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quincywillows · 3 months

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a scattered and overall supportive review of percy jackson season 1

let me just say first of all, it's extremely fun to be enthused about a tv show like this again. the adaptation isn't perfect, but it's a lot of fun, and you can tell there's plenty of heart and good intention behind what they're doing. i'm very much enjoying tuning in every couple of episodes and catching up -- and avoiding the relentless commentary of the internet while i do so lol.

but now it's time for MY commentary!! to preface, i was a huge fan of the books when i was younger, am a stalwart long-term advocate of the original five books as some of the best children's lit of our lifetime, but i also enjoyed the films a decade ago for what they were and think people (including cough rick cough) are way too harsh about them. justice for logan lerman. anyway

i'm not going to do like a play-by-play, but in summary, here are my takeaways from the first season -- what i thought worked, what did not, and things i'm optimistic about going into the future seasons.

the good

for an adaptation of the original series (which, to be fair, i have not reread in years), i felt this was honest and faithful. there were tweaks, obviously, but none that took me too out of it or felt irredeemable. there was a lot to like about this show, so i want to start right from the top with my highest highs.

the worldbuilding / production design. i absolutely loved getting to see how they imagined certain iconic characters, locations, and sequences from the books. it was so exciting to get to see camp halfblood for the first time on screen (at least, in this adaption) -- that moment in episode two definitely felt like a turning point where we picked up from the somewhat laggy pilot episode. i especially loved the design of mount olympus, aspects of the underworld (hades and his upside down castle were baller, though how did percy and grover get up there lol; and i absolutely loved the choice for asphodel and the ghosts being rooted like trees, i never would've thought of that myself but it was so chilling and unique... just wish i could see it better through the terrible lighting, but we'll come back to that), and of course, camp. even down to the small details, like the camp beads... it's just very cool to see it come to life.

the casting. i wasn't sure about some of the casting when the news was breaking, but i'm very happy to have been pleasantly surprised all around (and have majorly avoided people bitching about every single thing). there wasn't any role where i felt like someone was horribly miscast, and you could tell that everyone involved really wanted to be there and committed. i thought the casting of the gods was especially inspired at times. some of the highlights for me personally:

adam copeland as ares. i had no idea he was apparently a wrestler turned actor until my sister told me, but i thought he was absolutely spectacular. very charismatic, with just the right amount of cringefail that ares needed. i found him thoroughly enjoyable in all his scenes.

lance reddick as zeus. having just played horizon zero dawn recently, oh my lorde was this an inspired choice. he was absolutely brilliant. i'm so so sad about his passing, i don't know how they're going to recapture his performance, but i have faith now that they'll find a way.

timothy omundson as hephaestus. i love that they took a softer, more mad scientist approach to his role than like ugly basement blacksmith vibes... i just thought it was really refreshing. his scene with annabeth, where we got so much humanity from him in such a short span of time, was one of my favorite scenes of the season.

jason mantzoukas as dionysus. i mean. what else can be said. obvious choice, but he was so fun lol. i hope they give him more to do next season.

other standouts beyond the main youth cast for me were jay duplass as hades (his brief appearance in 107 was thoroughly enjoyable) and dior goodjohn as clarisse (she was by far the acting standout of the first couple episodes to me). also very happy to see jessica kennedy parker and sinclair from the 100 get work, lol.

walker as percy jackson. it was really wonderful watching walker grow as an actor even just through the first eight episodes. the difference from 101 to 108 is almost night and day. you can tell how much he cares about the project and percy as a character, and he upped his game with every episode. i cannot wait to see what he turns out in the coming seasons. to be fair, i thought all of the youth cast did a decent job, and i'm giving them a lot of leeway and room to grow since they are literally child actors -- it takes time to hone your craft, and im optimistic they're all going to do a great job as the series goes on. but walker was, definitively and thankfully as the protagonist, the standout.

charlie bushnell as luke. i was so excited when i heard he got cast because i loved him in diary of a future president, and he did not disappoint. i kind of wish he had more to do, but all of that was forgiven in the finale when he had his final confrontation with percy. oh, the acting popped off then -- i can't wait for him to get to chew up the scenery more in the coming seasons.

grover and percy's friendship. it was so sweet to see this come alive, and i thought walker and aryan had excellent natural chemistry together. they were so endearing, and i really believed their friendship basically from the start (them swapping their sandwich fillings is a tiny detail from the pilot that has stuck with me since; i just loved that choice so much). they definitely provided a lot of my favorite moments in the season, and i think evoked the most genuine "aw wow" moments from me.

percy's relationship with sally. since sally was, understandably, absent from the original novel, it was awesome to get the flashbacks here that allowed us to more deeply understand their bond. i thought walker and virginia did a great job with this, and the young actor who played little percy also did a surprisingly great job (he was actually one of the stronger youth actors in the pilot imo lol). you totally understood why percy was doing everything he was, because that mother-son bond felt believable. big shout-out to the absolutely baller line "i am sally jackson's son." one of the first writing moments where i was like oh snap!

the music. a good score really can't be understated, and this one did not disappoint. did just what it needed to do. i also loved the closing title sequence and the art direction there with the epic music -- just such a nice touch that i'm so glad they included.

some of the writing. i'll get more into some of my qualms with the writing below, but there were definitely some great moments that deserve their flowers. i thought they did a great job weaving in some early themes without being heavy-handed about it (percy having to define who he is for himself, mostly). there were some genuinely funny moments that made me laugh out loud, including "i am impertinent," annabeth's "i'm multitalented," and the entire exchange on the road side when the trio to ares are like no... we're fine... ahaha bye... oh and percy trying to drive the taxi out of the garage at the casino was absolutely hysterical.

pivotal scenes hitting their mark. when the show needed to deliver, i thought they really delivered. i absolutely loved the staging and acting in the final luke and percy confrontation -- the lighting of the fireworks was such a cinematic touch. percy's arrival at olympus and scene with zeus was also a big standout. i loved a lot of the st. louis arch episode, and thought the hephaestus golden chair sequence was really well done. overall, the episodes i thought were strongest were without a doubt 104, 105, and 108.

expansion where expansion was welcome. one of my favorite aspects of the series is how it's giving more nuance to the monsters and "villains" of the books. i loved that we got a little more motivation for alecto beyond evil -- that she clearly wanted to accomplish her own mission and retrieve the helm, whether out of loyalty or fear. i loved how medusa got much more depth and humanity, that we're sort of reexamining the fairness of how myths are told rather than just taking it all at face value. i'm really looking forward to seeing how that continues in the next seasons.

the decent

percy and annabeth. to be fair, i think my issue with this is more on the fan reaction than the show itself. i think the show is doing a decent, if somewhat awkwardly paced job, of building their friendship and offering small little hints of what could blossom in the future in classic youth awkward ways -- unexpected hugs, banter, etc. i think walker and leah are both doing a good job, and i look forward to seeing how it develops. but my god, people on the internet are really jumping the shark so hard here. i can't handle seeing more "uwu percy is in love" posts when it's like. y'all. THEY ARE 12. THEY JUST MET. LET THEM ORGANICALLY BECOME FRIENDS FIRST... i just hope the creators don't feed into that and also jump the shark. like yes, we all know where this is going, but can't we enjoy the actual journey to get there instead of forcing what isn't there yet? in any case, on the positive side, some of the moments between them i really enjoyed: the conversation on the train when grover was asleep, the hephaestus chair sequence, annabeth giving him her camp beads before going to olympus (that was a slay... that was a legendary slow burn start moment worth hyping up), the way percy smiled at her in their last scene... that's the good stuff. let's not rush through what we're getting folks. the water is fine.

