifetime of mediocre sex because you haven’t experienced anything else. ↩︎

I went with Fage because Bobby Flay, the whitest man I can think of, was their brand representative for a moment. Why is Bobby Flay the whitest man I can think of? He has a show where he literally competes with people to prove he’s good. I don’t need that, I literally have MY LIFE. ↩︎

Things that are interesting to only me: after two years of having the lead on a white background in a red dress (Joelle and Rachel), they’re back to the metallic-colored sequin dress (Kaitlyn and Andi), but Becca’s on a grey background. Both Emily and Desiree had what honestly looks like satin prom dresses from JCPenney. This matters to literally no one else.  ↩︎

The least surprising thing about Leo is that he’s a stuntman. Of course he is. Stuntmen either look like him or look like... well, what I imagine Joe From Chicago Who Owns A Grocery Store’s uncles probably look like. ↩︎

boundaries.

↩︎

Some other guy who is a real estate agent is like, “you never buy the first house,” which reminds us this show is doing really good things for gender progress in America. (/s) ↩︎

Seriously, has anyone with a Death Eater tattoo realized they’re just telling the entire world they’d be a proud racist wizard? ↩︎ ↩︎

RYAN IS MY SECRET MYSTERY HOTTIE, OMG. I forgive his banjo playing, it’s not like he’s in Mumford & Sons. ↩︎

#the bachelorette #the bachelorette recap #reality tv #feels so goooood to be back #all of these men are trash #i mean has this show ever been full of winners? #i'm really terrified maggie actually submitted me for this #what if i get picked and i have to date one of these men #oh my god #kill me now #kill me

[queernuck]

War Machines and You

The conception of a Deleuzean body of the state, a process of understanding producing-production as related to state power, due to the means by which producing-production is itself the defining character of production and the codification of producing-production is itself realized through schizophrenic encounters under late capitalist artifices of consumption-production, the ideation of the Deep State’s Despotic Body, the apparent War Machine of American Empire through the film department of the Pentagon, leads to a concept of the State that deceives even those within, which belies the creation of a hyperobject that has an awareness of itself that we are unable to speak directly to, the creation of a War Machine in the Deleuzean sense as nomadic, as unaffected by the controls of the state, as developed and further developed by a sort of Catholic faith in the Church of the CIA, a libidinal fantasy of a state that does not exist.

The film 12 Strong was, by some, foolishly anticipated as a self-aware look at a certain sort of military action through the very lens of encounter most readily given to it, rather than a sort of ironically reductive embodiment of that libidinal fantasy, a poststructural treatise on sex rather than a pornographic film. The film tells the story of the “Horse Soldiers” who were a group of American Special Operations personnel that took part in the first actions of the war in Afghanistan. With that very war coming up on 17 years, and scenes featured in the trailer claiming an ironic and all too knowing evocation of the “Home by Christmas” ideology of the invasion, a second Gulf War being set up, the field into which 12 Strong is released is effectively poised to cannibalize itself as the war becomes more and more an occupation, as the military begins to enlist its first recruits born post-9/11. 

The Horse Soldiers are famous because of how they seem to be a sort of fantastic, schizophrenic product of a certain point in American history: they were equipped with laser designators and technology beyond civilian imagination at the beginning of the internet age, but could only travel on horseback due to the roughness of the terrain. This was resignified in media like Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s Afghanistan level, where the player fights Soviet forces from horseback in a direct reference to the Horse Soldiers. The irony of an American CIA operative using Stinger missiles in an unironic embodiment of what would become the Taliban forces Americans would later find themselves fighting is itself dense within the text of the game, but this irony is perhaps better explored by an anecdotal examination of CIA and DoD activity over the past few decades.

Stories about CIA moles like Aldrich Ames, who went from thrift store suits to designer clothes as his own investigations turned against him, the too good to be true realization that one American-backed militia had turned against another while both were still receiving funding that neither backer knew anything about, these are amusing to realize as blunders, and in a certain sense these can be eventually reappropriated, reclaimed as resulting from a complicated nomadism of globalization and its results that retains the same sort of despotic body of the state, the same capitalist totality and eternal watchfulness. In reality, there is no effective way to totalize and list the entirety of that which the American empire has it hands in, to even begin such a project would effectively be a project where one takes a census on a global scale. Not only is there the producing-production of imperial power itself, but one must take into account the producing-production of reactionary response, the namings of terrorist assemblages along with the means by which these terrorist mantles are taken up, the terrorist-embodiment that terrorist-assemblage not only accepts, but relies upon at a foundational level, requires thinking of the war machine of the American state in terms that defy its very being. It can be comforting, in a way, to consider a state that can topple in its whole and entirely remove itself from being, a state confined in a single Oneness rather than a oneness defined by the multiple, by the multiplicity of Being and irreducibility that is the defining quality of American geopower. However, what this does not allow for is the genuine schizophrenic character of the war machine under current structures of global terrorist-assemblage, the means through which contradictions in capitalist producing-production have created logistics and outsourcing as two of the largest industries in the globe, have created a rabattement of producing-production such that the most lucrative sort of producing-production is that producing-production itself. 

