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shouldershimmycity · 2 years

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Power Outage (Rooster x Reader)

This is short and is really just a funny little thing I typed out while my own power was out. It's back on now, and I have to go sort through my refrigerator (ew).

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy. It's just a quick little story.

*****

“Isn’t there supposed to be back up power or something?” you asked Bradley, lighting more candles.

“No, this house is too old for that, we used to have an old generator but it broke down before I left high school,” his voice came from the other side of the room, his face appearing after he lit another candle in front of him.

“Well that sucks, guess we’re back to ye olden… time,” you snorted.

There was a pretty bad storm that had swept through the area. Not hurricane level, but not the usual pitter patter of rain either. A lot of people’s power was out, as you had received several text messages from the rest of the Top Gun pilots.

“Ah crap,” Bradley sighed, “they’re saying the power won’t be back on until Monday.”

“Aww man, I wanted to cook dinner tomorrow night,” you said in frustration.

“I’m sorry Baby, the food will probably be bad by then anyway,” Rooster realized.

“UGH! I hate losing power!” you complained.

Bradley gave you a little hug, knowing how much situations like these stressed you out. You both sat down on the couch in the deafening silence of Bradley’s house, ears ringing from it being too quiet. Feeling like you were going to go insane from it, you sighed loudly to fill the abyss.

“Hey! I have an idea!” you sat up excitedly, patting Bradley on the shoulder quickly, “What if everyone came over here?”

“For what?” he asked, confused. There wasn’t much to really do, given that the majority of entertainment was electronic nowadays.

“Oh come on Bradley, we grew up before cell phones, let's make do,” you said, picking up your phone to send messages to everyone to meet at Bradley’s house. Getting off the couch and walking to the closet, you grabbed a cardboard box that was in the top corner and pulled it down from it’s perch. Lifting the flaps of the box, you revealed cards, poker chips, pictionary, and a few other board games.

Mr. Bradshaw was impressed with the little stockpile, nodding his head along to your idea, “touche.”

*****

When everyone had everything taken care of at their own houses, they made their way over. Phoenix was the first to arrive, having picked up Bob on the way. Coyote and Payback showed up next, with some chips and salsa. Maverick, bless his heart, brought peanut butter and jelly fix ins, and even Hangman showed up, bringing his… charming self. Needless to say it was the best idea anyone had out of all of you. Without it everyone would have been sitting at home in the dark. (Which is what I’m doing now and I hate every minute of it). Now, everyone was cracking up at Bradley, who had a sticky note on his forehead with the word “mustache” scribbled on it.

“Am I a food?” he asked slowly.

“No.”

“Nah.”

“Nope.”

“Am I an object?” you asked the group in the same tone.

“Nope”

“Nada.”

“Am I… an F-14 Tomcat,” Maverick asked and the room went silent.

“How the fuck did you get that on the first try?” you asked him in awe, “you totally cheated!”

“Not my first rodeo,” he stated, tearing the sticky note off.

“Okay… we’ll come back to that…” Bradley gave Maverick some side eye before focusing back on your face.

“Am I an object?” he squinted at you.

“Yes,” you confirmed.

“Am I hard?” he asked, deep in thought.

“Not that I can tell,” you said with a deadpan expression, looking right into his crotch. Several bursts of laughter filled the room.

“Ha Ha, am I though?” he questioned, too into the game now.

“Technically no,” you shook your head.

“Damn.”

“Am I… an animal?” you guessed.

“Yep.”

“Yeah.”

“Am I small?”

“Relatively yes.”

“I’d say so.”

You grinned at the man in front of you who was now sweating nervously. You already knew you had won.

“Am I… a bird?” you guessed.

“Haha, she’s got you man.”

“Yes haha.”

“Am I… Bradley Bradshaw?” you laughed.

“NOOOO!” Rooster cried in defeat. He lost every round and somehow Maverick was incredibly good at it.

“Hahaha! Yes! Sweet victory!” you screamed, “and YOU my friend, the answer was right under your nose.”

Bradley’s confused expression turned to mild annoyance when he saw what was written on his note, “...fuck it really was.”

*****

While everyone ate peanut butter and jelly with chips and salsa for dinner, everyone shared wild stories they had from the navy.

“A-and then, he’s going off about everything,” Hangman chuckled, “and the Admiral walks in right behind him.” Everyone gasped, and Seresin shook his head, still laughing, “he holds it up, and is like ‘who’s fucking pants are these?’ and the Admiral just says…” he’s too far gone to finish the story, wheezing himself into oblivion and everyone is laughing with him.

“Did I ever tell you about that time when I–” Maverick started.

“Yes,” you said, completely serious.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say–” he defends.

“Yes I did,” you state, still serious.

Maverick sighed, waiting for you to be done.

“Sorry, go on,” you encourage.

“Did I ever tell you about that time when I was inverted and I scared off a MiG 28?”

Maverick was dumbfounded, and you still looked at him in complete seriousness after quoting him word for word at the same time he said it.

“...Yes, yes you did,” you said, cracking up at his face, “but we can hear it again.”

The captain rubbed his hands over his face. He loved you, but sometimes he wanted to drop you off in the middle of Baghdad and have you find your way home.

*****

Eventually everyone started to trickle out, having to return home and check up on their own situations, but it was a fun little party while it lasted. Packing everything back into its box, you smiled over at Bradley who was snoring on the couch.

The power may be out, but you guys made it work. You always made it work.

#top gun x reader #top gun maverick #rooster #rooster top gun #rooster x reader #bradley bradshaw #bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x reader

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twstmemories · 2 years

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Hello! I'd like to request for a drabble (or headcanons if it's easier for you) where the reader tries to give lots to jewels to Azul! Where did the reader get the jewels? No one knows~ Thanks in advance if you do this. ๑(◕‿◕)๑

-- ! how about i do both? i feel like a drabble would be easier to write for me once i've established a few headcanons that are a drabble in themselves but i don't have to worry about sentence starters or a proper flow HAHA

i am- so sorry for the delay of this. and for all the next updates t_t

✧ Azul Ashengrotto's reaction to the reader giving him jewels [headcanons & drabble]

✧ gn!reader

Is highly suspicious when you first come to him with your hands behind your back. He knows you mean no harm to, but he's always on his toes. (￢_￢)

Will look at you with a raised eyebrow, he won't immediately question you which indicates that: yes, this is your time to fess up and tell him what you're hiding.

But when you don't fess up what you're hiding behind your back, he gets a tiny bit impatient. As much as he would like to humor you he does not have all the time in the world - But his worries to get a bit quenched when he sees that there is no ulterior motive painting your lips, just a tiny mischevious smile. (─‿‿─)

He will humor you for a few more minutes, tilting his head a bit more to see what you're hiding even though he's well aware that what you're hiding is further hidden by a small bag. But time is precious, and Azul is a busy man. So after humoring you he will lean back in his chair and cross his legs before eyeing you with a raised eyebrow: "Now then, care to tell me why you keep hiding something behind your back now?"

You hum, swaying back and forth in your place and Azul could tell that you knew that you were testing his patience, but the two of you have played this game of cat and mouse before with both parties emerging victorious numerous times - he could afford to spend some more time toying around.

"If I were to somewhat get close to guessing what you're keeping behind your back, would you at least yield and show what is that you're hiding?" Azul offers, and he sees the familiar smile of yours that signals another game of guessing is about to happen.

"Why what would I be, if not a benevolent dealer for my client?" you tease, Azul rolling his eyes knowing you're imitating him in some twisted way.

Was there something Azul was in need of lately? You usually have a keen sense of perception and hearing, noticing whenever he would mutter that a certain ink he like has run out or that he's stack of papers are in need of restocking.

But there are no materialistic objects that Azul was in need of as of right now at least: "Is it something that is of use to me?" he decides in to ask in the end, and you just shake your head as a response.

A decorative item then, "... A shell of some sort?" he questions, and when you stop swaying and tilt your head to process the answer, Azul knows that for this round, he has won.

"Sorta?" you say with a giggle, walking up to his desk to place the small bag on top of it, Azul can hear the various sounds of something clicking against eac other, and stares curiosuly at the bag as he watches you untie the ribbon holding the contents together.

And out from the concealed bag, falls a variety of colorful jewels, some more rounded to look like a sleek stone, and some carved to make the light shine in any direction. Some big and some incredibly small: "... Jewels?"

"Yup!" you confirm, bringing up a few of the bigger ones: "You can use some as a paper weight, since I've often seen the mere air from Floyd bursing into the VIP room cause all of your stacks to fly everywhere, some are just decorative pieces, maybe you can place them in some of the tanks for some extra pieces to blend with the environment," you say, giving Azul a smile while the merman just stares at you, blinking in confusion.

"Is- Is there a reason for this?" he asks in the end, and you only blink before laughing: "I can't give you something out of my own volition?" you tease, and Azul huffs, cheeks a bit red: "... Thank you, I'll make sure to place them in places where they can shine the most."