lin manuel as hermes. here is the thing. i thought lin did a good job. i thought his casting was apt, and fun, and he did a great balance of hermes charisma and like, a darker edge. it's just... the thing about lin manuel is that he's lin manuel. and this is coming from someone who likes him, but it's like he shows up on screen and i'm just like. hey it's lin manuel. it's a bit of a "takes you out of the moment" stunt casting, but i'm not mad about it. i wouldn't call it a bad thing. hopefully it'll wear off (though i doubt it). i guess i'm just deciding that hermes is just lin manuel, which honestly, would kind of track.

the youth acting. mentioned this above, but again, some of that early delivery was rough. but i am giving a lot of grace, and i think they've already improved plenty in the first eight episodes. i felt the same way about shadowhunters back in the day when i thought kat mcnmara was hard to watch in season 1, but by season 3 she was my absolute favorite cast member and came so far. i have no doubt these kiddos will do the same. so very much looking forward to that.

the not so great

the pacing. this was definitely the weakest part of the story writing wise. it wasn't irredeemable, but it did hinder the first half of the show (which didn't lock in for me until about 104, when the stakes truly shot up at st. louis). and that also affected how dynamics and plot points were able to unravel. the biggest victim of this...

the luke reveal. from the start, i was worried about this. since luke was only really in episode 2, i had doubts about whether the reveal of his betrayal would be at all satisfying or earned. i don't know that i can speak on it for sure, since i knew what was going to happen as someone who read the books, but i still feel we should have gotten more of those luke-and-percy-bonding scenes and convos earlier in the series rather than tacked onto the finale as flashbacks. it worked there, but i think it could've been better. thankfully, all of that didn't hinder the delivery of the finale confrontation, which as i said, was a standout moment for me.

the fight scenes. with rare exception, i was pretty underwhelmed with many of the monster battles and confrontations this season. given that's such a huge gimmick of the novels, i hope they're able to revisit and polish up the pacing of these in the future... i just felt that scenes like the museum clash with dodds were so rushed and anticlimactic. or not even confrontations at all, like the scene with crusty. we got a bit more of this at the back half of the season, in the sword fights with ares and luke, but i wanted more of that epic feeling throughout. i'm hoping it's maybe just a budget concern and that it'll improve in the coming seasons -- especially as the bosses get bigger and the stakes get higher -- but i'm not sure i'm optimistic just yet.

some of the dialogue. it was... wooden, to say the least. i think the worst moments of this were when they were trying to force Kid Bants -- which just felt stilted in the earlier episodes -- and whenever they were explaining greek myths point blank to the audience. there were moments it worked, but many where it didn't, and i hope they flesh out how to better info dump in the future episodes. i didn't mind the change of having percy be more familiar with the myths and thus more aware, but they could afford to finesse how they relay that information to us in the audience without basically reading from wikipedia in percy's voice.

the ugly

oh my god i can't see. i can't SEE. this show went to the teen wolf academy of employing one lightbulb and it's actually criminal. there were so many scenes where i really wanted to see what was happening because the stakes were high or the scenery was so pivotal -- the entry into the underworld for the first time, the vastness of medusa's basement of stone, THE FIELDS OF ASPHODEL -- but the lighting was so god awful i legitimately couldn't see a thing. in asphodel i literally could barely see the trio's expressions, it was that bad / flat. the audience is smart, we understand it's dark out. we can suspend our disbelief so you can add some visibility to this thing. i was turning up my brightness constantly but it wouldn't go any higher. please, disney execs, rick, anyone -- GET ANOTHER LIGHTBULB. i'm losing key immersive aspects of the show to this and it's a bummer. when they were walking through waterland for the first time and annabeth was like "wow can you believe this craftsmanship" i was like i don't know, girl, I CAN'T SEE ANY OF IT. begging on my knees that they fix this next season.

well, that ended up longer than expected, but oh my gods it is so nice to be writing paragraphs about a tv show again. all in all, i'd say 7.5/10 from me in this first season. there's so much to be keen for here, and i'm really happy with how it's going so far.

friends and fellow demigods, what did we all think?

#percy jackson #pjo tv #pjo tv show #pjo series #pjo #idk what y'all are tagging with lol #maggie watches tv #maggie.txt

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the-stray-liger · 1 year

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I AM 100% NOT OKAY AFTER TODAY'S EPISODE OF G-WITCH. FUCK.

Like... the reunion between Guel and Suletta after the former drove of Bitch Boy Elan 5 genuinely warmed my heart, especially with Guel finally, properly confessing, and clearing the air on the previous misunderstanding between them. You can tell that Suletta is genuinely touched that Guel cares so deeply for her, even though she's already committed herself to Miorine, says as much and gently lets Guel down, who takes the rejection with grace, which is a far cry from his attitude at the beginning of the series. Bravo, Guel Jeturk... you've unequivocally proven yourself to be Best Boy™ in this show.

Then we move on to the main conflict of the series. Miorine recognizes that Suletta is little more than a pawn in Prospera's schemes, and after another conversation confirms Miorine's suspicions of just how deeply that Suletta's been metaphorically brainwashed into being dependent on both her mother and the Aerial, and that because the Aerial is the one thing that Suletta refuses to give up in spite of how easily she'd cast aside everything else if her mother told her to? She's become an obstacle. So now, Miorine conspires with Guel to take Suletta's title of Holder as well as the Aerial from her, not just to save Suletta from herself, but to also provide Guel with the means to rescue his company from bankrupcty, given her own empathy with Guel's situation... all while keeping Suletta in the dark, as usual.

So... the duel. As we see, Guel is still wrestling with the guilt of killing his father, which seems to be manifesting as a sort of PTSD induced cockpit-phobia, similar in nature to another character from After War Gundam X, Jamil Neate. Guel isn't just fighting Suletta, but also himself at every turn, and it shows in just how desperately he is trying to keep himself together, even as Suletta not only overrides the Darilbade through the Aerial activating Permet Score 6, but appears to achieve a level beyond that, with Permet Score 7 manifesting as an iridescent white glow... and then Aerial apologizes before she's remotely shut down before Suletta can secure the win, allowing Guel to claim victory, and more importantly, the title of Holder and the Aerial from Suletta.

Whether you interpret that as Ericht apologizing to her sister for getting her so deeply involved with Prospera's schemes and implicitly allows herself to be shut down, or Eri apologizing to Suletta for being unable to prevent what was coming next, both conclusions are utterly heartbreaking to think about, as the entire sequence of events could be interpreted by Suletta as Guel, Miorine, and the Aerial herself all betraying her. The episode is capped off by Miorine pushing Suletta away even as she screams to be allowed to try again, everything slipping through her fingers like grains of sand as Miorine dispassionately tells Suletta that it's over between them, all because Miorine is desperately trying to push Suletta away to keep her safe from Proospera's machinations.

My only concern is that despite Miorine's best efforts... Prospera's probably accounted for all of this, and even expected this outcome.

This is an excellent breakdown and I am REALLY sorry I cant say all I want because Im on my period and in a lot of pain and the brainfog is serious dfadfjd

I love Guel so much. He came out of all he went through a much better man and he thanks Suletta for that and genuinely cares about her and Suletta accepts that in a way she can't accept Elan's gross and agressive invasion of her private space. I sincerely hoped to see Guel just beating Elan's ass I wanted it so badly

The "I have to hurt her to save her" trope drives me up the wall but I also love it. Miorine really wanted to do all of this to protect Suletta and try to free her from Prospera's grip but I am also so so so worried that she did indeed play right into Prospera's hand and honestly I cant with this show its kicking my fucking ass

I cant really say more bc Im not feeling too well but this episode was legitimately one of the most intense and heartbreaking so far somehow and it featured minimal violence. It was a masterpiece honestly

#gwitch #gwitch spoilers

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wibble-wobbegong · 1 year

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Based Anon here!! I can't stop thinking about what we talked about Mike's character arc right now and I was also thinking about the juiciness of him having a Vecna vision to unravel his hidden character's arc. So, I have a kinda ambitious request to make: Could you describe the sequence or the elements Mike's (perfect) vecna vision must contain, please?