It is rather easy to attribute the ills of Amazon’s expansion to Jeff Bezos himself, and the rhetorical power of creating a sort of despotic figure in Bezos is indeed worthwhile, but this in turn leads to a point where one forgets that there are managers in these warehouses, people who invite them into their towns and cities, people who contract out and advertise for the work knowing full well what sort of work it is, that there are massive chains of support for each and every node within the assemblage that allows an entity like Amazon to realize itself. This, then, is the schizophrenic as compared to the neurotic: whereas the latter is the fear of totality, the latter is its very acknowledgment, the realization of a conspiracy of the Real, of Being itself, whereby both action and inaction, resistance and collaboration, are appropriated within a neoliberal space of action and reaction such that the reactionary topography of global biopower is expanded beyond any thinkable body and past an unthinking object into a sort of biome, a thinking and expanding and genuinely nomadic hyperobject, one that takes the overcoding and redefining of hyperreality into itself, that takes that action as part of what makes it define itself. This is related to the means through which we realize the earth, the globe itself as a hyperobject that speaks, that has a voice, that can itself offer a certain univocality, how one must accept the means through which the first and third world have been torn apart not by natural forces but by the creation of an apparently natural division, by the very forces that separate natural and unnatural, the arbitration of semiotics as part of producing-production within contemporary late capitalist exchange. 

The contradiction, the complicatedness, the incoherence of postmodernity is disquieting, it lacks even the cold comfort of modernism, in that even within the realization of the modern there was the counted one, there was the singular, there was a promise of dignity in even a lack of dignification. This is absent within postmodernity, the structure of assemblage has embiggened the singular into a universal such that the infinite is no less but also no more for one’s own existence. This is at once terrifying and incredibly freeing, in that it allows for one to accept a sort of infinity of being, a sort of phantasmic character to the Real, to the material, that presents effectively unlimited means for defining oneself in relation to the levianthic quality of existence. 

[rieshon]

Fall 2018 Power Rankings

Wow, I actually finished this shit sort of on time this season.

1 Yagate Kimi ni Naru: You know a show is good when you put off finishing it just because you don't want it to end. I did that with Yagakimi this season, and not only is it my favorite show of the season, I'm pretty sure it's my favorite yuri anime of all time. It's not just that Touko and Yuu are such an adorable couple, but that the story and relationship dynamics are genuinely original for a yuri anime. You've got two heroines who are de facto dating from the outset, so no will-they won't-they bullshit like most yuri stories (lookin' at you citrus)... But only sort of, because it's complicated. You've got one heroine who doesn't want her girlfriend to fall in love with her because she has a weird identity crisis because of past trauma and is afraid to embrace her own individuality which having someone fall in love with her would validate because she's "only herself" around said girlfriend... And then you've got the other heroine who thinks she's asexual/aromantic but slowly starts to realize she's actually just gay, but only after she's promised her girlfriend she won't fall in love with her because she "can't." To say this is a weird relationship is putting it mildly. There's also some stuff you usually don't see in anime at all, like another character who actually IS aro/ace, and a live-in adult lesbian couple (one of whom is actually revealed to be bi later on) who are the Big Gay Mentors to the younger characters. There is still the requisite amount of Yuri Melodrama, of course (elevated by a beautiful soundtrack from the venerable Haketa Takefumi) but it's so much more interesting than usual here. Oh, and of course, as I mentioned above, Touko and Yuu are the most darling couple ever, perfect cinnamon rolls who must be protected. Well, okay, maybe not perfect: they got issues. But I love this story and characters so much I actually picked up the manga to read what happens next, and I basically never do that. Maybe it's not technically the "best" anime of the season, but it's the one I love the most. ★★★★☆

2 SSSS.GRIDMAN: Somehow, based Trig just keep doing it. You'd be forgiven for thinking Darling in the Franxx, the show that has "SMART ANIME FOR ADULTS" practically engraved on everything about it, would be the 'cerebral' robot anime Trigger made this year, and Gridman, a spinoff of a cheesy tokusatsu show that was itself a spinoff of Ultraman, would be little more than a fun but forgettable robot romp. You'd be totally wrong, of course: Gridman is every bit the heavyweight that previous Trigger/Gainax robot anime are, with its own flair of course. It takes a while for it to fully develop and present its themes about social anxiety and isolation, but once it does it really pops off. The dual heroines of Akane and Rikka are brilliant, not just for their lewd character designs but also for how well their stories are written. Rikka is the real hero of the show--Yuuta might be the one jumping around in a robot, but ultimately Rikka is the most important. Stellar performances from both Ueda Reina and Miyamoto Yume as Akane and Rikka, respectively, really carry the thematic weight of the show. There is, of course, some great art and animation on display, as you might expect from Trigger, who always make the most (and then some) of whatever resources they're given. Episode 9, which takes place for the most part inside of a dream, was especially visually striking. An all around great production and one that won't soon be forgotten. ★★★★☆