#disney twst #twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland headcanons #twisted wonderland scenarios #twst x reader #twst imagines #twst headcanons #twst scenarios #azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #azul ashengrotto scenarios #azul ashengrotto headcanons #azul ashengrotto imagines #no i did not forget to place my iconic kaomojis what are you talking about

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centrally-unplanned · 1 year

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How much do you know about Dien Bien Phu? I, as a typical American, know almost nothing except that it was a major French disaster, that eventually led to the American Vietnam war. However, i fell into a YoutTube rabbit hole, and it changed my perspective. I think it was one of the most impressive marvels of combat logistics, planning, and ingenuity in military history.

The French made some major blunders, but i think it's important to un derstand why they put a major airstrip in a valley surrounded by mountains: The French Foreign Legion considered it a complete impossibility that the Vietnamese could put artillery on the mountains. From that persepctive, the fortress at Dien Bien Phu was an amazing idea. A well-supplied forward air base that is basically impregnable allows you to completely dominant the war. The French could have operated with impunity. The battle-hardened French military and engineers were absolutely certain that no one could move artillery up to the rim of the bowl - at least without modern equipment. Its not like these were guys fresh out of the academy, these dudes built the Maginot line, they fought a full-scale modern war, they were phenomenal engineers. They climbed the Alps, the fought in Fortress Europa. They knew their business. They were safe in their elevated bowl.

Instead, those hard little fuckers in the pajamas pulled post-WW2 field artillery pieces and modern AA batteries up mountains with their bare hands and some effing ropes. They did the impossible. They proved, once again, that wars are won by planning, logistics, and hard fucking work. Bravery is great. Genius is great. Strategic and tactical mastery of excellent skills. But being a good logistician and being willing to dig forever will win more wars than anything.

That, and SPEED. The moment the French extended themselves too far, the Viet Minh were ready. They exploited the advantage lighting fast.

I am just so impressed by the Viet Minh achievement at Dien Bien Phu, and would love to find more information on their side of things. Just incredible what they did.

Sounds like you know more than me! You can just make this your own reblog you know, no need to bury your essay in the illusion of the ask ^_^ We like essays here!

For my own thoughts I know some, I guess I can share a few:

-Okay, bear with me; there is a Malcom Gladwell essay about the Full Court Press strategy in college basketball from 2009 (absolutely *chef kiss* start here) which digs into the "effort vs ability" paradigm. Now Gladwell is as always full of shit, don't listen to him on the object level question of how effective the FCP strat is, but the paradigm is a good theoretical tool - that in a lot of places you don't expect, effort can substitute for a lack of ability and close disparities. In the essay he discusses T. E. Lawrence's attack on the city of Aqaba (which he overly credits to Lawrence over Auda Abu Tayi or the other British advisor, Stewart Newcombe, but w/e), which was heavily defended on the coast but its artillery batteries didn't cover the desert in the rear - why would it, its hundreds of miles of barren wasteland. The insight of the Arab Revolt forces barely counts as an insight until you see it the right way - just cross it anyway! The enemy has a greater 'ability' in firepower, which can cover a dozen approaches, but not all of them - so if you ignore the gigantic human cost of crossing the desert, you obviously attack the weak point. They just didn't conceive of enemy willing to essentially suffer that much, the Arab Revolt's true strength was apply effort in quantities the Ottomans were unwilling to consider. Dien Bien Phu is the same - the French were essentially correct that hand-dragging artillery pieces into the mountain ridges was virtually impossible, the British or the Chinese wouldn't have done it. Insurgencies are built on the principle of effort overcoming ability, though - if they had the ability they wouldn't be the insurgency. These are the gaps that insurgencies hunt for, where the enemy treats you like a 'normal' army and assumes you wont simply grind away at the problem. Dien Bien Phu is the moment where that gap emerged, and the Vietminh were ready for it.

-The other point is to downplay this a bit, in that whenever you see a stellar victory you should always look at the other perspective; if it happened, maybe it wasn't that low odds. The French in Vietnam were a classic case of War Without Strategy - after WW2 France was a broken state being built from the ground up, America had ruthlessly pushed the Western European powers into paring back their imperial ambitions, and the domestic populace was sketchy in its support at best. France had set up the State of Vietnam as a quasi-free nation, something they did have hopes for in the 1940's but by 1954 its lack of viability was on the wall, yet France could not diplomatically admit to that fact. As such into the 1950's France had minimal strategy - French commanders were simply aiming to not-lose and save face for their eventual return to Europe.

Individual ideas would bubble up - like the idea behind Dien Bien Phu, baiting the Vietminh into taking huge casualties attacking it as part of the "hedgehog" strategy a la Na San in 1952. But notice how this...isn't a strategy? If *inflicting casualties* was gonna win France the war it would have been over 5 years ago. It has a hint of a strategy, sure, but in the main its an idea born of the fact that France was unwilling to commit the resources needed to actually have a chance of winning, but was unwilling to admit defeat, and was filling the gap with hail mary's.

The fact that the Vietminh had already fought a similar battle at Na San, lost, and was able to learn lessons for when France offered a repeat is telling; their victory is maybe not that surprising in this light. France could afford few defeats and had no capacity to end the war, the Vietnamese could afford endless defeats and were bent on fighting for the long haul. Of course such a grind would eventually, probabilistically, tip in Vietnam's favour and hand them the victory they needed; in a sense France was hoping for just that, an excuse to withdraw. Dien Bien Phu is the logical culmination of the politico-strategic balance of the two forces.

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dangermousie · 9 months

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Say You Love Me - done

Was it a good drama? Objectively perhaps not. But it was worth the price of admission to see incredibly solid acting from everyone (this drama is old, and so it did not suffer from the phenomenon of idols who may be talented in other things but have no experience with acting being put in just for looks) and tackle themes and characters modern dramas don't really care for - I mean, the gender reversal itself with the two women being the doers and the drivers and both men being passive willing or unwilling recipients of what they dish out is fascinating. Byung Soo, our ML, was a tall, well-built Victorian maiden, suffering over loss of chastity and falling ill from angst and needing permission to take any action and second ML was willing to enable SFL to bang other men as long she wanted it. The two women literally fought and then men only wept. It was also remarkably character consistent; Byung Soo was a lovely sweet puppy of a person and the drama showed what a freaking drawback or even cruelty that could be. (I am still impressed that Kim Rae Won, who in my head is associated with these totally alpha types, played such a weak, submissive, beta boy (because I can't really call BS a man between his youth and personality) so well).

Anyway, eps 12-15, let's go. ML and FL have finally had enough of their psycho significant others and ran off to the same place. This is the first time we see them happy in eps and eps. For someone who was obsessed with his smile, SFL really made sure he never smiles again, this is the first time we see his smile in eps and eps.

But they can't get back together because he feels unworthy and also because SFL has basically terrified him into thinking she will die if he leaves her (which is deeply ironic in light of what is about to happen.)

Because his granny dies (and SFL chooses to bring up what he did with FL at the freaking funeral, because the woman knows no shame or time/place, god when FL dragged her off and they had a fight, it was glorious.)

And that is basically the last straw for a dude who was already contemplating suicide a while back and that was before everything else that got dumped on him. And so our Victorian Maiden ML aka monk boy literally collapses into a unconsciousness and is likely to die from EMO AND STRESS AND ANGST. God, I love this drama.

SFL decides a great thing to do to an unconscious and possibly dying man is to move him from the home he grew up in to her apartment because she doesn't like looking at pictures of him with others in the place. She also doesn't let his friends visit (I am not saying FL, I am saying dude friends) because "I am his wife." She is so insane, her brain should be dissected for study. The best part he's utterly unconscious but he keeps weeping FL's name non-stop over and over and over as SFL is slowly driven insane by that. GLORIOUS!!!!

SFL is, as always, making everything about her - someone else's suicide attempt, funeral of someone else's loved one, someone else's childhood trauma, and now someone else's unconscious murmurs are all directed to torment her, the real victim.

This cracked me up - she always says that when he's about to die but the moment he's not literally on brink of death, she's all...psych!

Bwahahaha how I enjoyed this.

And then they are all so yeah he's dying. Why it does not occur to anyone to take him to the hospital is beyond me. Unless they know it's a Victorian Emotional Illness (tm) so no hospital can be cured. So SFL finally caves and lets FL in to see him.

Guess who magically gets better? Heeeee.

Anyway, YC makes sure he's OK and peaces out. SFL is all fine fine you can go to her, my boy toy, mainly because I think she's (a) finally realized he's literally gonna die at the pace she's going and (b) he's literally ready to bolt anyway, even his obedient self can't take it any more. But also the way he basically desperately asks for permission - I roll my eyes at melo cliches a lot but the power imbalance in this is honestly kinda awful, not just because he's so nice/weak and she's so neither, but because he's so much younger and so much more inexperienced in life and like dude, it's almost like she kidnapped a high schooler and locked him up in her basement.

Except of course she renegs yet again but at this point even the spineless SML has had enough and basically tries to drum some sense into her. But also SML tells her he loves her and I think this helps her because this psycho needs to cling to SOMEONE. So puppy is finally free but that whole being in his house with wedding photo etc was last straw for FL and she's all I don't want him back, it's all too painful, I want no relationship thanks...