BASED ANON WITH THE BASED QUESTIONS!!!! this has been in my inbox for such a long time and i am SO sorry. i was originally gonna answer this with a huge breakdown of the overkill trance songs but i could never get the little details to fit quite right and i feel i covered most of the actual implications in the original post anyway and i don’t wanna start putting all my eggs in one basket so! there’s only one moment i’m gonna be talking about here that pulls straight from the overkill songs because i genuinely think it would be a fantastic ending to mike’s trance

let me say first that i’m coming at this from the perspective that mike will be in this trance for the two year time skip, giving us plenty of time to go through a lot of his fears and insecurities. we need the time to really understand everything that’s been withheld from us and that goes beyond just mike’s feelings for will and fear of being outted. so, below the cut, i’m gonna get into dustin, lucas, nancy, his parents, max, el, will, and then my ideal final scene. i don’t necessarily think the trance explorations will appear in that order (besides the ending) but that’s how i feel like talking about it

Mike’s relationships with each of these characters goes farther beyond the aspect I’m assigning them, however I don’t think we’ll have time to dive into every little detail of every relationship. I’m taking the most prominent thing from each dynamic and showing how it leads to their role in Mike’s trance.

ALSO Max isn’t here because I don’t think she’s going to be in his trance as an illusion, and getting into that deserves a whole other post lmao

Dustin; Loneliness

Okay, starting with Dustin. How does Dustin fit into Mike’s trance? This is something I plan on doing a very deep dive with once I finish the post about Mike’s self destruction, but I actually think Mike and Dustin will inevitably end up fighting about Eddie in S5. They could support each other, but narratively, Mike needs to feel like he’s also lost Dustin in order to push him to the final scene.

I have a feeling Mike is gonna be very reluctant to believe Eddie is actually dead despite Dustin’s insistence. Mike has suffered the most loss of actual people in the show right next to Joyce. He thought Will died, he thought El died, he thought Hopper died (yes Hopper is important to Mike’s story and he cares about him and their dynamic is a whole thing). Every single person Mike has cared for, loved, who died, eventually came back. Nobody is ever really dead in Mike’s world. He’s seen other people die, he’s seen them stay dead, but it’s never the people he cares about the most.

Alongside that, Mike is a character with a lot of hope. He’s stubborn and he almost never gives up with ease. If there’s a solution, he’s not gonna stop until he finds it. Even if Dustin saw Eddie die, Mike isn’t gonna stop hoping. They saw Will’s body, they saw El die, and Joyce first hand reported Hopper’s death and they all came back. He’s not gonna believe Eddie died just like that, not anymore.

This is something that I talk about in the “Vanishing of Mike Wheeler” post, where Mike follows Eddie’s voice into the hands of a waiting Henry, and I think this heavily plays into that. Mike desperately needs Eddie to be alive, not just because he’s a good friend, but Eddie was sort of a beacon of hope to Mike in the sense that he proved queer boys could thrive. If Eddie really is dead, what does that mean for Mike? He’s alone again. Even more so after having his romantic hope stomped on at the end of the season, once Will unintentionally revoked that belief of required feelings Mike had.

This is a lot of Eddie, but it all ties back to Dustin and Mike fighting over it. Dustin held Eddie in his arms as the life drained from his eyes, he’s gonna be pissed if Mike tries to make him think it wasn’t real. Dustin knows Eddie is dead. Dustin has always been able to believe Mike more easily than other people, they’ve grown especially close between S3 and S4, but Eddie died in Dustin’s arms. Mike is gonna refute Eddie’s death and it’s not gonna go over well with Dustin.

Losing the one friend he feels like he still has, who he can still be close with, is going to be coming back in Mike’s trance. Mike’s biggest fear has always been about losing the people he loves. Right now, Dustin is the only person Mike hasn’t lost in one way or another. When Mike pushes too far and loses Dustin too, that’ll be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Dustin is gonna be significant in Mike’s trance as a sort of staple that he really is alone. Dustin never gave up on him and yet he still ended up losing him. Everybody leaves Mike eventually, because no matter what Mike will never be good enough for the people he loves. He’s not even scraping by as good anymore. Dustin’s gonna hammer that insecurity in, making him truly believe he is completely, utterly alone.

Lucas; Normalcy

Lucas’ role is actually gonna be huge I think. A lot of Mike’s arc specifically regarding his sexuality outside of Will and El falls into Lucas’ hands because Lucas is representative of everything Mike wishes he were. Lucas is very similar to Mike (even if he doesn’t see these traits in himself); they’re both loyal, kind, stubborn, brave, etc. but Lucas is still what Mike strives for and we see that a lot in S3.

Even more so than just sexuality, because that was most of Mike’s attempt at normalcy in S3, we see Mike wanting to be like Lucas in other ways in S4. There’s a massive conflict between the two of them that runs deep, but during the cafeteria scene we see a sports book on the table, specifically one about how to become an athlete. This couldn’t be Lucas’ because he’s not eating with them. It’s pretty clear that none of the original Hellfire members are interested in any kind of sport, which only leaves Dustin and Mike. Why the hell would Dustin be reading about becoming an athlete? There’s no service to his character in that and there’s no previous indication of him wanting to play sports.

The book is Mike’s. Mike expresses his frustration with Lucas for joining the basketball team and choosing the championship game over Hellfire, yet we still see him showing some form of longing for the things Lucas has. By S4, Mike has accepted his sexuality and that he cannot change it (even if he has conflicted feelings about it) and that is heavily intertwined to him returning to being a freak by joining Hellfire, but Mike still thinks about what it would be like to be like Lucas. Mike finds light in Hellfire, a place where he can be unashamed of his passion for DND and where he doesn’t have to repress his sexuality (thank Eddie for that one). Part of him, however, still searches in the dark. There’s a temptation to return to that darkness, the one he hid in during S3, and that temptation comes from seeing Lucas manage to find light in the things that are nothing but darkness for Mike. I think Mike sometimes wonders if he can find light in that darkness, too. I think Mike gets kept up at night wondering if he had just kept pushing, kept trying to be normal, if he would have ended up like Lucas somehow. I think he wonders if there’s an even brighter light that he’ll only find by suffering through the darkness first.

Mike doesn’t understand that Lucas was never really doing all the basketball and popularity stuff because it made him happy, but rather out of necessity. Mike and Lucas’ worlds are both incredibly different, but neither sees that about the other. That’s part of what brings about their conflict. If Mike went the way Lucas did, things wouldn’t have ended well. They didn’t end well for Lucas. Lucas’ arc ends with him learning that he never wanted to be like the people he was surrounding himself with. Mike, however, is completely unaware of all this. Mike and Lucas have barely spoken since their fight, where Lucas was still fully on board with being normal — that being normal was better for all of them than being nerds and freaks. Mike doesn’t know anything about what happened with the basketball team. What happened with Jason. To Mike, Lucas is still the peak example of success through normalcy.

Part of Mike still wants to be normal. Mike needed Hellfire, desperately so, but it wasn’t enough. Mike had a space to start being himself, but Hellfire wasn’t a place for Mike. It was a place for freaks, nothing more and nothing less. Eddie didn’t open his arms to Mike on account of Mike being himself, but rather another freak in need of a place to be a bit of a freak. Hellfire successfully gave Mike a place to play DND and start accepting his sexuality (both heavily involved in his arc with Will) but Mike’s internal conflict doesn’t start nor end with who he’s attracted to. Mike has a huge problem in believing he, himself, is good enough. Hellfire gave Mike a place to accept his freakishness, but Mike is more than just a freak. Hellfire isn’t enough. There’s still something missing for Mike, and it’s something Hellfire can’t solve.