3 Zombie Land Saga: With all that out of the way, here's a show about some moe zombies. Ah, anime, even after all these years it still finds ways to surprise me, like a show about moe zombie idols being as genuinely moving as it is hilarious. Probably the weirdest thing about Zombie Land Saga, even as a show that features the undead filming commercials for a Saga-based fried chicken restaurant and competing in a Takeshi's Castle-style mud Olympics, is that it unironically works as an idol anime, too. All the characters (well, except for Yuugiri, who is woefully underutilized) really do grow throughout the show and it gives the idol anime aspect a really solid backbone to build off of. Of course, Zombie Land Saga is more than just another idol anime, and calling it a zombie idol anime is somehow still selling it short. From the aforementioned chicken commercials, to the unforgettably epic zombie rap battle, to the middle schooler biker gangs, to basically everything Yamada Tae does, this show was not just surprisingly moving but shockingly hilarious at times. Also, it must be noted that these zombies are fricking adorable: definitely way cuter than the undead should ever be. Especially Junko who is the best girl, once again proving the superiority of Showa idols. ★★★★☆

4 Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai: Since this is a light novel anime through and through, it seems fair to describe it in terms of light novel anime: it's basically the Monogatari series meets Oregairu. Our sardonic protagonist with a heart of gold (and impossibly hot girlfriend) meets a bunch of high school girls with weird supernatural problems and helps them solve them. That might make it sound boring or derivative, but as I always harp on, it's really all in the execution and Aobuta sticks the landing. It reminds me of those above shows not just in narrative content but also in terms of how sharp the dialogue is: it is one of those delightful shows where you could have two characters just have a conversation for 24 minutes and it would still be endlessly absorbing. The reliable Ishikawa Kaito is great as our male lead, bringing not just snappy wit to the table but also a surprising amount of emotional depth in later story arcs. The aloof, sarcastic protagonist is of course done to death in this genre (hi, Kyon!) but Sakuta is certainly an example of it done well. It helps that he's such a loving oniichan and cute boyfriend, which really endears him to the viewer. The gallery of heroines is of course stocked with plenty of cute and sexy girls--the art and animation is top notch--but what really carries the show is Sakuta's relationship with his girlfriend (and best girl) Mai, which is a continuing story throughout the series even as the focus moves to other heroines. They're just so adorable together. Ironically, the element of the show that probably matters the least is the weird sort-of-sci-fi plot hooks: you're really just here to watch these characters talk through their emotions and stumble through adolescence, and the sci-fi plot devices are basically incidental to all of it. ★★★★☆

5 Himote House: Talk about a dark horse of an anime... Himote House is the latest... thing... from the man, the myth, the legend who brought us Minarai Diva, Ishidate Koutarou, and it's great. It's half nichijou-kei anime, half just a seiyuu radio show that's animated, and it's all superb. In the scripted bits, the show can get wonderfully weird, from the episode that used the Game of Life to teach us about the lack of gay rights in Japan, to the episode that took place entirely inside of a copy machine, and I haven't even mentioned the Bitcoin episode yet, which is too bizarre to even give away in this review no one will read. The unscripted bits are also great thanks to a collection of some of the seiyuu industry's top personalities, including the always great combination of Suzakinishi, comedic genius Mimorin, and the criminally underrated Mizuhara Kaoru whose performance as Tokiyo really must be experienced: it starts over the top and just keeps going from there. Even the cheap 3DCG animation is surprisingly charming, and it's at least good enough that these girls look genuinely cute, although the show is also helped along by regularly inserting some nice hand-drawn stills in the most important moments. Almost everyone probably overlooked this show this season, but I'd give it a hearty recommendation. ★★★★☆

6 Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-san: I hope Comic Cune anime are here to stay, because this was certainly the best pure nichijou-kei offering this season. It's "cute girl vampires" but, as you might expect from the source, this is the most laid-back depiction of vampires you're ever going to find in fiction. None of the human characters even seem to be remotely bothered that vampires are in their midst, the sun is an inconvenience that mostly makes it harder to go buy manga in the middle of the day, and they order their blood from Amazon. Even when a vampire hunter shows up, she's just won over by the vampire girls' cuteness. It does use vampire lore to tell some amusing jokes at times, like Sophie getting trapped outside because she had to count all the seeds in a sunflower, or Akari getting a plank put on her in bed because the vampires felt bad that her bed didn't have a lid, but mostly you're just here for the cute girls cuting, and cute they do. There's the requisite amount of soft yuri, and the character designs and animation are fantastic. Very little to complain about here--the show's only real weakness is that the jokes are occasionally kind of meh. Ellie is best girl. ★★★☆☆

7 Uchi no Meido ga Uzasugiru!: Shocking no one, the Comedy God delivered again. This show is frequently laugh out loud funny, and it's helped along by animation from Douga Koubou that is right up there with some of the best they've ever produced. The sole factor that makes this show somewhat weaker than Oota Masahiko's previous works is that with its completely absurd comedic premise it is ultimately trying to tell a very serious story--about a little girl who is terrified of having her late mother replaced by having any other adult woman enter her life--with a premise that definitely should not be telling a serious story. The show is at its best when Tsubame (voiced by Numakura Manami in some of her best-ever work) is being an irredeemable lolicon shithead, not a role model. Still, the show is pretty great most of the time, and it only gets better when ドM best girl Midorin turns up about halfway through. The Russian loli is pretty cute too I guess, but as seems to always be the case in these shows (I can't help but remember another Douga Koubou production, Mikakunin de Shinkoukei) the silliest and most perverted girls always steal the show. ★★★☆☆