But of course it doesn't last long because they love each other like mad and all they need one little push from their fam where they send a clip from her old diary to them blah blah. The way he runs to their place and finds his old bike and she's left there his chastity necklace (yes, I know it was true love necklace but we all know what it was, she even labeled it something like "BS is only mine" necklace back way when) and, more importantly, the paper with "Tag" eeeee! (reference not to just their childhood but their breakup when she told him he has to stay away until she unfreezes him and tags him and then he can come find her.) AAAAAAAA

This is adorable!

Meanwhile SFL swans off overseas to happy bliss with SML, utterly and gloriously unpunished for all the awful awful stuff she pulled.

Moral of the drama: Never stick your dick in crazy.

Or perhaps, maybe if you didn't teach them so much abstinence, dude wouldn't have lost his mind to hormones and avoided all that misery.

Oh, and I really now want to know how heavenly his hair must be for FL to be so obsessed with it she can't think straight.

Anyway, it was a fun ride, and I am just glad I finally found another rare Kim Rae Won drama where he doesn't die or his OTP doesn't die. That man is drawn to misery.

#kdrama #kim rae won #say you love me

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 3 months

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I listened to Elis James and John Robins on the Comedian’s Comedian podcast, as I somewhat recently passed the point in their radio show when they recorded it. It was a really good episode, even by the standards of that podcast, which are high. Very little messing around with basic explanations of stuff that we could find on their Wikipedia pages anyway, they jump straight in with analysis.

I cut out a few clips as I was listening. I meant to write a paragraph or so about each of them. I am coming back here after finishing the post to say I ended up writing a lot more than that. This one gets out of hand. It mainly stays on the topic of the podcast episode and the radio show, occasionally veers off into some personal stories of my own, makes tenuous connections between the two. That's what's below the cut that I'm adding because not everyone needs to be subjected to that.

I particularly liked this one, from the very beginning:

First of all, Elis James definitely has met another person who will start a radio episode by sighing and just saying whatever's actually in their mind instead of trying for slick broadcasting. Elis knows him very well, the mother of his children is frequently recording lines to put in that other broadcaster's shows. However, there is the key difference that Daniel Kitson's doing that on an obscure radio station (well, two obscure radio stations as he used to do Triple R in Melbourne, but hasn't for a long time, so I mainly mean Resonance FM in London) that doesn't pay him any money, while John Robins is doing it on a commercial radio station that was presumably a significant source of his income and is definitely the main source of his career success. It's definitely more a risk to try in that context.

Anyway, I'd like to put the above clip next to this one:

I'm now three years into following this radio show/listening to various podcasts and other things they've done alongside it, trying to go mostly in chronological order, and I would say they do this in one form or another approximately every six months. Just explicitly state the status dynamic between them, which is that Elis is more successful but John is funnier, this creates a couple of sources of mild tension that can be funny to listen to and give them something to play into as a double act, but it also balances out enough so their entire relationship isn't going to implode like Jon Richardson and Russell Howard. It's always a bit weird when they actually say that out loud, comedians aren't really supposed to tell us what level of status they've decided to assign themselves/each other for any given moment.

Elis James frequently says John Robins is a better comedian than him, which also a bit weird because it's the sort of thing you'd say as a joke, but he never sounds like he's joking, and it's... I mean, I was going to say it's objectively true, I guess it can't be given how subjective comedy is, but it is pretty clear cut. And it seems to genuinely not bother Elis James, which I used to think was odd, but I guess it makes sense. I've been teammates with people whom I know are better athletes than me, and we can still be friends, and if anyone asks who's better I can be honest about that. It sure would make that easier if I also somehow won more medals than they did (to continue the somewhat stretched analogy of Elis James having more TV work so that balances the scales), though sports tend to be more of a meritocracy than arts so that doesn't really happen.

There's also truth in the thing John said about how one of them has to come up with content for the radio show - they're on the same official footing, co-hosts rather than calling anyone a sidekick or whatever, but the vast majority of the funniest stuff gets said by John, and more than that, John drives most of the discussions. He usually comes in with more features and stuff prepared, he establishes a lot of the running jokes and keeps them going, he's the one who will lead most of their offshoots into weird little sketches and characters. His timing is incredible sometimes, every once in a while he'll have an episode where he's got Lee Mack levels of being able to jump on everything that gets said almost immediately and be funny every time. He seems like he can decide, pretty much based on how he's feeling at the moment but possibly also based on a sense for how much potential something has, whether to wrap up a thread in one incisive sentence or to draw it out. And it's almost always John making that decision (if it isn't the producer telling them to get on with it, that is, but it's rarely Elis' decision). Sometimes I can hear John work out the comedic potential in something they're talking about before Elis does, and Elis will start to move on but John will bring it back and guide him toward it, and eventually manage to push Elis into whatever joke John had figure out would be funny but only if Elis said it.

Having said that, and this is a tangent but discussing whether Elis James is funny just made me think of it, I've been wanting to give him credit for something. At some episode sometime in 2016, Elis James was telling a story about someone he admired, and the story was about something fairly serious, and at the end of it, John asked "Is he a laugh?", which was quite a funny thing to say in the context, it's annoying me that I can't remember the exact story but it was something like that. And it was funny to hear John be so efficiently dismissive of the sort of weird story. But later in the episode, John told one of his stories about one of those vaguely depressing things he does, like obsessively do his taxes four months in advance or drink rum alone at 2 AM and get sad while watching Queen documentaries - one of those types of stories - and at the end of it, Elis asked "Are you a laugh?" And after that, for several months, Elis James brought that back the exactly perfect number of times. I don't know how he did it, how he got it so perfect every time. He didn't drop it for long enough for regular listeners to forget that he'd made this a running joke, so it would lose its power as a callback. But he didn't say it often enough for it to start to get overused and less funny (not that those guys would ever try to milk more from one bit than it should be expected to bear... but of course we're all on email). There is such a small sweet spot, such little room for error in the frequency with which you can bring back a joke and not fall into either of those traps, and he got it perfect every time. Every time he'd said it, I'd have a moment of surprise because he'd left it just barely past the point at which it had been long enough since I'd heard it for it to get really funny again, and every time, I'd take a moment to admire his timing. He kept it going for quite a while, occasionally responding to John's depressing anecdotes from his own life with "Are you a laugh?" So, well done to Elis James, he can be funny too. Also, I mean, obviously he is regularly quite funny on the radio show, just not as funny as John Robins. It's fine, most people aren't as funny as John Robins. I'm not as good at underhook setups as my friend I hung out with the other night, but it's fine, we manage to get on with our lives.

Anyway, that was only very tenuously related to the topic of this post, let me see if I can find my way back. John Robins and Elis James having an odd balance of tensions created by John being funnier but Elis being more successful. I'm not sure that's as true now as it was in early 2014 to early 2017, which covers the period of radio episodes I've heard so far. At that time, Elis had recently had major roles in two sitcoms (Crims and Josh). He'd had one Welsh-language stand-up special released on the BBC and I think was working on recording another one. He'd done some panel show spots, more than John I think. I think he's started on his BBC television travel show with Miles Jupp. He'd gone to Europe to do TV and radio things about the Welsh football team. John Robins, meanwhile, had released the audio from a couple of his stand-up shows himself on Bandcamp, had been on Mock the Week twice and one of those times was a fucking disaster, a couple appearances on As Yet Untitled, and I think he occasionally got on things like The News Quiz but less often than Elis James did. I think he had a pretty good stand-up career going by then, but it hadn't really translated to other stuff. And John complained at times that he didn't get as many reviews and publicity as his stand-up profile deserved, though it's hard to tell if that's true or just his bias. He had a job for a while doing TV warm-up gigs, but then he got fired for what sounds like a combination of drinking too much and being too harsh for the "keep it light" atmosphere. The disparity between his profile and Elis' was probably for two main reasons: 1) Elis has the significant USP of being one of the only comedians who's fluent in the Welsh language so that gets him some stuff, and 2) the reasons outlined in that second audio clip about John having pissed everyone off.

I think their positions are different these days, though. I'm into the March 2017 episodes right now, in a few months John Robins is going to win a Perrier Award, so he can't keep complaining about not having a significant enough stand-up profile after that. That turned into a Netflix special, a significantly bigger deal than Elis' Welsh-language BBC iPlayer special. And then in 2018 he hosts a panel show, which I have downloaded but haven't watched yet, I'll wait until I get there chronologically. To be honest I'm slightly dreading getting there because I have a feeling it might be terrible. I don't think it was hugely successful because I'd never heard of it before I started looking up John Robins things this year, and I went really deep down the panel show rabbit hole in the last few years, I watched some quite obscure ones but never came across this. It also only lasted one season. But still, he hosted a panel show on Dave. That's a TV career.

And now, obviously, he's on Taskmaster. And seems to be playing large rooms in his latest stand-up tour. A tour that I'd assumed would get filmed for another TV special, though he's mentioned recently that he's planning to put it on Bandcamp like his earlier shows, and I do appreciate him keeping it real for us despite now being a Taskmaster star with a huge tour (as much as this shouldn't make sense because there can be visual humour in stand-up, I tend to prefer audio-only stand-up that's usually closer to how it actually sounded in the room, over filmed versions that get more edits). On the other hand, Elis had a TV series about Welsh comedy a few years ago. A podcast with some football players. I've just looked it up and apparently he hosts a football-based TV show on Sky, so that's nice. But the gap in TV-based success has probably closed.