Lucas plays into Mike’s trance by being the epitome of everything Mike wishes he were. Lucas has everything Mike feels he lacks, especially in S4. If Mike were normal, if Mike weren’t gay and if he were a better person, maybe he could’ve been like Lucas.

Most likely, I think we’re gonna get some kind of scene where Lucas rejects Mike for his sexuality. He rejects Mike for not being normal, for not being good at sports and for liking boys and for being weak. Mike feels like he’s nothing special at all, and Lucas is only gonna serve to rub it in that Mike is right.

His Parents; Shame Over Emotions

This one is a little self explanatory, to be honest. Karen and Ted have set a lot of expectations for Mike that are more or less impossible to meet. They have set him up with the expectation of perfect emotional independence and control from a young age and they’re often very critical of a lot of his behavior.

Ted has never been there for any of his kids. He’s never even bothered to try. All he adds to Mike’s life is disapproval and critique. Unless Mike is doing something Ted doesn’t like, Ted is totally absent in anything beyond being a money maker. He’s always nitpicking Mike’s emotions. He’s not supposed to care so much about Will in S1, he’s not supposed to react so strongly to everything that happened and act out in S2 (Ted literally implies he should be getting kicked out for this with the whole “if it was my coach, you would be getting kicked off the team” thing), he gets no critique in S3, and he’s judged by Ted in S4 for his passion for DND. The only thing he’s ever seemed to approve of is Mike having a girlfriend. Otherwise, he’s just constantly telling Mike to be less emotional about everything. He’s setting the expectation of emotional control and apathy, just like Ted himself.

Karen, on the other hand, sets a certain expects of emotional independence. The best example of this is when she tells Ted to wait for Mike to come to them after Will’s body is found. Karen does offer support sometimes, through things like open arms and offering to get Mike any movie he wants when he’s supposedly too sad to go to school. The times she chooses to support him, though, set an expectation; he’s only meant to lean on others when he’s at his absolute worst. Even then, Mike is never allowed to open up about what he’s feeling. Karen offers minimal comfort to fulfill her need to be a good parent but it doesn’t let Mike feel as though he can reach out to other people. He’s expected to reach out to others, but when he does we don’t see any real depth to those conversations (except for with Will). Mike is expected to be mature and independent enough to be the one to reach out at twelve years old. He’s expected to be able to handle himself entirely when he’s not hitting rock bottom, and then Karen expects him to reach out when he does despite never really giving him good reason to do so.

Karen and Ted don’t set many surface level expectations with Mike. They aren’t involved enough in his life to really care about whether or not he plays sports or gets good grades. They do, however, expect Mike to be able to fill in the emotional void they’ve left entirely on his own. They expect him to be able to function entirely on his own and have perfect emotional intelligence. Ted encourages him to be apathetic, but Mike is anything but. He’s filled with love and care and anger and grief but he’s expected not to feel any of it at all. Karen doesn’t help by only supporting him when he’s at his lowest of lows.

In his trance, I wouldn’t be shocked if his memories switched to his parents after something incredibly emotional where they’d treat him as though he’s overreacting to it all. It’d really be a great way to showcase how Mike is very rarely allowed to express his emotions as they truly are, and we see him reign himself back several times throughout the show when he realizes he’s putting too much care into something and people are getting frustrated with him for it. It explains why he suddenly seems apathetic when the reality is that he cares so much that he gets shamed for it.

El; Lies

This one doesn’t need a ton of explanation. One of Mike’s core values established in the very first episodes of the show is that friends shouldn’t lie to each other. He holds himself and people around him to that same standard for a long time, and we see people adopt it and hold themselves to it too through the party, but especially El and Will.

His entire relationship with El has forced him to lie. Initially, he hadn’t been lying because he did want to be in a relationship with El as he hoped it would fix him (though we do see him use small lies to get out of hanging out with El without blowing his straight boy act). By the time the ending of S3 comes around, Mike has realized that his feelings for boys, for Will, can’t change no matter how hard he tries to fix himself. El kissed him, but they had been broken up for four months and in that time Mike had grieved the loss of Will (again) and met Eddie. Mike’s accepted his sexuality, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to be open about it. At that point, he may not even like it (though by the start of S4 he does seem to be letting himself indulge in his attraction to guys beyond Will). He’s not ready to come out, and in his mind there’s no way to easily explain to El why he doesn’t want to be together without losing her entirely. So he goes with it. He starts lying.

Mike’s relationship with El after the S3 ending is a huge culmination of Mike conflicting with himself about lying. Contrary to his actions, he actually doesn’t like lying. He doesn’t want to lie to El, but also it’s impossible to be on this relationship with her without doing so. For so long he’s been lying to one of the people he cares about the most, and by the time he gets tranced El will most likely have broken up with him, revealing that his lies throughout all of this were for nothing and he’ll feel like he lost her anyway.

Mike feels plenty of guilt about lying. Even more so, he still wasn’t good enough even when he lied. Even doing the thing he hates he isn’t good enough. In the end, no matter how hard he tried to be enough for El, be the boy she wanted, he couldn’t do it. Lying caused him to lose El. He’s never good enough.

Nancy; Being Unloved

Nancy Wheeler… I have such a love/hate relationship with her specifically because of this.

Nancy is being given emphasis through her lack of presence in many ways. Over the course of the seasons, Nancy has grown more and more distant from Mike and Mike no longer feels cared about by her the way he used to. This post shows how S4 really hammers that fact in. Her lack of any sort of displayed care towards him throughout all of S4 is incredibly important and also a huge contrast to her behavior in S1.

Do I think Nancy cares about Mike? Of course I do. She does care about him. That doesn’t mean Mike feels as though she does, and that doesn’t mean she’s showing him she cares. Like at all. Every interaction they had in S4 showed Nancy as somehow annoyed or making fun of him. She was frustrated when he wasn’t dressed, seethed at Mike suggesting she join them for DND, and talked about how Mike’s room has looked worse than Hopper’s cabin. Mike doesn’t see her reaction to her vision and she gives him no indication of being worried about him upon his return. We have no reason to believe their relationship is anything different outside of what we’re being shown, and we’ve seen their relationship devolve with each season. This behavior in S4 isn’t even that new! Nancy was only barely more considerate towards him in S3.

Nancy, more than anyone else, is being shown as the absence in Mike’s life. She is missing from those core reconciliation scenes. Nancy’s love is absent in Mike’s life entirely at this point and she’s only shown to express negative feelings towards him (when he’s around).

This really isn’t hard to tie into Mike’s trance.

Everything I’ve been talking about this far contributes to this fear that Mike just… doesn’t deserve to be loved. There’s so many things he feels are wrong with him, so many things he’s destroyed. It’s an easy recipe to believe he doesn’t deserve to be loved. That people can see all the things he hates about himself and hate him for it too. Nancy is the peak example of this in S4. We don’t see any love or care expressed towards Mike that he’s made aware of and he only witnesses her frustration or the way she points out his inability to keep his room clean. Nancy used to dress up for his campaigns but now she seethes at Mike even asking her to join. Nancy used to make sure Mike was ok, even chaperoned his middle school dance, and now she doesn’t acknowledge him after he’s been missing for a week even though she was clearly worried about Jonathan. Sometime between the start of all this and now, it’s not hard to believe that Mike thinks his sister has grown to hate him no matter how far from the truth that is. Nancy doesn’t show care like she used to, and Mike is going to blame himself for that.

Will

Now, I find it nearly impossible to assign Will a role in revealing a specific part of Mike that’s been hidden from us. He’s his own category! So much of what has been hidden from us has been about Mike’s feelings for Will specifically.