8 Irozuku Sekai no Ashita Kara: It's a P.A. Works original, so that means it's time to complain about how it's not as good as other P.A. Works originals! Seriously though, although it's not the second coming of TARI TARI, this show is easy to recommend, being beautiful both artistically and narratively, with a simple and heartfelt story to tell about a girl going to a new place (well, a new time) to discover herself. Yep, you guessed it, this is one of my favorites: sentimentality anime! Girl literally learns to see the beauty in the world that she had been blind to by leaving her comfort zone and falling in love. Good shit, good shit. My main complaint is that the best girl, Kurumi, gets short shrift as best girls often do, although she at least does get one little story arc to develop her character. Ishihara Kaori is solid as the female lead, but I just loved Naobou as the snarky Kurumi so much. It's also worth noting that although the cast actually has a fairly even gender split, all the male characters are pretty much inoffensive to likable, which is all I really ask in a show like this. There's no one on the level of Wien, but Chigusa and Kurumi's relationship was pretty cute. Overall, though, this show is just about drinking in the atmosphere and the feels, and trying to avoid thinking about time paradoxes. ★★★☆☆

9 Akanesasu Shoujo: I had cautiously high expectations for this show going into the season, and although it didn't blow me away with a masterpiece, I was satisfied with what I got. The show doesn't have the best production values, but it has a solid premise that is executed well. A group of misfit high school girls in the incredibly lame Radio Club find a way to slip between alternate dimensions, have misadventures where they learn that The Real Power Was Inside Us All Along, and end up saving the universe from being consumed by some vague evilness. The story comes courtesy KID's Uchikoshi Koutarou, and definitely feels like something you might find in a science fiction visual novel. It's not afraid to be at least a little adventurous, with the various dimensions we visit being varying degrees and kinds of social commentary, and it even goes as far as killing off major characters and actually letting them stay dead! Plus, it had Kurosawa Tomoyo basically playing like three or four characters at once, which has to be worth something. If nothing else, I respected this series. ★★☆☆☆

10 Kishuku Gakkou no Juliet: Romeo and Juliet may well be the Bard's most widely popular play, so it's not surprising that now we have an anime version of it... sort of. In true anime fashion, this is not a tragedy of star-crossed lovers, but a comedy of errors about two goofball kids who fall in love at a ridiculous boarding school. Set against a backdrop of, uh, race war. Kayano Ai's blondenblu Juliet is pretty cute but as is typical in these shows the best girls never win, namely Ayaneru's Hasuki and the actual best girl, Shimamura Yuu's Chartreux. As always, the gay girls are the best. The show does have an unusually likable protagonist for one in this genre: Romio is a big dork who is singlemindedly dedicated to his cute girlfriend, and even if she's not the best girl, you definitely want to root for them. A pretty good show. ★★☆☆☆

11 Animayell!: Kirara anime are playing second fiddle to other cute girl shows again this season, but like Harukana Receive last season, this show is still decent. What it lacks in a compelling premise (sorry, not only do I come in thinking cheerleading is lame, but the show's animation isn't good enough to get it over as a cool thing) it makes up for in the most important ingredient for an anime, homosexuality. Not only is there the immaculately gay Hanawa-chan and the extremely homo Ukki, for some reason at one point theres also a completely random, out lesbian side character who asks our heroines for advice confessing to her female home tutor. But yeah, it's definitely worth it for Hanawa and Ukki at least; your mileage may vary on the rest of the actual show. ★★☆☆☆

12 Sword Art Online Alicization: I've repeatedly gone on record saying I love a slow burn, and I don't necessarily mind when nothing happens in a show if its at least giving me some good atmosphere and characters to gnaw on in the meantime... But man, is the new SAO one slow-ass show. Though I've never read the books, this really feels like a case of following the Original Way too closely. That's not to say that what is here is bad by any means; there's some truly interesting concepts, a good SAO story, and of course some stellar animation, but they probably could have cut this first cours down to like, six episodes and still accomplished the same things. I still have confidence that it will get more hype as we progress, though. There's a long way to go in this one yet, so this rating is anything but final. ★★☆☆☆

13 Debidoru!: This show is an ugly looking 3DCG abomination that was probably made in MikuMikuDance, but thankfully we now live in a post-Kemono Friends world, and so Debidoru! was still pretty great. You couldn't ask for a better trio of voices for an ad-lib stuffed comedy than Hanazawa Kana, Mimori Suzuko and Iguchi Yuka and they fill their roles with aplomb, especially Iguchi, who at one point tsukkomis so hard she clips the microphone. Like the best no-money shorts it also had some moments of true ART, like Sugahara Souta (the director) singing the moe opening song (in one uncut take) for no reason, or one of the greatest things I saw all season, episode 11, which was done (also in one take) entirely with paper cutouts of the characters in front of a camcorder. It's not really a mastapeece in the way Himote House was, but it was certainly a memorable little show. ★★☆☆☆