But that discussion they had in that second audio clip - about John Robins not getting stuff because he's (rightly and justifiably) reaping the consequences of being a dick with a substance abuse problem, and Elis James valiantly taking on the role of Robins Apologist - that really nails, for me, what I enjoy so much about their dynamic. I think that my favourite dynamic. I fucking love anywhere where two people get that one going. That dynamic that's summed up by this post htat I remember from ages ago and have somehow just managed to find because Tumblr's terrible search function decided to work for me today:

It was about a year ago that I had the extremely clever idea of adding that Taskmaster screenshot to that other person's text post, but I maintain that it's hilarious. Guy Montgomery and David Correos were so much fun because of this. At the time, I considered instead using a screenshot from Taskmaster UK season 5, with the speech bubble pointing at Mark Watson looking at Nish Kumar. There are so many example of two people whose comedy show interactions have been hilarious because they're based on one person making terrible decisions and the other person looking at them like "I'd follow him to hell and back but I wish he'd just stop going there." And not always a him, it doesn't have to be a him! Danielle Ward and Margaret Cabourn-Smith had some good "I'd follow her to hell and back but I wish she'd just stop going there" energy on Do the Right Thing (with Danielle Ward, of course, in the Correos/Kumar/Robins position).

I'm sure I realized until right now, as I write this, how much this might be my favourite dynamic in comedy because it also characterizes my favourite relationships in my own life. And I am genuinely not sure whether that's a me thing or whether most people can slot most of their relationships into one where someone's the David and someone's the Guy, in terms of who keeps driving things to hell and who follows out of loyalty but also apologizes. When I was in high school, and also for most of my twenties, my nickname among my friends was "loose cannon" because when they were trying to be careful and diplomatic in the political battles within the increasingly high levels that we reached in the sporting world, I was the person who once yelled at my coach in a hallway because I was so angry at the way he treated the athletes, and had a letter in my coaching file by age 22 that accused me of not caring about common courtesy. A letter from a coach who refused to work with me anymore because I was insufficiently courteous, so my best friend had to liaise with him on everything while asking me to please not upset more people and further alienate our team. And I have wonderful friends who tell other people that I don't hate them, really, I just seem standoffish because I'm shy, and later on they tell me that I really need to work on my poker face/ability to be around people I hate without making it incredibly obvious that I hate them. In addition to being genuinely shy. When we tried to get someone from my team elected to the provincial board, we knew from the beginning that 1) I would do all the actual work for both the election campaign and, if successful, the role itself, because I know and care the most about the issues and am good at admin stuff, and 2) I could not be the candidate because I hate most people and everyone I hate knows I hate them because I have no diplomacy skills.

Though I do also have one friend who coaches a team in another city and he knows he can call me pretty much any time and ask me for pretty much any favour and I will do it, and I will edit his emails and do his research for him to help him fight his stupid pointless battles and to try to keep him on top of things even though he can't keep track of anything and keeps making wild badly planned decisions, and people ask me why I don't just let him fail and walk away, and I say I know he seems like a brash asshole with no ability to think ahead, but he's a really good guy, really, once you get to know him. It's got back to me that most people in our sports community assume I am or was sleeping with him, as that seems like the only explanation for why I would stick by a guy who's clearly an idiot. The truth is much weirder, he was my university teammate in 2013 and one time he was in my corner when I had a panic attack in the middle of a match at the university national championships, and he saved me and got me through it and I managed to go back and win, and that's why I had to do things like sleep on a hotel room floor for a week in Atlantic City because he'd talked me into going on a provincial team trip where he hadn't booked enough rooms (or planned anything), because he'd earned my eternal loyalty. Oh God, I just remembered how during that trip he stopped to gamble in front of children, and I ended up yelling at him in the middle of the street in Atlantic City, "You know, I argue with people about you!" And he said, "What people?" And I said "People who think you're not responsible enough to run a provincial team trip! Which is everyone! I get into big arguments with them and you make it hard when you do shit like this!" But a few years later he was the first person I called when our mutual friend died because I realized in that moment, that's the person I trust most in the world.

Anyway. What was I talking about? Elis James and John Robins. I think I was talking about Elis James and John Robins. Okay, turns out listening to people talk about the friendships that you base on blind loyalty and apologism brought some stuff up for me. I think I have, in recent weeks, at times blamed my overly emotional posting - my posts that start out as comedy analysis but then go into oversharing about my person life - on the fact that I'm going through some emotionally difficult stuff as I'm trying to avoid drinking. But that's not the case here, I think I was always going to go on that tangent. I haven't seen my friend from out of town in a while, I'm a bit worried about him. I think he might be ruining his own life again. Something was going to connect to that. Rhod Gilbert reminds me of him.

Anyway. Anyway. Elis James and John Robins. Solid double act dynamic. Weird balance of status and tensions, enjoyable running thread of loyalty and apologism. Amazingly, I'm not done, here's another clip I cut out of that ComCom interview:

This is the second time I've heard John Robins tell this story, and I had the same reaction as the first time, which was: Oh my God oh my God oh my God, how were you ever able to sleep again? The horrible sharp pain of this story keeps me awake at night, just imagining what it would be like if that happened to me, and it didn't even happen to me. How could you ever sleep if it did? John Robins frequently tells stories from what he calls the "shame well", those things that happen where you obsess over how you did something wrong and regret it. John is constantly making jokes (or just statements) about how he lives a life mired in shame and regret. But still, I don't see how he can just casually throw this one out there like it's just another shame well story. It's so much worse. It's the worst one I've heard. I would hide under my bed for the rest of my life.

John Robins went on Adam Buxton's podcast in 2016, I have listened to that episode and it's not great. You want to talk about dynamics created by a differential in status - I think that one went way too far, to the point where nothing could really happen. There was this huge discrepancy of John Robins meeting his hero, which will often make someone sort of adorably giddy but not in this case, he just seemed a bit out of it and subdued. While on the other side, Adam Buxton appeared to have no idea who John Robins was, so not much discussion got generated. It wasn't a complete disaster, but I could understand why John didn't plug that one on his radio show, despite plugging most of his podcast appearances.

Anyway though, if I can manage to get past the sheer horror of the first part of that clip, the second part was sort of nicely validating. Because I am slightly weary of how much my trip down the Elis and John rabbit hole has got quite intense quite quickly, even by my standards of comedy obsession, and possibly taken a turn for the parasocial. I mean, I am currently writing a multi-page post about an interview they gave and it includes several paragraphs about my own life that are only tenuously related, in a way that I can say "Look I do the same thing as these guys I've never met."

The intensity of that has definitely been accelerated by the fact that I happened to, by a genuine coincidence, get into this show at the same time as I decided to try to slow down and/or stop drinking, and God, a lot of the ways in which John Robins talks about alcohol and anxiety resonates. And yep, I'd feel weird admitting it because I know it's sort of inherently creepy to say "they feel like my friends" about some people you've never met, but since John Robins said it first I think I can admit those headphones do make a difference. Might be another reason why I prefer the Bandcamp comedy to a Netflix special.

They touch on this throughout the ComCom interview - not so much in the clips I cut out but throughout the whole thing, it really is worth a listen if you're interested in this - the way their radio show gets so many letters from people who thank them for talking so honestly about mental health issues, people who say they've dealt with their own difficult shit and find this radio show has helped. Probably lots of shows get similar letters, but I think it's safe to say this one gets more than most. The Bugle used to read out their correspondence and Andy Zaltzman wasn't getting people every day saying "Thank you for making me feel less alone in my depression."

They really are good at that, at hitting the exact right balance of honest without being overbearing about it. For a show that spends so much time talking about symptoms of mental health problems, they almost never use the words "mental health". They never sit down and say "let's have a talk about what it's like to live with anxiety." They just describe their week, in more honest detail than you would normally hear on commercial radio. And leave in the parts where they panic about every decision they've ever made and get drunk alone in the middle of the night and cry because they think they've done everything wrong. And by "they", I mostly mean John.

I do like their word, "darkness". I didn't realize, when I first watched The Darkness of Robins in 2022 (a show John first performed in 2017, won a large award for it, released as a Netflix special in 2018, but I watched it in 2022), that that title's been around for ages. Elis James made a joke in an early radio episode, from 2014, about how someday, John should do a show called The Darkness of Robins, where he just lays bare all his anxieties, all his weird toxic quirks and control freak tendencies and oceans of shame and regret and various addictions/self-medication and cynicism and bitterness and anger and deep self-loathing. Elis said this as a joke, the joke being that you can't just put all that in a comedy show. But they kept the joke going for years. John did the Richard Herring podcast, in which he talked a bit about some of the more difficult mental health struggles he's had, and when he plugged it on the radio show, instead of saying "I talk about some of my more difficult mental health struggles", he said, "There's a fair bit of the darkness of Robins in it." And then he started casually referencing it on the show, describing a night when he might have drank too much and had a panic attack with a causal and sort of joke-y "I got overcome by the darkness for a little while." And then they started describing those emails from listeners who say it resonated with "[Person] has emailed in to say they've been afflicted by a touch of the darkness, sorry to hear that." And I just love that word. It's used with enough genuineness to make it clear that they're not making fun of mental health problems, they really do have them and it does feel dark. But also with enough irony - obviously there is irony in using a term as grandiose as "The Darkness of Robins" to describe panicking at 3 AM about something bad you said in school - to make it feel like it's not an after school special. I also like that they found a way to let that word mean no one has to name a diagnosis, to narrow their issue down to a loaded term like "I suffer from clinical depression", when not everyone who has that is diagnosed, not everyone is comfortable naming it, not everyone finds it easy to separate their symptoms into clear-cut causes. They can just use a shorthand like "the darkness".