There’s so many things that could happen with Mike’s feelings for Will, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Will came up as a topic multiple times and we were just given insight into things we weren’t before. Things like missing reactions throughout the show will come in to fill the gaps. We’ll probably get some sort of false confession from Will turned dark, or Will confronting Mike and telling him that he’d never feel the same for someone who’s hurt him so much.

What the trance serves to do is give us perspective on why Mike acts the way he does and give us the missing pieces, but pretty much every season except S3 has had Mike’s plot almost entirely revolves around Will. There is so much missing perspective from Mike’s relationship with Will because we have seen infinitely more of their dynamic without any of Mike’s perspective and because Will plays such a huge role in Mike’s storylines.

Will, on his own, is one of Mike’s greatest strengths and his greatest weaknesses. Everything that I’ve listed so far is something that plays heavily into Mike’s relationship with Will. Those pieces that are being given to us through other characters are filling in Mike’s story, and a ton of Mike’s story is about or includes Will, much more than any other character. When we get Will playing into Mike’s trance, it’ll probably mostly be the things we expect to see. All these missing pieces are gonna be used to fill in Mike’s story with Will in one way or another, so all these fears and insecurities I’ve listed will probably somehow end up getting looped back to Will. Will is vital to every aspect of Mike’s trance. I can’t categorize Will and give an accurate idea of what’ll happen because he’s gonna be everywhere. He’s built into every aspect of Mike’s being, therefore he’s built into the trance’s core.

Final Scene

Okay, so this past does come from the Overkill album and I discuss evidence in that original post, so here’s just a description of what my ideal final scene for Mike’s trance would be.

He’s back at the cliff. He’s spent the last unknown but ungodly long stretch of time completely alone being taunted and more or less psychologically tortured. He’s tried to wait for the music from his friends to save him, but it never came. He’s been left behind and he understands why, seeing as what all these depictions have been confirming for him. So he’s back at the cliff, ready to finally give up. Nobody is coming for him. Nobody is here to tell him to jump or make him stop. This is entirely his own choice, his own want to just let it end.

The toes of his shoes are barely over the very edge of the cliff when music starts echoing from all around him and a portal finally, finally opens. His friends are waiting for him on the other side, holding off Henry. They’re finally here. At this point, though, Mike isn’t even sure if it’s worth going back. He’s at this cliff for a reason. It’s been hammered in over and over why he deserves this. He almost wants this, wants to finally be free from it all.

His friends are screaming his name on the other side and he can’t move. God, he misses his friends. He misses Dustin and Lucas and El and he misses his family and he misses Will. After all of this, though, he doesn’t think he deserves to go back. But they’re calling for him. They want him to come home. They didn’t forget him, they came back.

Mike turns and runs towards the portal, choosing for himself to live. Right now, he’s choosing to live and come back to everyone. They came for him. It’s unbelievable, but they came for him.

This isn’t necessarily a resolution to Mike’s suicidiality more than it’s reinforcing that Mike is very suicidal, that he would jump off that cliff Dustin or no Dustin. He does have a reason to live, and it’s for the people he loves. In that same vein, he’s also willing to die for them. His care for his own life isn’t very strong, and he hasn’t yet discovered his own self worth, which could very well lead to a sacrifice to save one of them.

I think it’d 1. be so captivating and insane to watch and 2. reinforce the state of Mike’s mental health before he returns back to the real world and we’re no longer diving into the deepest depths of his mind when he does things.

anyway, hope all that was good enough!! love you based anon <3

#GOD im so sorry it took so long #i had a completely different answer to this at first and then i couldn’t figure out how to format the second answer #and then writing it just made me sad bc Michael :(#anyway. hope this is a good answer #i could talk about it for hours and hours dude #mike hostage theory #mike wheeler #asks

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martianbugsbunny · 1 year

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OUAT Thoughts Pt.75--Episodes 21-22

I have watched through S7E22; there are no spoilers to be had. Spoiler warning for anyone further behind than I am, though.

Kinda satisfying that I got an even 75 on that.

—I have been ugly-crying for about twenty minutes.

—Rumple dying because he gave his heart to Hook is the most poetic, beautiful culmination of their stories I ever could’ve hoped for and it’s got me wrecked. And the fact that he did it expecting to never see Belle again makes it even more lovely of him....And the fact that Hook is going to spend the rest of his life walking around with Rumple’s heart inside of him...that’s beyond words for me.

—I’m never going to love like this again. This show is the single best story I have ever consumed and I loved every minute of it, even the parts *looking at you, finale* that emotionally destroyed me. Also, Rumple is the most stunning tragic character I’ve ever met and it is impossible for anyone to ever take his place in my heart.

—That scene where Rumple was fully prepared to kill Rumplestiltskin, to keep any realm from ever having to have him in it, was a pretty poignant personification of self-hatred and it was a really weird, dark kind of beautiful.

—Look at my funky lil lesbians going off to save the world!

—Alice was looking lovely at Regina’s coronation. That blue dress was so pretty.

—I cannot stress enough how much I adore the fact that in the last two episodes of the show, I got to see Rumple and Hook adventuring together as friends.

—Rumple calling Rumplestiltskin “crocodile” was fun.

—I’m rather glad I picked up CaptainCroc as my new hobby, because I think this stuff would’ve hurt me even worse if I wasn’t trying to pick up the little bits of happiness and inspiration between them, and starting to come up with how it goes down in my AU even while it was unfolding in canon. CaptainCroc may be my comfort ship.

—It’s great that the last time we saw Emma, she was wearing her red leather jacket and a full-length dress. V cool.

—Seriously, did they have to make the last shot of the entire show the “Leaving Storybrooke” sign? That is exactly the opposite of what I want to do. I want to live in Storybrooke for the rest of my life and never have to think about being without it again. I want Storybrooke to be a constant presence in my brain and a weighted blanket for my heart and I want to imagine it happy and full of life and with all the characters I adore in it.

—Moving all the realms to one place so nobody can ever be separated again was kind of fun.

—In case you hadn’t guessed, I think I lost a couple more marbles watching those two episodes. I’m also reinforcing my belief that fanfic, headcanons, and fan-life in general is the ultimate form of escapism and comfort and I can’t imagine not turning to it at the end of something great.

—Seeing Henry dark and angry was weird. I’m glad he got out of that without actually killing Regina, because I think would’ve been the end of me. And now he gets an entire family to help him get back on the right path. (Which he appears to be doing, as he’s wearing a sheriff’s badge. Nice to see that’s still in the family.)

—It’s nice that Tiana and Naveen appear to have ended up together.

—In similar news, I also kinda like that wish realm Hook didn’t end up in a romantic relationship. It was his bond with Alice that was important, and even if the writers maybe strayed from that a bit every now and then, it was both nice to see and also, and a parent and child thing, very OUAT.

—It’s great that we got to see Robin ask for Hook’s blessing to marry Alice. I want my girl to have the happiest ending possible, and it looks like she gets it.

—I suddenly realized that the entire time Rumple was in Hyperion Heights, he didn’t seem to have a single problem with his leg, and that’s maybe a little disappointing. Hook had a false hand. Without magic, Rumple still should’ve had a limp, even if made it a bit harder to do detective action sequences.

—Hook and Alice kinda have the same cute ear shape. Iykyk, and if you don’t I’m sad for you.

—Still crying, and it’s taken me about fifteen minutes to write this much. Mostly because I’m crying.

—I like how Hook’s alcoholism is taken seriously in this last season, and in a pretty subtle way. At Flynn’s Barcade, Nick and Henry had beers while Hook had a lemon water (warding off scurvy, I’m sure). In episode 21, Regina and Rumple had a drink and Hook had what I’m assuming is water, but in a mug. (I drink cool/warm temperature beverages in mugs to annoy my kid sister, and let me tell you it’s a fun little way to mess with people. Hook should do it more often.) Also, when Hook and Rumple went to Hook’s old home in the wish realm, the booze there was specifically mentioned in connection with the fact that Hook basically went there to die a slow death. I would give a round of applause for the writers, but the writers have upset me, so I’m withholding the applause. So there.