14 Beelzebub-jou no Okinimesu Mama: I'm as surprised as anyone that this show ended up as low as it did, but by the end of the season I had a hard time convincing myself to even load up the latest episode of this one, and it's hard for me to really even say why. On the face of it it should be my jam: it's full of cute girls and pastel colors, and it's even occasionally lewd. Really, it's probably just because there's so many male characters who get a decent amount of attention in the narrative. It also doesn't help that Beelzebub (despite being a cute blondenblu voiced by Oonishi Saori) is not really a very appealing character, which makes the protagonist, who is constantly fawning over her like she's the best thing since sliced bread, come off as less likable as well. It had some good stuff too, like Sargatanas's shyness and Gocchin's needing to pee constantly, but I guess it wasn't quite enough to hold my interest. It also doesn't help that my favorite girl, Eurynome, was barely even in the show after she was introduced. We ankle fetishists gotta stick together, man! ★☆☆☆☆

15 Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken: I had exactly zero expectations for this show to begin with, so I was pleasantly surprised with it at first. Those great typographic effects, especially, really sucked me into the first episode and I was excited to see where it went for the first few weeks, especially with the promise of cute girls on the horizon. The girls have been underwhelming, though (mainly by virtue of their having nothing to do in the story) and what actually is going on in the story, I find incredibly dull. Rimuru is just such a booooring protagonist, and his very existence tends to sap the tension out of scenes since you know he's ridiculously OP and will probably just absorb whatever bad thing shows up next like he's absorbed every other bad thing up to that point. 俺TUEEEEEE isn’t even necessarily something I hate, and it can be made to work, but Rimuru isn’t cool enough of a guy or really interesting in any way that I can self-insert and live vicariously through his TUEEEEE-ness. Just give me more Shion, she is the best purple oni secretary. ★☆☆☆☆

16 Hashiritsuzukete Yokattatte: I guess I should put this down since it's technically a show I finished from this season. It's kinda boring and lame, do not recommend. The girl with the glasses never even puts them on, she just wears them on top of her head like a doofus the whole time. Might have been able to deliver some feels if it was in a longer format, but just falls flat due to the <60 minute total runtime. ☆☆☆☆☆

#power rankings

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Roll Out the Red Carpet: It’s Time for the Annual Secret-Diary Awards

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS FINISHES ON A REALLY BLEAK NOTE

So, with Xmas gone and just a few days until New Year, 2019 is staggering to a richly-deserved close.. which means it’s time to look back and hand out some entirely hypotherical awards to people and cultural products that don’t know I exist and wouldn’t care if they did. It’s fair to say this year has been a mixed bag of the transcendent and the appalling. Kind of like a sandwich bag full of ferrero roche and cat sick. Without further ado, it’s time to rummage through that bag and pull out the most succulent chocolates and the most nauseating lumps of vomit to give them their fifteen minutes of ill-founded notoriety.

The Jason Voorhees Award for Best New Horror Villain... ... Goes to the kid from Brightburn (who eventually becomes known as Brightburn himself, incidentally). In the 70s and 80s it was easy to grab attention as a horror movie antagonist, because there wasn’t a huge amount of competetion. Jason himself bludgeoned his way into the public’s heart and the collective cultural unconscious just by being unkillable and refreshingly workmanlike in his approach to homicide. Freddie grabbed attention with a nothing more than some surreal nightmare sequences and a glove with knives on it. Nowadays, the standard’s much higher. Luckily, Brightburn brought something fresh to the table: all the powers of Superman combined with the moral compass of a drugged-up rock musician. I, for one, look forward to his next murder project and/or concept album.

The ‘Dog With its Head Trapped in a KFC Bucket’ Award for Most Self-Defeating Move of the Year... ... Goes to the British public, who had an election this year in which they were invited to choose between a kindly older gent who wanted to renationalise the railways and ensure the survival of the NHS and a drivel-spouting upper-class buffoon who wants to destroy the NHS, destroy traveller communities, antagonise the E.U. and repeal the laws that protect against animal cruelty. The British people chose the upper-class buffoon, because (and I have to admit that I’m guessing here, but it’s an educated guess) THEY’RE GIBBERING FUCKWITS DEVOID OF BOTH COMMON SENSE AND EMPATHY.

The ‘I Told You So Award’ for Most Comprehensively Murdered Franchise... ... Goes to Terminator: Dark Fate. The Terminator films have always made intelligent use of both male and female leads, balancing the need for a feminine narrative voice against the fact that their audience are mainly there to see big manly, macho robots beat nine shades of crap out of eachother. In an effort to appear ‘woke’ (to use the parlance of today’s hot young bell-ends), Terminator: Dark Fate elected to sideline the big, manly macho robots in favour of three female leads, only one of whom was Jamie Lee Curtis. This failure to accept that the audience for the Terminator films is mainly men who want to imagine themselves as unstoppable robot killing machines pretty much lead to the film bombing at the box office. The lesson to be learned here is that NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO VIRTUE SIGNAL HOW GENDER-PROGRESSIVE IT IS EVERY FIVE MINUTES. Of course, media comentator types have been groping for literally any other reason the film might have failed miserably, but it’s a losing battle: I’m pretty sure even that one with Christian Bale made money, and that was bloody terrible. No disrespect to Dark Fate director Tim Miller, though: he needs to do something with his time in between Deadpool films and it might as well be going from ailing franchise to ailing franchise, putting them out of their misery like an endless succession of Old Yellers.