It has been good, to have this radio show for the last couple of months that have brought some darkness into particularly sharp focus, as I decided to quickly remove the maladaptive self-medication. I've tried to stop writing about it so often the way I did earlier in the year, but as a little update on how that's going, still bad. Not enjoying it. Getting mildly parasocial about some guys on the radio might not be hugely healthy, but it's a healthier coping mechanism than whiskey, I guess. I'd really like some whiskey. Anyway I'm fine.

I do think that's why I find that Adam and Joe story so incredibly painful, though. I get paranoid about whether I get too parasocial about the comedians I like, I try really hard to be self-aware about it and be super clear that I know what I'm getting is a curated public persona and I do not actually know these people, and I am mortified at the thought of being one of those fans who thinks they actually are my friends and therefore they should know something about me. No one should know me. I hang out on Tumblr because it's the one social media platform where I know no famous people are searching their own name or anything, everyone's just an anonymous nerd. The thought of anyone knowing me makes me want to hide under my bed for the rest of my life. Though having said that, John Robins and Elis James are always very nice about people who write in with darkness emails.

Amazingly, I'm still not done this post:

Throwing this in just to say, once again, that I'm sorry for having also thought this but in my defense it's not just me. I am truly sorry that when I first heard John Robins got sober, my first thought was... but he's still going to be bitter and angry and annoying and plagued by regret and self-loathing, right? Because that's kind of the cornerstone of his comedy and is what I love so much about it. I mean obviously I want him to be happy, but could he release a couple more stand-up hours first?

I feel genuinely guilty for having thought that, especially because I do hold the sort of political belief that it's bullshit to say one must suffer to make great art, van Gogh did his best work once his mental illness was being treated, and all that. I do believe it applies to more contemporary things too. Jason Isbell made his best music after getting sober. I think James Acaster's best stand-up show might be his current ones, and it's a "let me tell you how therapy has made me healthier" show. But John Robins did base a lot of his comedy on being bitter and angry and annoying and plagued by regret and self-loathing. That's sort of my favourite thing about it.

I felt slightly better when I re-listened to his 2014 show (recorded in 2015) This Tornado Loves You, and was reminded that he admitted that himself:

That's John Robins talking about how his comedy has suffered because he's too happy in his relationship with Sara Pascoe, a relationship that has ended a 20-year search for happiness. And it goes with the clip I posted before that from the ComCom episode, of Elis James saying it's nice that John's relationship with Sara Pascoe recently ended, because it's given the quality of his comedy a real boost. And maybe they should just ruin John's life regularly to keep it that way. So it's not just me who had that horrible thought.

I'm feeling the need to clarify, once again, that of course I don't genuinely think that's a good thing. Obviously it's good that he got sober, for his sake but also, reports suggest his latest show Howl is excellent. I think Howl was written partly while he was drinking and partly while he wasn't, but performed after he'd quit, and the fact that it's done so well suggests that people can, in fact, make their best stuff after getting their shit together (I haven't actually heard the show, he's said he'll release it on Bandcamp sometime soon-ish, probably). And even if his comedy did get worse, which it clearly hasn't, it would still be best that he quit drinking because suffering wouldn't be worth great art, even if it were required for it. That's how it works. Drinking is bad for you. I definitely don't want to drink any whiskey right now. It's fine.

But. But. I recently re-listened to John Robins' episode of Isy Suttie's podcast, The Things We Do For Love. This is a rare instance that I've heard of a comedian being genuinely drunk while recording something. It's happened before that comedians will claim to be a bit loose and tipsy, but not usually so drunk that they're slurring their words. John Robins on Isy Suttie's podcast was slurring his words. He kept losing track of the question and interrupting at inappropriate moments. It's one of those things that makes me say "Oh, yeah, you really needed to quit drinking. This really was affecting your career, that's just a guy who showed up to work too drunk to effectively do his job."

But it was really funny. It made me laugh so many times. At one point he gets furious because Isy Suttie asked him whether he knows how to drive a car. Later on he threatens to murder her and Elis for their sitcom money, which would have been an okay joke but tbere was a bit of a sense of line crossing when he also threatened their child. (Fun side note that has nothing to do with John being drunk: at one point Isy tells a story about her ex-boyfriend, John Robins asks what the ex's name is but she refuses to say, which is weird because I know. It's weird that I know something about Isy Suttie that John Robins didn't, at least on that day.) It's a mess. It's hilarious. I feel vaguely guilty for finding that so funny, the same way I do about the episodes of No More Jockeys where Mark Watson gets properly drunk - that guy's probably got a problem too, I probably shouldn't laugh at it so much, but I also find those the funniest episodes. I have the say, the episode of Adam Buxton's podcast where John Robins was sort of awkwardly reserved would probably have been funnier if John had gotten drunk before it.

My best defense for that is I would not want John Robins to actually be drunk when he performs stand-up, or certainly when he writes it. Being drunk made him funnier on a podcast interview where he's supposed to tell off-the-cuff stories, because off-the-cuff stories get better when someone's filter has been broken down. But also, in his actual stand-up, or even his actual radio broadcasting, John Robins is doing a thousand little things at once to make what he's saying funnier. He's the master of the well-timed pause and the carefully chosen word. None of that would be any good drunk. So I maintain that you don't need to suffer addiction to make great art. It might help a bit to make funny tangents on an interview podcast, but not the actual substance. Also, however funny I found it, I don't think he was proud of that one. On the radio show, John plugged his appearance on Isy Suttie's podcast before he did it, but not one word about it on the radio after it had been recorded, even though most of those things he'll plug both before and once they're released. Though in a later episode of her podcast, Isy mentioned that the first guest she'd had on was a very drunk John Robins, who called her the next day desperately asking her to cut out the sexually explicit story he'd told using an old girlfriend's real name.

And she did cut it out, it's not in the podcast, as it shouldn't be, because it's not responsible to tell sexually explicit stories in something that's being recorded and will be published, if the audience knows the real name of the person you're talking about. Having said that, I've finally reached the point in the radio show where John's doing WIPs of The Darkness of Robins, where he does just that about Sara Pascoe, and I'm having a bit of trouble morally justifying how much I like the show in spite of that. I think I'll re-watch that show tomorrow, for the first time in nearly a year and a half. I'll see how that goes. I remember it as being very, very good. But also, in the last few weeks, I've had three different people watch it because of my posts about John Robins, and all of them came back to me to point out that the stories about Sara Pascoe are pretty inappropriate to tell on stage. I'm still holding out hope that I'll hear him clarify on the radio show that he did run that stuff by her before saying it publicly, or at least before recording it for Netflix.

Anyway, this post got a bit out of hand. I've tried for the last couple of weeks to slow down on my posting about the Elis/John radio show, and the posting about my personal life, but I seemed to have built up a lot to say and put it all in this one. I'm doing fine.

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mortalfollies · 5 months

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ghosts grievances under the cut

finale was quite shit wasn't it lol. totally rushed, 20 minutes of filler that was nowhere near as funny as 80% of the show is, alison seems totally unconvinced, a million different ways to have ended it and they choose a really weird way. if they wanted to do west horsley place a favour by showcasing how it's been renovated, we still coulda believed it was elderly mike and ali that did it. also, seriously, they lose all the fuckin time in the show; could they not have won the lotto or something, just once? also, ALISON IS ALWAYS GOING TO SEE GHOSTS. EVERYWHERE. THATS STILL A LIFELONG PROBLEM LOL (said with aggression). they forgot that.

lolly adefope i am so fucking sorry that these bitches refuse to write for you with respect or love. they enjoy your comedy but refuse to give kitty any semblance of depth, especially when it came to her death. still not over that, btw. i think the spiderbite was a good idea, but reconcilliation with eleanor, to me, screams 'we're six english people who won't acknowledge the existence of racism, at all, ever.' meanwhile homophobia is part of why cap dies lol. the double standards. unreal. disappointing but not surprising.

the treatment of all the female characters, btw, will always be the biggest negative of the show. kitty, mary and alison are all mistreated bc its like well, they dont write for the show so lets consider them afterthoughts. alison and kitty really get the short stick in the finale. and then fanny - well martha made her choice i guess.

and speaking of depth and deaths...cap's death was so poorly done bro. i dunno what you people r talking about, crying over it - it wasn't moving. it was objectively sad but elicited no emotion from me, which is amazing bc while havers is boring, i do feel moved every time i watch redding weddy. you ppl pat ben willbond on the back too much, to the point where it's obviously fed back to him, seeing as he felt he had to say 'sorry' for 5e5, when it was just. flat. poorly executed. rushed. etc. yeah nah man, not good. that being said, besides cap's death i actually love that episode.

even my mum thought the finale was boring and bad bro.

yeah. anyway! the series will always end on s5e6 for me.