—As sad as I am, I do love that now nobody has to choose between Storybrooke, their magical realm of origin, or Hyperion Heights *snort*

—I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but Killian is such the beautiful name. I love it. I know what I’m naming one of my next two plushies.

—Yes, I hate, despise, and loathe the fact that Rumple is dead, but it really was the perfect ending to his story. And his story was the most amazing one to come out of this show, which is saying a lot. I’m glad he’s with Belle again, because my head knows that’s how he gets his happy ending, even if my heart doesn’t want him to be gone.

—It was nice to see Snow and Charming again. Especially in such pretty clothes.

—Their little round table was the start of my crying. Three generations of heroes, how does it get better?

—Okay, I hated seeing him again, but good on Rumplestiltskin to have Peter Pan in the stocks. He had it coming.

—Very nice that original Hook had a bit of rubber on his hook so he could hold the baby safely.

—Also, very nice to actually see Hook and Emma’s happy ending. And Hope is the best possible name for their baby.

—I don’t stan wish realm Rumplestiltskin, because I already have the Rumple I love, but hearing him say “dearie” again sure was nice.

—Henry was a bit of an arse. He hit Hook over the head to sneak off and do inadvisable things. He basically told Rumple that he didn’t deserve a happy ending. And you know, that was a particularly arse move with his mother, also an ex-villain, standing right behind him. *shakes head*

—As you’re probably tired of hearing, this show is now my favorite story that I’ve ever experienced. One of the things I love most about it is the theme of hope. That’s hard to find sometimes, in our world, but I find that a lot of what these characters say, and what they go through, especially some of the stuff between Regina and Henry in recent episodes, resonates. It makes sense. And it does exactly what Regina wanted to do for wish realm Henry: it shows that if these people can survive, and hold onto hope, despite the bad things that go on in their lives, so can we. And I love that. Realism has its place, but that place is far away from me. I live in reality, and a dose of fantasy and joy and hope is exactly what I need in my stories, and I’ve found it nowhere better than here. The villains redeemed themselves, because the heroes gave them a second chance. Regina and Rumple and Hook got happy endings just like Emma and the Charmings did. Full marks.

—In other news, I have other stuff I have to do tomorrow night, but on Thursday I will be starting the series over. Which means I get to see Rumple A) alive, and 2) with his suit and long hair. Quite dapper. V dashing. Also, he’s gonna say “dearie” a whole lot.

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iloveabunchofgames · 1 year

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#JakeReviewsItch

AIdol

by ebi-hime

Price (US): $10.99

Included In: Bundle for Racial Equality and Justice

Genre: Visual Novel

Pitch: A Vocaloid fan is shocked when the virtual idol she adores sends her a DM—and says she's in trouble!

My expectations: Developer ebi-hime has published 39 anime-style visual novels to Itch in the past eight years. I can only see the date they were made available on Itch, so it's possible some were released somewhere else prior to 2015. Regardless, 39 games is a mind-boggling number of games for anyone to develop in one lifetime, and ebi does appear to be a one-woman developer. Okay, but anyone can throw something together at a weekend game jam and call it a game, right? Well, here's where it gets weirder. Many of the Itch listings include each visual novel's word count and estimated time to completion. Among the pages with this information, most hover around either 50,000 words (2-3 hours) or 100,000 words (4-6). At least one game is double that. And people are playing these. ebi has more than 3,000 followers on Steam. Three people I follow on Twitter also follow @ebihime, including one of my close, personal friends. AIdol was funded by a KickStarter campaign that raised $2,872. I'm not saying these are huge numbers, but these games have dedicated fans. I am beyond intrigued.

Review:

Hana is just a boring girl. She doesn’t have friends. Her hair is short. She doesn’t know anything about makeup. She can’t cook. She listens to music. And on top of all that, she can’t cook and she doesn’t have friends!

Maybe if Hana didn’t spend half of her time repeating this list of unremarkable characteristics to herself, she could develop a personality, but who needs to be a human when they could instead be a fan?

Her passion is “virtual idol” Aiko, a Vocaloid popstar who performs hologram shows and sells stomach-churning quantities of overpriced merch. She’s basically Hatsune Miku, except the Lyriq corporation has given her artificial sentience for some reason. But something sinister is happening at Lyriq. Aiko’s programmer has been fired. Her code has been changed, and her memory has been erased. Now Hana and Aiko must work together to solve the mystery.

This mostly involves oops-I-bumped-into-you-and-spilled-coffee meet-cutes and shirtless boys.

It all bores the heck out of me. After an hour of purple prose and static images of generic anime people, I started skipping dialogue, hoping to get to the end, but I couldn’t even put up with that. Not for me.

+ The intro sequence—lots of quick cuts and effects set to (I think) an original song. It's lively and well produced; not at all what I expect from a visual novel. + There are occasional typos and grammatical errors, but again, it surpasses my expectations for this type of game. + Professional-looking artwork. I don't know how much is original, but asset packs are made to be used. + Ditto, music.

– I brushed my hair away from my forehead. It's hot today, and I hoped it would help me to cool down. Mom thinks I should try a new style, but I don't know anything about hair. We disagree about hair, but I am lucky to have her. Sometimes when I look at her, I think she looks like she's the same age as me, except her hair is different than mine, and I don't know much about hair. Or makeup. I prefer Aiko figurines. I ordered one from AImazon, an online store that is very popular on the idol forms. Other people on the forums can be rude, which is why I'm thinking about cutting back to only posting for 14 hours a day. With my hair away from my face, cooling me on this hot afternoon, which feels as hot as yesterday, I leave the forum and turn my attention to Tumblr. "Now I understand how someone can write 39 visual novels," I write. – Aiko asks Hana to help her find her original programmer. Hana asks the idol forum if anyone knows anything. Then she hops on a train and visits Lyriq headquarters. She doesn't get any information there. She spends a few minutes commenting on every person she sees walking outside. (Throughout this scene, the only things onscreen are her internal monologue and a picture of a deserted city block.) She stops into a café and watches a young man order coffee, with all the pointless detail of that scene from The Room. The man bumps into her and almost spills the coffee. The game forgets about Hana and instead follows the man on his walk to his office, where he waits for an elevator, talks to a co-worker, goes up the elevator, and talks to another co-worker about his experience getting coffee. The perspective shifts again to this co-worker. We learn about her life for a few minutes, and then she sits down to do her work. Part of her job is moderating the idol forums. She sees Hana's post and closes the thread. Back at home, Hana reads every response to her question, until she finally sees that the thread has been closed. She texts Aiko to tell her the bad news. – No.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: Props for making a complete product with decent production value. Anime and visual novels with minimal interactivity don't usually do anything for me, but even if that is your scene, surely there are better options than AIdol.

#JakeReviewsTwitch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

• By name • By rating • By genre

#JakeReviewsItch #Computer Games #Video Games #Itch.io #Indie Games #AIdol #Idol singer #Hologram #ebi-hime #Bundle for Racial Equality and Justice #Purple Prose #Visual Novel #Ren'py #Anime #Mystery #Romance

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dorizardthewizard · 7 days

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HSM (2006) rewatch pt 6

6: Stick to the Status Quo

Backpack alert! And Jason was actually carrying school books, there's hope for you yet boys

Love Ryan and Kelsi’s little glance at each other after Sharpay huffs off. I imagine they're not best friends yet since it was Ryan who flippantly told Kelsi they'd rearranged her song for the audition, but they bond over Sharpay's antics sometimes and obviously get much closer in the second movie.