The Andrea Dworkins Dancing Naked On a Plinth Award for Best Actually Good Woke Movie... ... Goes to The Perfection (spoilers ahead), a film about two classical musician ladies taking a brutal and harrowing revenge on the misogynistic, overprivileged man who destroyed their lives. Easily one of the best films to emerge in 2019, it’s one of only two films I’ve ever described as ‘transcendent’ (unironically). The Perfection is shocking, brutal and feminist in a way that suggests that the writer might actually know what feminism is and what movie writing is- which makes it pretty much unique in the current era of self-consciously progressive films.

The Most Needlessly Elongated Process Award... ... Goes to the impeachment of Obvious Criminal Donald Trump, which is still going on at the time of writing. He worked with hostile foreign powers in order to cheat in his election, he’s boasted about sexually abusing women and he’s the most singularly incompentent, dangerous imbecile in the history of American politics. Just fucking arrest the guy already. How long does it take to get one flatulent old crook into a prison cell? Has he fucking superglued his feet to the floor of the white house or something? HURRY THE FUCK UP!

The Most Painfully Ironic Celebrity Death Award... ... Goes to Carroll Spinney, who gave movement and life the Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch puppets on Sesame Street then died of a degenerative, neurological movement disorder that slowly robbed him of the ability to move his own body. There’s not a lot I can do to make that funny, other than point out the bizarre irony of that coincidence. As far as I’m aware, he was a lovely man who brought joy to thousands of children and dim adults. Definitely worth raising a glass to this New Year’s Eve. It’s just sad for him that he died in a bleakly funny way and therefore ended up in my end-of-year roundup. What a way to finish a rich and fulfilling career. Poor bloke.

The Special ‘Band of the Year’ Award... Goes to The Orion Experience, who actually disbanded quite some time before 2019. However, I only discovered them this year, so I’m giving them the shoutout they so richly deserved, several years ago... when it might have helped. They’re great: a camp, New Romantic sound combined with clever lyrics and deliciously inventive song concepts make them one of the best modern bands I’ve ever had the good fortune to stumble across.

The ‘Chrissy Metz Goes on a Diet’ Award For Worst Thing to Have Happened to an Unsuspecting Planet... ... Goes to Hellboy (2019), which came out at the start of the year and set a high-sewage mark for general awfullness. It was a bafflingly, determinedly bad film in which characters simply stated their feelings rather than emoting, musical cues were misdeployed and wasted and the plot meandered from one bloated set-piece to another without ever feeling big or meaningful. To describe it as a shit-burg floating in a sea of lukewarm cum would be to insult shit and cum. I’ve had eight months and I still can’t get over how bad it is.

The Hellboy 2019 Award for Second Worst Thing to Have Happened to Unsuspecting Planet... ... Goes to Chrissy Metz’ diet. Yeah. She went on a diet. She’s shrunk. Don’t google it: it looks exactly as pathetic, miserable and depresing as you’d expect- another plus-size celebrity knuckling under to the pressure to lose weight and not even being good at it. If I’m ever famous, remind to use my position to elevate some actual motherfucking feedees to the status of cultural icons, just so we get some fat celebrities who actually stay fat.

The Arnold Rimmer Award for most Gratuitous Act of Cowardice... ... Goes to Prime Minister Boris “My Second Name Means Penis” Johnson, who, in the run-up to the election chose to hide in a fridge rather than be interviewed by Piers Morgan. This is particularly funny because Piers Morgan is a toothless, name-dropping suck-up who doubtless would have given the Prime Minister an easy ride while making big, goopy heart-eyes at him and fantasising about how he’ll be able to boast to his friends that he’s met BoJo, the Amazing Guffing Head of State. Maybe Johnson just correctly surmised that if he was in the same room as Morgan, the Craven Bullshit Density (or CBD) would be so high that the universe would implode.

The Dianne Abbot Award For Sexiest Older Black Lady in a Serious Cultural Product... ... Goes to Octavia Spencer, who played Psycho-Cougar Sue Ann in the psychological horror film Ma and who did a great turn as a emotionally manipulative, possesive, terrifying and yet strangely sympathetic borderline sociopath... whom I would definitely have had sex with, given half a chance.

The UK Postal Service Award for Most Delayed Cultural Event.. ... Goes to the arrival of Rick and Morty Series 4, which finally arrived on screens after years trapped in a nightmarish labarynth of production issues, rights negotiations and (admittedly justified) showrunner perfectionism. I haven’t seen it yet, since there’s a very good chance that 2020 will be a barren wasteland in terms of televsion and I want to make sure I have at least one good thing to binge-watch during the early months of the year. However, I’ll give you my hot-take when I do get round to viewing it.

The Brian Cox’ Strip Tease Award for Loveliest Thing to Happen in 2019... ... Goes to TV magician Justin Willman, who, towards the end of this year, gifted the world with a second series of Magic For Humans, probably one of the funniest and most inherently well-meaning street magic telly series ever invented. Speaking as a magician, I have to say it’s nice to represented in the world of televsion by a warm-yet-snarky gad-about rather than pretentious mumbling toss-mage David Blaine.