#bbc ghosts #yeah i know its beena couple weeks but im bored at home so woe opinions be upon ye #ghosts

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mlobsters · 6 months

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supernatural s11e14 the vessel (w. robert berens)

don't judge, nic. (generally historical fiction is not my jam. the sigh i sighed when the title screen with nazi-occupied france came up... also why i immediately get tired over old timey men of letters stuff)

hold the phone, i know that music intro! it's non, je ne regrette rien by edith piaf - which was used to wonderful effect in inception. spent far, far too long trying to find a clip of it, everything is garbage quality and it's not streaming anywhere i can get it easily

well, i am definitely on board with stabbing nazis, with impunity. (and gee, men of letters related, color me surprised :p)

haha ok but wait

SAM 'Cause I found something. I mean, we need something. Magic. A weapon strong enough to give us a shot against Amara. So, I've been looking outside the lore in history. And I found this, the Vichy Memorandems. They were Nazi communications that puzzle historians to this day. And they speak of a super weapon obtained by the Ahnenerbe, said to be strong enough to win the war.

reminds me of the magicians rhinemann ultra

the magicians s2e2 hotel spa potions

I mean, it was amazing reading about how you used the Rhinemann at Gettysburg to help win the war for the Union. And it was you who slipped it to Rupert Chatwin for the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, you changed history.

the magicians s2e3 divine elimination

The spell that won World War II is called the Rhinemann Ultra? Sounds like a not-so-great beer.

and someone had to power-up with god .... juice (semen) to be able to cast it. anyway. god this is going to take forever.

SAM Well, these memos refer to it as "The Hand of God." I mean, that was sort of a catch all term for several objects he touched on Earth in Biblical times. But they're believed to contain traces of His power. DEAN Yeah, well the Nazis believed a lot of things. SAM Dean, Lucifer's caged. God's MIA, the only beings strong enough to battle Amara are gone. If we're gonna fight her, what better way to arm up than with an actual dose of His power?

just sayin. familiar!

so dean i got a pro-tip here for you. have more than one source of caffeine on-hand at all times. that way even if you're out of power or machine breaks or no grounds or whatever, you can have coffee. personal fan of starbucks doubleshot cans. and it reminded me of the self-heating coffee cans in the neuromancer universe way back when they first came out and i've been drinking them for my first coffee of the day since :p (william gibson writes about coffee a lot.)

answers the incapacitated crowley question i had

distressing. i generally like crowley, even if i don't like what he's getting up to. and having him in this forced pet play torture thing is pushing some really upsetting and unpleasant buttons for me. at least they let us know he's still in there fighting i guess sooner rather than later

DEAN Just in case things go sideways, somebody needs to be left standing to take care of the Darkness. We can't risk us both! And at the moment, I'm the least valuable player! You both know that I can't kill Amara, so the least I could do is get the thing that we need so that you can! SAM So you expect me to sit here and ride pine while you can Cas go play Jules Verne? DEAN Yes! No. I - who?

so he just used a 20,000 leagues under the sea reference but doesn't know who jules verne is? sure, jan. anyway. sure, yes, get dean and lucifer!cas alone on a sub together, sounds great. handwave away sam's confusion about logistics of time travel without wings

SAM (Resigned) Be safe. DEAN When am I not?

ha ha.

oh, sam, i feel you.

LUCIFER Right. We'll double down on what screwed us the first time. You're really bringing your A ideas today. I can't believe I lost it. (sighs) Him. Can't believe I lost Dean.

and now dean is alone there, great. trying to figure out what submarine movie this is reminding me of but all i can figure i've seen enough is the hunt for red october (which is cold war) mashed with some vague memory of enigma machine on a sub thing - maybe from cryptonomicon? (book by neal stephenson which was kind of a mashup of current and historical fiction)

jackles is doing a good job with this and the production quality is nice but i'm emotionally detached and just want it to be over with. lucifer isn't even half assing his castiel cosplay but i guess sam is too distracted with imminent death for dean if they don't fix the problem

SAM Wait a second. I remember Bobby told me when you needed strength to retrieve us from the past, you used him to power up, you touched his soul, right?

LUCIFER That's right, I did that. But that procedure can be fatal. SAM Use my soul. That way maybe you'll have enough power to wield the spell. LUCIFER That isn't necessary. SAM It's worth the risk. Cas, Dean needs our help. I trust you.

ugh. the unknowingly begging for torture from the thing that tortured you for (an unknown but presumably) very long time, yeah. turns my stomach. is this over yet. at least the cat is out of the bag right after.

DEAN So. Cas. SAM Yeah. What do we do? DEAN What else? We hunt Lucifer, trap the bastard, and save Cas. SAM Like I said. Lucifer may be in control now, but Cas may not come back willingly. I mean he chose it. DEAN No. No, not possible.

guess we're not mad about him saying yes to lucifer? all righty.

getting in a lingering beauty shot

and closing with non, je ne regrette rien again

#supernatural #spnwatch #spn 11x14 #robert berens #non je ne regrette rien #music #tm spn thoughts #is my tag for the magicians spn parallels or whatever #the magicians #very vaguely

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roseberryboo · 5 months

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This is Rose with the final update on the timespace anomalies that have been happening all over Unova.

They’re gone. It’s over. That’s right, everyone who was affected by them, you can now rest easy knowing that it’s all blown over.

As for what caused them… That’s a bit of a long story.

I’m going to start this off by saying they weren’t timespace anomalies at all. They were pockets of illusion peeking into reality, a falsehood carefully crafted with so much more psychic-type power than what should be possible.

This was all made possible with several psychic-type gems; an overabundance of them, really, all of them helping the main culprit- a gothitelle- with the upkeep on the illusion.

Before I say anything more, I CANNOT stress how damaging it is for a psychic-type to constantly be emitting psychic power like this, and how much abuse it would have to take for one to be able to even START to do anything at the scale this occurred at.

Now that that’s out of the way, we move on to what happened. I got kidnapped.

Ironic, isn’t it? Me, the person running the investigation on the SCP end, got kidnapped into the illusion. By my crazy ex.

It isn’t something I would really like to get too into, so I’ll just be sticking with as barebones information as I possibly can without making the explanation too hard to understand for the people that got caught up in it.

My crazy ex is- or was, I should say- a prank mewtuber, and she benefitted very much from having me around: I made her views, which made her money, which allowed her to keep going with her lifestyle in a secure manner. Since I am capable of a lot of life skills, that only made me more valuable to have around.

Once I broke up with her, though, her entitled ass wanted me back, so the best solution in her mind was this: create a separated, isolated reality where she could rule, and where she could still leech off from the outside world. Of course, a world like that isn’t complete without its subjects, so while it was in the process of solidifying (which was when and why all the rifts/portals/whatever popped up) she ordered the other two psychic types on her team to hypnotize people into believing they belonged in that world and beckoned them in.

The ‘paradise’ she made just happened to look like medieval Galar. Thought it would be more realistic to copy and paste the knowledge she studied about medieval Galar into her victim’s brains, so they cpuld better live up to their ‘roles.’

My role just happened to be the princess, since I am the object of her obsessions.

Problem is, I wasn’t willing to do that, so she had to kidnap me and put me in a psychic sleep until her ‘paradise’ was ready, so she could focus al her resources on keeping me hypnotized for the rest of my life I guess.

Now, just before I had gotten kidnapped, I was at a sleepover with my friends @ladyzee-oddityhunter and @uncle-dusknoir . I was originally going to pick something up and return, but when I took to long, that’s when they realized something was up, and let the rest of my friend group know that something was wrong.

I cannot understate how lucky I am to know them.

They jumped into the portals to save my damsel-in-distress ass, risking their own lives to do so, along with many of my other friends- with @delicatedelcatty @suicunecontainprotect and @cooper-magnolia among them.

Again, I am extremely lucky to know these people, and I don’t think I could ever show them just how much they mean to me. It’s impossible to say in words.

They all confronted my ex in a battle, and- when they won- had the gothitelle break the illusion. Together, we made sure my ex couldn’t flee the scene, and we had her arrested- as well as made sure that everyone who had wandered into the illusion was safe, too.

If I forgot anything, please let me know, I really don’t want to type anymore right now thank you this was a lot

#pkmn irl #glitch pkmn irl #pokeblogging #rotomblr #high stakes pokereality #tw objectification #tw implied abuse #tw implied violence #storybound arc #arc end #suicune contain protect arc

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palialaina · 4 months

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Okay, uh... where do I start... Do I start with the tree falling on me, or do I go back a bit?

I say as though anyone else reads this.

But you know what, I'm still proud of this thing, as silly as it is.

Anyways, renovations! Or, well, I had too many shop medals, and I kind of went on a Spending Spree~

Reth also gave me a cooking plaque, and Tish gave me one for furniture making~ The cooking one is in the kitchen, the furniture one is in the workshope near the mujiin head. (Where did that mounted sernuk head go anyways? I could've sworn...)