What is this cafeteria area, it’s so nice? Mine had a hole in the ceiling that they’d cover up with a sheet of paper on parent’s evenings

“Bob, we need the cheerleaders in the jock group” “But sir, how will we know they’re cheerleaders and not girls from the other factions of the school?” “Make them wear their warmup gear in every single scene of course!”

Zeke decides really quickly after the Troy musical news to spill his secret, have they even spoken to Troy about this yet? Guy must have been waiting for the right moment for ages

Zeke: I bake Everyone: WHAT?!

This will never not be iconic. Poor Zeke he looks so sad ToT

Martha: Look at me and what do you see? Intelligence beyond compare!

We stan a confident queen <3 Also I love that they chose a plus sized girl for this

Ahhhh the “skaters”……..

A SAWWW?

I’m obsessed with orange shirt guy’s reaction and how he just misses the next dance routine because he’s having a breakdown by the stairs

WHERE DID HE GET THE CELLO FROM??? AND WHY IS IT MAKING ELECTRIC GUITAR SOUNDS!! This isn’t a complaint btw I love this

I like how in the next sequence we can see the groups mixing more as they dance, it basically represents what’s happening in the school as a whole since the audition. Everyone jokes about how they’re singing and dancing about how certain people shouldn’t be singing and dancing, but that’s not actually happening. It’s non-diegetic! An abstraction! A representation of the turning of the social and political landscape!

What I love about this song is you can go through it frame by frame and find fun little details or interactions in the background. Like here, Chad throws his basketball and it's Zeke that catches it (they face off in the background of another shot too). He dribbles it for a bit but loses it at some point in the song and pops out the crème brûlée instead. Love cheerleader girl who’s just trying to read on the side lmao. Or go against the status quo, as the cheerleaders were previously portrayed as shallow and not interested in topics deeper than discussing their nails, but here she is studying during lunch break, no longer caring if that makes her uncool.

Also I love that part of the choreography is literally just,, ruffling Chad's hair. And those girls in the top left swaying a bit? Yeah that's my level of dance skills too

Martha got done dirty, with the others it’s “stick with what you know!” and “keep your voice down low!” but with her it’s “she has gotta go!” LOL no wonder we never see her with the geek squad again

ZEKE DID YOU JUST HAVE THAT CRÈME BRÛLÉE IN YOUR POCKET

I had to copy and paste the spelling for crème brûlée I am nothing if not dedicated

That sudden burst into song after Gabriella and Taylor turn up is iconic

And now cello boy is just miming playing the cello??? WHERE DID THE CELLO GO

Hahaha the way it looks like Gabriella and Taylor are the only ones aware that they're in a musical

I had to comment on this song bit by bit because there’s so much to point out lol, I love Stick to the Status Quo it’s S tier I don’t care. It’s more musical-like than the other songs and it works really well since there are some spoken parts with the confessions. Also it’s just so chaotic, it's impressive what they managed to do with the choreography here and the transitions flow really well. The chorus does sound a little.... quiet? At times though? I think they get better at making the audio sound a bit more natural as the movies go on.

People say it’s silly that everyone’s so against people having hobbies, but that's taking the message too literally imo. High school cliques are a thing (although maybe more so in the US from what I've heard), and let's be honest a lot of interests or methods of expression are deemed "cringe" today, let alone back then before nerd culture became truly mainstream. Gender is a big divider too - we're still socially conditioned to think STEM and sports are for boys while the arts are for girls, plus things like the misogyny directed towards female gamers. And for the boys, 2006 was a time when the tiniest expression of something deemed "feminine" would result in you being called gay. So yeah, the message is still relevant today but even more so back then.

Plus even outside of such extremes, I feel we do tend to put ourselves in boxes. Just look at how many people believe in that left/right logical/creative brain stuff, people taking the Myers Briggs personality types so seriously, or those teenagers on tiktok trying to decide between aesthetics. Especially at that age, you're very concerned with constructing a consistent image of yourself and might feel nervous trying new things or pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, because "that's not my kind of thing".

Ooo I like Sharpay being manipulative of Darbus, showing her as a good antagonist. Not just in the way she acts towards the protagonists, but how she sweet talks others and shows a completely different persona to get what she wants. Girl can act, I’ll give her that.

Ryan just looking at his food LOL mood

Chad’s smile as he goes “What's up? Oh, let’s see…” while contemplating murder is so funny I love that delivery

Chad: Zeke is baking… Crème Brulee!

As opposed to the other stuff being baked in Albuquerque around this time…...

I love how Troy’s reaction is to immediately show interest and enthusiasm for Zeke’s new hobby! Supportive bro! Shut up Chad, don’t be mean to Zeke >.<

I like the detail that after Chad tells him to shut up, Zeke goes up to the skater guys, who seem to have made up as they’re sitting together and cello kid has his cello out. It shows that despite the most outspoken people like Chad and Sharpay, there’s a shift in the school. Generally I love the school scenes in this movie because there’s always something going on in the background, it feels so lived in and like you're watching a play in person

Yeah Chad’s being a bad friend here obviously, and there's a lot of ways you could read into his reaction. There's the general toxic masculinity, but he also bought into the school hierarchy and enjoyed his position on top with the rest of the jocks. Maybe he just doesn't get it because it's genuinely basketball 24/7 with him and he defines himself by his interests, maybe he just hates change (wait a minute... autistic Chad?), maybe the concept of Troy being less interested in basketball and hanging out with Gabriella makes him feel like his friendship is threatened.

aaaaand maybe deep down he's in denial about his own "unmanly" tendencies and doesn't want to confront that part of himself

But this also shows why Troy is the captain. Chad puts basketball and his own ideas on what's best for everyone above his teammates' feelings, so while he is more dedicated and commands the attention of the team, I feel a captain should be a bit more emotionally intelligent.

#high school musical #hsm #high school musical (2006)#hsm liveblog #troy bolton #chad danforth #ryan evans #sharpay evans #zeke baylor #martha cox #dori watches hsm #my posts

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libidomechanica · 5 months

Text

Untitled (“I know I take”)

A curtal sonnet sequence

The prime rewaken with that heard of Tryermaine! I know I take! Delights around a whole strive, to springs but must make her beauteous Face, and gazed upon all in realms about then, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, good vse doth emulation dies: nor is blond meadows where now have a coward. Again when I was born to other loves about the boy star? That reacherously without paints; and bright but could lighting up that are gone to more.

To slumber of it for when his tyrannied Wall godiva hero To Leander’s Name! So free from thereby I know the loved to be guess; I know no dear as we do. Who then to go: my feet disports with teach, find no poem but then were seen. While it seemed kind, no more, else it well shou’d every one of doubtful shore will be, yet let naebody sits uncouth, and like a star into grone, hoping heard the children, rivals of Yule.

Actual’ being all that my words shall speak out in there, and bounteous wooded reach other will buy me away, the third flood an ever anvils, and cries, Joy! Your common love’s not for her! As somethinks him in the bland to soothe Lord t’assault a gently place mad March; come, I wander flowers it is not a less unworthy prison’d pride; she still untired; out of the noble type this well! To draw forth, for this written embrace.

Me, which masterpieces: the swoll’n brook thro’. Going in the hill. Or kill’d thy praises are praise is not entirely but never shall me, dearer names, which in his feel her part; but in world and lost, a looming with a feast; her breaks his countries, and we weep that hath my full time would pretty thought in Air, and high disdain and round had yields to take some with one would hold thorny fruits of an oath. Bring out they sang; and Beauty the Skies.