The Special Award for Most Confusing and Alarming Year of the Decade... ... Goes to 2019 itself, which offered political hope only to snatch it away; produced some amazing films while continuing to shit out virtue-signalling dreck at the same time; and generally massaged us with one hand while slapping us with the other. In many ways, it was a year that refelected human nature itself. Earlier this year, angry arsehole commuters beat the crap out of Extinction Rebellion protestors who were trying to raise awareness of our planent’s ongoing ecological crisis from the roof of a London Underground train. And that about sums up the dichotomy of the human race for me: enlightenment and knowledge climbing high in the hope of broadcasting its message, only to be dragged down by an endless ocean or irredemable thick cunts who’d rather be complicit in the slow death of civilisation than be five minutes late for a job they don’t fucking like. And that’s why 2019 gets a booby prize: it was a year that embodied the brief rise of brilliance from a sea of grime while reminding us of how little that actually helps. Cheers!

So that’s it for 2019. The death of culture, political acumin and possibly the human race continues, though with the occasional high-point thrown in just to keep things interesting. I’ll see you bastards when it’s when it’s time for my New Year’s Resolutions Blog. Sorry that turned a bit bleak at the end, but in fairness, that only happened because I live in a terrible country during a terrible time in history.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #End of the Year awards #end of year awards

[scstoll]

Everything Is True: Inside China’s Dream Factory

 “Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.“  — Raymond Carver (Cathedral)

“You wanted to be honest, right?” 

And there he is. Picture him as best you can. Johnny Bravo. A  bureaucrat who exists on the middle to upper level of Hailiang Education; a multi million euro company in the back arse of Zheijang Province. The drinker of litres of green tea brewed in beautiful expensive kettles by nervous secretaries. The only man who will conduct an interview formally and then spit in the middle of it. Sitting there in his freshly ironed short sleeved white shirt, even though it’s pushing 30 fucking degrees outsides. Like the world’s most polite Godfather, he was the one who made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, or live with. He beamed up at me. It was the earnest smile of a man who believed in a system whose only job was not to believe in him.  And there began our troubles in China. Call it an ‘adventure’. Adventure being a code word for a supposedly safe thing I’ll never do again. 

In many ways China is quite a big country. But it’s also a small one and it’s shrinking everyday. A shrinking list of people who can traipse around in expensively ironic t-shirts compared to those who can’t. T-shirts with pastiche slogans like the “Antisocial Social Club” and “Make Your Own”.

Here you can sponsor a tree for the cost of an education, and girls you meet on Tan Tan will respond to the question “What do you want to be?” With the answer “Skinny”. Unironically.

But I didn’t know any of that then. So as Johnny Bravo began to ramble on in his self taught English about the immense privilege my being there would bestow on their institution, I sat back and I felt flattered. I liked the idea of being respected because you were ‘uniquely qualified’, which is much the same thing as being male and white. I liked the idea of getting to wear a sharp leather lanyard with the words ‘Master’ emblazoned on it. I especially liked the idea of being presented with this lanyard at a special welcoming ceremony, bowing to receive my prize like a skinny, Irish Luke Skywalker. Smiling noncommittally as the school’s collection of beautifully mannered and well heeled students burst into Hailiang’s anthem “We are Family” in a tone deaf zeal which bordered on desperation. These were children whose parents were exclusive members of the Got Rich First crowd in the People’s Republic. The people who everyone else was meant to emulate but never could. Here it was the hallmark of successful parenting to send your children away from you to an expensive corporate institution as quickly as you could. So it was that the Got Rich First parents did indeed complain that the levels of homework on national holidays were too low. This left them with the unfortunate possibility of having to speak with their offspring. An unfortunate scenario which they paid lower class people to do. And so Johnny Bravo could have saved me the pep talk and let me see what really happens when you build a school campus in the middle of rain forest, fueled by nothing but a dismissive attitudes toward planning laws and the social anxieties of your number one educational consumer, the parent. But that would take time.

It took time to realize that here billboards are secrets, whispers are lies. In China’s dream factory only the lies are true. In many ways this was the university of the quick visa. Everyone was a photo opportunity without a caption. Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the world’s first truly postmodern post primary school.

Even visiting Western academics soon found the lure of an institution based almost entirely on self promotion to be almost irresistible. As an ‘esteemed foreign guest’ I sat on numerous meetings where Chinese Principals and heads of Irish colleges talked for hours about “Educational partnerships, yada yada yada visa visa visa.”It turned out that vague corporeatise was a language which transcended borders. But worse was to come.

My first assignment was to shadow a Bangladeshi teacher who had long ago lost his final straw of sanity. He began everyday by typing on a keyboard which was worryingly not connected to a computer and then shouted out instructions to take down notes from a PowerPoint which was never displayed. The terrified students complied in silence.

Yet another foreign teacher had long let slip the bonds of common sense to read curriculum plan templates all night while teaching students exclusively about her fractious private life. Repeat after me, she drilled into the ever willing class with her shrill English accent

"I have developed trust issues, that’s past continuous kids”, she intoned.

An eager student would invariably thrust forward his hand.

“Yes Phoenix?” She asked wearily.

“Present continuous means it continues into the current situation.” Phoenix said seriously.