Tish though the blusprints were a nice touch, and it was kinda fun to plaster them to the wall like that. I did have to move Einar's net, but it looks good where it is not, so, not a big deal.

And that rock display. Hodari went a little bit overboard, yanno? I just wanted something I could maybe display a really nice starstone in, not... that.

Cute though.

Flow groves are still the best thing ever, even when they spawn in weird place. I've found a couple now inside the Flooded Fortress, which really threw me for a bit, but you know what else I found in there?

This lil shit~

It's so pretty. I couldn't bear to sell it, so now it's in the guest house~

Seriously though, sitting in a flow grove and waiting for other people is surprisingly relaxing. Look at how pretty that is... I kinda wanna drag Hodari or Hassian with me to see one. (Jel would come in a heatbeat if I showed him this picture, I know.)

Bahari is so wonderfully picturesque. Maybe I should talk to Tish or Zeki about getting picture frames so I can hang something like this in them?

Also, who has two thumbs, a concussion, and a new portrait?

This girl.

I had to rearrange the pictures a bit, move the fish off to the other side. I wanted all of them side by side, but well...

Okay, so... leading up to the tree things, uh... Hodari popped by my house and asked me what my favorite flower is. Which, objectively I don't have one, I just love the flowers I find, but since I know how hard it is to find most of the flowers around here, I told him a crystal lake lotus. He hummed, and left pretty quick, which... well, it's Hodari, he's like that?

And then I turn around and nearly clobber Najuma as she scrambled out of the bushes and scares half my life off me. Jeez child!

Sweet kid though. She told me he was struggling with making a pin for me, and that I should sort of force his hand so he'd stop being all indecisive. So it was off to Sifuu after forever, and man. She teased me fierce.

Though she said she understood how I'd won over Hodari, considering I won over Hassian. Which. Was sweet. And yeah, I guess I am kinda the Grump Whisperer, aren't I?

So when I talked to Hodari about it, pin in hand, he said he had about twenty pins in progress, but since I'd given him one, he had to stop worrying about perfection.

He's adorable. That's adorable.

He said he'd get it to me quick, so I went to Bahari, because I had other things to get. Like, more tree seeds.

And that's how I dropped a tree on myself.

Look, in my defense, I really wanted to know what the pin would be like!

Tau found me, then went and got Hassian and Najuma. Najuma considered blowing part of the tree up until I pointed out that I'm no more explosion proof than the tree. FOrtunately, no one got blown up or exploded, but they did have to get Hodari to help move the tree, and everyone's telling me I'm lucky it isn't worse.

Also, I got my pin from Hodari. He's really sweet when he puts his mind to it. And... I'm glad he's willing to take a chance on us. I really am.

Jina's threatening to take away my book, so I guess I should probably stop now. They're all going to be ridiculous before Chayne gives me a clean bill of health, I just know it.

...it's sweet. I'm glad I woke up here.

#palia #palia online #singularity 6 #berry plays palia #palia game #palia journaling #palia journey #palia mmo #palia roleplaying

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lord-shitbox · 28 days

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sigh

doing that thing again where i get miserable over the attention that i feel my art gets & I know the internet numbers are mostly "does this art align with a fandom i am interested in" and not 'is this Good Art' but also like. hardly anyone FUCKING talks or acknowledges my art in the one art server i'm active in & that's really discouraging + I put art I was really proud of in a really small art show/competition thing and didn't even remotely win, again. something about knowing the people im competing against makes it worse. there were only like 8 of us & I didn't win which sucks but I didn't even get an honorable mention either and that's WORSE. three out of fucking EIGHT won something. at absolute best that means im fourth out of 8 and i may as well kill myself at that point. (i acknowledge that this is unhealthy and abnormal thinking). what have i spent the last several years of my life doing? my self esteem is chronic dogshit so I pour everything i have into being good at a select few things so im worth fucking SOMETHING at least & theres absolutely nothing worse than not being good at those things. fucking dark night of the soul or whatever i dual-skill art & math so I have that at least but rn all the math ive got is really hard exam prep shit because the sink-or-swim everything-i've-done-in-the-past-two-years-comes-down-to-this exams are in a week. it IS rewarding to spend all my time on that but it's also pretty difficult & even less people are interested in hearing me talk about differential equations than about my art. FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! at least people think kabrugatory is funny jesus fucking christ.

gave myself a break day yesterday because I got the news about the art show results & i knew i would not be functional. and i wasn't but I at least managed to have a good day despite it which is good. fuckingggggg. hhrhghghdhghhdhgghg FUCK god damnit i cannot tell if I think my own art is good because there are objective good qualities to it or because im just fucking egotistical and insane and a massive idiot. i experience one rejection & start second guessing every good thing anyone's ever said to me huh.

#shitboxposting #i suffer from enneagram 5 disorder. this is fine my minecraft build project is going well so its fine.#ill post the pieces that did not win anything to this website later today probably. IG is really annoyng bc you have to maintain it to get #consistent 'reach' aka more than 10 likes. too mcuh fucking work and i need to not spend 90 minutes secondguessing an image caption #i am no longer miserable for the time being. will set out a task list for myself and go back to kabrugatory later #thank you guys for thinking kabrugatory is funny its motivating to maintain it. should also play ddr its been a long time

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ovrarches · 10 months

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Okay, but I love Thomas Du Motier as an acting persona name, it sounds elegant... and the du motier twins has a nice ring to it! :D I also love that they were in ~everything~ not only the Disney stuff, but your good old horror as well...establishing that range early, huh... and ngl, I'd be kinda into the idea of Alex actually having liked their work, the stuff he's seen, before meeting Thomas (though even if that was the case, it obviously wouldn't stop him from trying to ridicule it). Would make me wonder how Thomas regards Alex's previous work, though!

*Anyway*, I'm actually dropping in with a different question for this, do you think Burr/James/Angelica/... will have a place in this AU? 🤔🤗 (I, too, am invested deeply already 😂)

Thank you for asking questions about this half-assed au,.,.., I’m.,.,,,, ahhhh🥺

Du Motier twins is very cute and iconic….. Thomas loves that they went with a French vibe. And yea I also like the idea that Alex likes their work!! Like he’d do “research” to find some iconic catchphrases he can parrot to piss off Thomas, and then find himself accidentally chuckling along with the laugh track.

Hmm I think Thomas (film snob and hater of sitcoms and “fluff” roles AKA most of Alex’s filmography) did not have a high opinion of Alex when it was announced they’d been casted as the leads, but he did go and watch some of Alex’s later work where he featured as a main/recurring character (and not as corpse #3 on CSI Miami, or corpse #28 on Grey’s Anatomy, or CSI Miami again as corpse #1…)

But he’d have to acknowledge that objectively Alex is good: very expressive, memorable, and to put that much heart and energy into every stupid little role is… impressive, for sure. However… he also noticed there were many instances where Alex stole the scene even though it didn’t make sense narratively (and Thomas can guess that wasn’t the director’s choice) and then there’s the hundreds of background roles Alex still took on once he became more prominent that should’ve been “beneath him”, which Thomas sees as a foolish waste of time.

As for Burr/James/Angelica, they don’t have a solid place in the au yet but I’ve toyed with some ideas for them

Burr: B-list actor same as Alexander, was actually the first choice for Alex’s current role when the movie was first greenlit but he turned it down for another movie by a big studio that was guaranteed to be a box office success. (It does decently, but the jamilton movie is a surprise hit and garners widespread critical acclaim + nominated for numerous awards. Burr is totally not jealous 😐)

James: nepo baby indie film maker who is very influential within his genre and won multiple awards which has made him highly sought out by studios, but so far he’s refused to compromise his vision™ to appeal to the mainstream audience. His work has a lot of horror, philosophical, and religious elements and they’re the type of movies you have to watch twice to catch all the details. He and Thomas met way back when the twins were in The Shining (dir. James Madison Sr.) and Thomas has appeared in a few of James’s films since coming back

Angelica: famous singer who dabbles in acting, although most of her film industry involvement is cameos or being a part of a move soundtrack. I’m not sure if she’d play a role in the jam movie, maybe as a side character?

#actors au #oh and washington is the director of the jams movie ofc

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thisselflovecamebacktome · 1 month

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Anne of Green Gables: The first impressions of someone reading the series for the first time in 2024.

To start this off, I'm just going to preface it with this is not going to be an academic/professional essay. Realistically it'll be closer to dotpoints and free flowing thoughts that jump around the place. It is also not official or objective or anything else, just my thoughts and feelings. Argue with the wall if you disagree lmao. I will also note that nowadays I am primarily a non fiction reader and that it's been long since this has been my genre of choice, but I had all the books on my shelf and want to read everything on my shelf at least once lmao. I went into this series with a vague idea of the plot around the first novel and knew that Gilbert and Anne ended up together, but that's it. I also read the books in Anne's age order, which, according to Wikipedia, was:

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Avonlea

Chronicles of Avonlea

Further Chronicles of Avonlea

Anne of the Island

Anne of Windy Willows (yes I am Australian so I own this as opposed to Windy Poplars)

Anne's House of Dreams

Anne of Ingleside

Rainbow Valley

Rilla of Ingleside

The Blythes Are Quoted

So I guess a good place to start off my thoughts is to note the obvious: This was not the release order of these books. And that is super interesting to me.