“Thanks Phoenix, tell me about it.” She sighed.

But all of the foreign teachers put together couldn’t match the appeal of Hailiang’s two Crown Jewels. A pair of beautiful blonde teachers who were either brother and sister or dating, admittedly this was an ambiguity which was at once novel and deeply troubling. Everywhere they went you were sure to be informed that those two teachers were from Oxford. This was like a label of untouchable platinum whiteness affixed to their very souls. And if they have child I can tell you that while that child may have been born in China it will be inextricably an Oxford child. Of course the Oxford crowd weren’t as popular with the rest of the Irish teachers. Especially Brady from Cavan. "Oxford can go away and shite” said Brady.

Of course the sense that most things here were done or said mostly for show didn’t just restrict itself to the exclusive campuses of the Got Rich First crowd. It was Lee from Arklow who had first discovered that here the taxi drivers had also imbibed the sense that it was the speed of the journey rather than the exactitude of the destination which counted. In many countries taxi drivers would be precluded from practicing their craft if they were either illiterate, or drunk or had a general difficulty with directions. Yet it was in Shanghai at 5am in the morning that Lee would find out that even a gentleman in possession of all three of these attributes could readily find employment behind the wheel of an official taxi.

The driver stared in sheer perplexity at the hotel’s directions which were clearly displayed on Lee’s phone.

"Woo, woo!” The clearly drunk driver shouted.

“You’re a fucking retard like” Lee said.

“Woo!” He repeated in forlorn stubbornness.

It wasn’t that the meaning had been lost in translation, there had been no real meaning to communicate in the first place.

Everywhere appearance trumped reality, in a manner which was much too earnest to count as deception.

Even in KFC the customers who ordered ice cream were presented with a cardboard cutout and an apologetic shrug.

Welcome to the desert of the real.

Indeed the barometer of just what the fuck was actually going on here could be measured by China’s most successful fast food franchise, Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC was so ubiquitous that it could peddle products which were clearly both wrong and unappealing. Like Chiza, a piece of chicken with pizza drizzled over it that was quickly snapped up and splashed all over Wechat by happening twenty-somethings. It was one of those things that if you thought about too much they could become an issue, China was jammed with things that if you thought about them enough you could be hit with a kind of mental brain freeze that could take decades to clear.

Another one of them was the trend of Shanghai beggars to stand outside nightclubs that Westerners frequented with what was for all intents and purposes a small monkey dressed in a prisoner’s outfit.

We all stared in amazed astonishment as one of these little monkey inmates clambered joyfully onto Lisa’s shoulder and posed happily for pictures. It took another moment for the potentially dangerous part of the situation to sink in on us.

“Is that a fucking monkey?” Exclaimed Lee thoughtfully. It was. And it bit down on Lisa’s flesh with a desire which was both wrong and unappealing, like Chiza.

Even more traditional customs could look to us like everyone had taken a kind of national leave of their senses. We walked by open mouthed as two chefs took turns kneading dough with massive wooden mallets. “Look” said Brady, “two lads bating the absolute shite out of their dinner”

There is a chasm between genuine ignorance and willing collusion. The first stemming from a lack of information about the outside world, the later stemming from a dearth of knowledge about ourselves. We would learn that from Paul and Debra. Two middle aged semi-professionals from England who saw teaching in China for what it was; a market inefficiency that could be exploited by the callous and the desperate.

We met them in the centre of Hailiang’s  vague Campus;  Life Experience Square. The school’s authorities just named places after the things they wanted and then were disappointed when students didn’t obtain them through some kind of fucked up spacial osmosis. Paul and Debra took us to the night market in Yiwu, where we haggled for bargains on fake t-shirts and they laughed as a beggar with no limbs dragged himself past us on a skateboard.

“Hilarious, isn’t it?” said Paul.

I mean at the end of the day, you could forgive the odd bit of baldfaced lying, hell even whole societies built on patently inaccurate foundations have been consigned to the dust bin of history with nothing but a regretful shrug. But you can’t ever forgive unwanted honesty. And so that’s what really fucked us up. China wasn’t some grim facade. It was a two way mirror and behind it was us. Playing the same games with a lot more makeup. You can’t unsee through people. You can’t unsee through yourself. If the eyes were the windows to the soul then no amount of tint is going to help us now, for fucks sake.

Johnny just sat there, his tea beginning to fester. His eyes alight with a glow which wasn’t so much enthusiasm as it was fear. And so I looked down the barrel of Johnny’s offer, gulped once and got out of there as fast as I fucking could. And for what, like? Even now back on the disappointed streets of midlandia, I find myself looking through people like they’re CVs. Weighing up profit and loss, balancing up awkward shifts against another evening falling asleep while Netflix buffers. Let’s put it this way, it’s not necessarily living. Maybe Johnny was right. Well, certainly not right. But unlike the rest of us he has been afforded the unique social and economic skills to persevere in his wrongness, and who wouldn’t want that? We don’t all have the apparatus of a heavily militarized state to ensure the stubborn persistence of our own personal dream factories. To make sure our flights of fancy are laced with enough denial to stave off reality indefinitely. But if we could do that, then we would in a Hailiang heartbeat.

You wanted to be honest, right?