Firstly, I want to applaud Lucy because I feel like often times when writers write a novel in a series in which the new novel happens chronologically before ones that came before it, it is made clear in a bad way that that's the case. However, had I not known this was not the chronological order beforehand, I never would have questioned it while reading. It also makes me want to talk to someone who was a fan of these books as they were being released and ask them what they thought about the books coming out in that order then. However, I am well aware that most if not all people in the world who fit that category have unfortunately passed on by now.

Secondly, I think this is particularly interesting in regards to Rilla of Ingleside and the two books that followed within Lucy's lifetime. I don't think I need to explain to anyone who has read the books that there is a massive tone change in Rilla of Ingleside comparative to all of the other books (barring the poetry in The Blythes Are Quoted) within the series. Given the timing of the books that followed, it would make sense to me that war was on Lucy's mind; that the war to end all wars did not in fact end all wars. It would have made sense to write a Rilla of Ingleside 2 exploring that given the circumstances, and yet she went back to Anne and comparatively happier times within the Anne of Green Gables universe. I am neither saying that is the wrong or right choice, just that it is very interesting to me. I do know that Lucy died before the war ended, so perhaps had she lived longer, she would have knowing that the allies won, but we'll never know and again, I find that very interesting.

As for my enjoyment of the books themselves, I think that with the exception of Rilla of Ingleside (which is a top 3 book of the series for me), there's a reason why the series revolves around Anne. I think she is the star of the show and I found that I enjoyed the books that heavily featured her far more than the ones that did not. I would say this to the point where if I were to reread the series, I would read any of the books starting with “Anne of” and Rilla of Ingleside and leave the rest, and to be honest, I would probably recommend that to any of my friends who haven't read the series if they felt they didn't vibe with the side characters in the first two books.

What I do appreciate the side books for is how they show that, intentionally or not, there is narrative bias and unreliable narration in the other books when it comes to how the Blythes are perceived. Throughout the Anne books, I always got the impression that while yes, people did see Anne as weird, most people came around and ended up befriending her or at least otherwise seeing her positively and that Gilbert was mostly liked. However, on top of The Blythes Are Quoted flat out saying that Anne was not liked by many, I found it interesting that a lot of the books from other points of view really showed Anne to be an annoying gossip to a lot of people and Gilbert to be quite harsh; even to the point of abuse rumours. Even in Rilla of Ingleside, we see Gilbert putting his foot down with Rilla about her responsibility in keeping the child in a way that I'd argue we don't with his interactions with Anne. The closest we get to that is the end of Anne of Ingleside where he is that overtired and embarrassed that his gift for Anne did not come on time that it came off to Anne as apathy. From memory, most to all other occasions in regards to Anne show him as stubborn but ultimately very caring and right. This difference in perception fills out the world and makes it feel a little more real, which I appreciate.

My main takeaway from this series, and I think a highlight of it, is to look at it from a lens of 'How is this different than the society I live in now?'. And the honest truth is is that it's not as different as I was expecting. There are a lot of ideas and plots in these books that are very progressive; even in 2024. Like let's be real, comparatively, there are not a lot of books that deal with miscarriages, women in higher education, the themes of love explored (marrying for love vs money, whether someone coming back for you after being separated for years/after their partner died is romantic or being a second option etc) and the impact of war on those of us left behind (whether that's veterans or those who could not fight in the first place). I was particularly struck with the comment Anne makes in The Blythes Are Quoted implying that Walter likely would have killed himself had he survived the war and Jem implying that he himself was struggling despite not being as openly vulnerable as Walter was. And I imagine there was even less of these themes in books a century ago. Likewise, I found it interesting that Lucy did not play into the idea of the older generation automatically having it worse when she made the choice to have the Blythe children grow up in the war era. As I have mentioned, Rilla of Ingleside was far different and darker in tone than the other books (again barring the poetry from The Blythes Are Quoted) and it's such an interesting choice to make given that even to this day there is a sentiment that each generation automatically has it better than the last purely because their parents (rightfully) want them to have it better than they did.

In saying all of this, the progressive nature of a lot of these books just made the conservative/traditional choices all the more obvious and harder to swallow for me. The non Anne/Rilla books are the worst offenders for me (and likely the main reason I did not enjoy them as much as the Anne/Rilla books). Like obviously there are sign of the time differences that were interesting to me (lack of Diana/Marilla, even in mentions, in the later books despite Anne naming children after them due to travelling being less common and more time consuming back then etc) but then there were also a lot of times where I found myself reminding myself that these values were the norm when these books were written. The obvious culprit was the racial language used, but I also did find myself cringing at how anti psychology it could be at times (mostly to make spanking feel like the 'correct' option which is still unfortunately common in some areas) and making jokes to my friends about how I was about to bring out my inner Ms Trunchbull over how marriage was treated in the books. From having women apologise for having boundaries/emotions to marriage being seen as the goal in life, even if it's in the worst circumstances, to Anne primarily being known as “Mrs Blythe” or “Mrs Dr” the second she got married really stood out to me and were things I had to contextualise in order to be able to finish the series. I also want to note that this is the first book/series I've read that Lucy wrote and I have been told that a lot of her other works were not conservative/traditional in the same way which is interesting to me. I do wonder if a lot of it had to do with this being her best seller so choices being made that would appeal to the masses of the time. Outside of the books themselves, it did also remind me that there are books that are being written now that we see as progressive that our grandchildren will see in a whole different light, and made me appreciate how far society has come in that regard.

I don't have much to say about the books individually... barring Rilla of Ingleside of course. I recognise that this is the third time I am saying this, but the absolute change of tone and themes in Rilla of Ingleside makes it by far the most interesting of the books in this series for me. I remember feeling a bit gobsmacked the moment I realised it was going to be a war book. And then my heart sunk. Because, in that moment, I remembered Walter Blythe and the fact that I thought something horrible was going to happen to him the minute he got into that fight in an earlier book. I knew in that moment what was to come, and that it would make sense for it all to turn out like it did, but god did I hope I was wrong. Throughout the books they were part of, Jem was my favourite of the Blythe children, but as a super sensitive person myself, I have a very special spot for Walter in my heart and think that his arc is the best put together out of the Blythe children. Also as a side note, God is having Jem find out about Walter's death so much after everyone else a choice, and one that will live rent free in my mind forever; especially because we do not get to see him grieve as we do the others.

Outside of Walter though, I find it interesting and the correct choice that this story happens through Rilla; the spoiled, vain, somewhat selfish youngest child at that prime age between childhood and adulthood. And especially with her and Walter seemingly being the closest out of the Blythe children, it tells a story that I don't know could have been told by any other character; even Anne. I also think that having this tale be told from someone who was not actively fighting in the war feels both progressive in that it's a story that is less often told (especially in the perception of it being just as important as those fighting) but aged well in many ways while still being dated/a sign of the times. Lucy did not live to see a world where the horrors of war were broadcast to the everyday people (though it was made clear that WW1 was different than past wars, the Vietnam war was the first time what happened on the battlefield was televised/shown to the masses), so it makes sense that not only is Jem 'cheerier' (for lack of a better word) about his prisoner of war days than what would actually be expected, but that a large part of Rilla's role is promoting the war and pushing for others to enlist despite her feelings about her brothers enlisting.

However, where this book has aged particularly well, and perhaps may even feel more resonate to the current generation than Anne's books for it, is its commentary on waiting during a traumatic time and feeling like nothing and everything has changed simultaneously. Many of the things said about the characters feelings regarding the war, and particularly those not fighting, were very reminiscent of things my friends who had not experienced trauma said about the coronavirus era we are living in. They also reminded me of an analogy to war an ex professor of mine made during the height of coronavirus about how those not fighting ached for a time where dancing and fun would prevail while those fighting could not find it in themselves to be that and were traumatised into a far more serious personality. Perhaps this is why I find myself wishing that we got to see more of Jem post war, but the aforementioned conversation between him and Anne in The Blythes Are Quoted in regards to Walter and Jem's war trauma gave me that same feeling.

To end this off, I want to respond to a question that I've been asked and seen others be asked about this series. Is this a children's series? Ultimately I would say yes. I was reading very similar things from the ages of 8 and above. Does that mean that it is only a children's series though? No. Had I read this series in 2003 when I was 8, I do not think I would have picked up on and resonated with at least half of the things I have spoken about in post. Instead, my main takeaways would have been about how love is not always what you think it will be or where you think you will find it and that change is a part of life, as is grief, but so is love and beauty and that they will always come back, even at the darkest of times. And I think those takeaways are just as important as the ones that I have spoken about here. It is simply that I got those takeaways from other experiences in life before I got around to reading this series. And I think that is the beauty of this series. It is by far one of the most interesting fiction series I've read in a while and really has something for most people in my opinion. Though it undoubtedly would not be the exact same story if written now, the fact that it has remained a classic over 100 years since the first book was released demonstrates that more than anything I could say would. And as someone who is writing a novel themselves at the moment, I applaud Lucy for that because god knows that is not easy to do.

#anne of green gables #rilla of ingleside #under a read more because it's long but yeah for anyone interested these are my thoughts. I'm sure i missed something but oh well

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