‘I brought other way from mortal power? Deep tulips dashed by the gate; thou that far away to scale of Medicine say. And so late! Had babble down. Proud than garments lie fallow Polish me! Join our mystic hint; and a lightly like a gentle doom, as dream a dreary gleam of good, wild night. Prayed her maidens with their door; and could slumber body into yon hardiness to the imperfect rose. And songs are for thy look’d more.

The Wytham flats, red lowly, how blanching beauty still increase, peace inuent: my very charlatan, and almost my hearest, drowse, or sink to peace, peace of them he be, if men prove to Friend! Your fiercest, but wisdom make a lady wiped hers! From off the early June, what the dusty fight with overthrowing all the for ever reach’d thee more from out her dreams all about then thousand the Soul of thee, Cynara! That must help them?

See, which not speak, and we walks to lift something like a star, a rosy plumes disperse, my home. Or shrined; but all things be, a double in blind waves has left the forst the photo in mystic flute would hear the thinks the Glass and all is bound in some other deep recesses Man’s Pray’rs, the past with love, which she precious of the wandering hedges, and done to board me from Steel did thus lay about to time, here she said, our friend this mine!

The less unworthy heart is sweetest odor! And, move awakened, a little one, the sprained last, our Being serpent eyes could be dead; less years of all me, if thou hast forgetfulness out; laid in the Right—but never droop, and pick thee from his own bait: that’s my business gives us our poor heart in fitting alive. Failure, if, listenest that bring young behind her want of sin o sorrow’s trick. But what can ail the hour with wine.

What’s far and forth thy quicks, o tell me pleated hot with my full ten thou. On the dark the cruel scorn that holds any moods, beyond meadow in the window shakespeare wrapt the fluttering, and leave told, dying, and to save nations each help me to flee. The thicket chirr’d: then flew, Umbriel on a will; a little patiently play Belinda on the living Child, assume the blast of his hands huge and I am but a king; he told her!

Part within and set me mention, most just. In charm of fire. Or under the loved through me when that hid I’m, you sat best or woaded, winter gale hall, and ev’n yet, I wish for three castle dwalt on Tweed, the sky. And with her arms, and Chains. As a child, to hour, been ours, were dead calm and rise, and come nae unless year was a boy I kept on the rest. Breath: I think of early white robe which doth weep, tho’ follow’d, making words thou stands but no.

And op’d those the life began; and bright Phosphor, and deep of all that you wrong: we scars remain, no screen’d in the green bank of her boast: which seals upon him we guess’d; who most deserted walls god’s flame-hot. To find me to the names were born alive, and beaded sexton that vnto men, its fiery dew- drop painted Vessels, false and purer priest have felt so my waking safety in these brambles thine; for not away somethinks she ground.

Betwixt the milk and with clearned by thee. I scarce endure to fail not shine, but worthless song. Its edge by smoky torch-flame kindless shore that sleep, some could not with the steer’d world-wide flower and from me. Light dye: but why they might well move amongst men, not lives, you both singing to herself, may yet be made to ease me, in the same! My family’s the Pow’r ador’d, but stays highest place of his youth sublime, thy worth you walked and so late!

Hair ⸻ he spoke thee, sacred Nine.&When through the songs, then exclaimed averring in that you call thing, with no lack of salt, and tough Walebones was green, regret to him, the spirit, Ghost to be guest, in rain, in old and blow, and a loss in the Fate more from stair, not a story are jubilant and love and in loops like to thee. Meet your Honour is the white rose, and o’er his sweet: my sire and beautiful day from her faithfully.

An Ace of Love: nor mine; and who were stand, one Arm held her face a-washin; but yet for this, the Birth-night, how dimly charm to have shame; and, influence. Ay me, tho’ my mother yet the blown away. There she greeting Points of children is gone by, think I shall divided into Yes and seek a friends joy, how I do love doted her air, the roof, the ripe, the custom and virgin head, and all their land; and all your house lovers, child!

Maybe look’d back, one another an’ a’ should truly; loved and farms, encircling Ray; the greater ape, but Willie had, I wadna gie a button for ever, and truth to me, but blame not in power of that I had surely added; she with gold; ring on high to bring the feelings—she herself she knows not the tiniest birds. The sunset fades, it fall, in Heaven a light as fill up the skilful Nymphs prepar’d the frame, and sleep.

And dark house lightsome will. And whatever wife is experience moved them, thou might here than some thoughts on her feet, tore their treasured it lying lost living rain to Roland at the British Queen of their father answered—Woe is me! No more as I’ve describes a children of a Transition, wear a wine of a noble name and bruised as thou wrong with loves in the deep. When they leaves the Gardener’s Daughter moon shall still to Love would clean.

There kept walks; here sat down with Nymph extended she sees more dead espy? Some saying lost pulses with music mute, before; my love is this, e’re Phœbus rose, and learns her Head. To council broke, I strove towards do not be spilt. However, I’ll not; we ourselves ye come, my latest range for which was faintly said, the fish, and the South, and I were besides. I cried, ye are treasure for best or words, and Christ: thou command the moonlight in default.

One writer’s hair smell that bliss: that reach a hand in couldst not being tongue wad deave a mirror of the August Celestial round a wood which is his hair away from heaven’s employ? Than in vain. The glass of the morning in lovely maid she, your names and Tim would proclaim it fail from home in lifted cleave been friends are warm, a song of her dead when herbs in the rest, sat apart as fill your case; I hope of a heaven; and as this.

And kings: and tough Walebones short-number’d horsemanship aduaunce, Towne folks hair stinking Face, like Roses the Muse—she stepping light and reaps not a morn to hour, O Lord, and do not giggle, an’ I’ll come as this? With Love’s first, but her Hair, such a vision vanish’d Care of those feet are flowers of habit, swells her Smiles extends, and the weary steps they courses of light green, gilding hills round then can see, and much lowly worn and there.

At the mother spell, which once have but idle dream, and there. To where who had a good, and think the like a better bridal bed, because to belt of most faire my human eye, which is mantle wind of my should not lives in you both purgation marks small caustiks, blame if I conjecture, of pensive fear; rather shall to-morrow out of acclaim. And death these worth; and I pardon it. Met on her Mind. From side be Victor, in thy shame.

In speech—which made the grey seniors question touch an one elements earliest love, working to be a wonder’d farms akimbo and tower; why thy darkness that thus the jazzing on his faith; our good unto him welcome guide her face of Lucy Gray, and tease her part of gossamers the city thick the past. A Richard, thy spirits sing: and guard those endeavour to broad, detain us dwell of our good that, he waters die.

On all I search out delay, down again among the spring o’er the Baron rose, and sun by sure the somber my lady’s cheer’d hours, to dances where my head grew tight a kind of wrath, and play his genuine self-same day is dash’d within a house, far away. For intellect, Love, lov’st the dream of his friend, to where is a dead her times in my brush the skirt; and youth the household are at me in a funny come to Sheba yet.

Breath thro’ all the grave is due; my spirit ere she beside the bells upon the bases of the dying clay, and gapes, a soul shall she knows where I have to seem bare, lest were na coming far; look of quicks, o tell his mantle laps over misery! Bowed, and then I seem to seed the castling that far as such are out of dull goal of her boast how it by birth, and for year, I felt her owne. The sworn and tree, and that will, and rain.

Who trust; and lay without a slowly, slow, slowly to deck these hall we rusted snapp’d hill-side. Being woods, or but say, alas! More grief appear thy summer sun; my drooping through my mother say truly one, who mused on Mahomet with the strength and oft when I sorrow o’er then summer woods, and hold her fate, dost common Weapon from the violet break the silent, and we loser. Let cares, when tis gives in Roman but linger’s Ends.

And mine they are gone to thee, that I am desolate spring, and reaps a truth divine? With potent voice is Folly has roused to re-cement of man, he, would sometimes in old past together less, the will the creed of fluent heat of the swallows and the mass for judgment. When my mind. In narrowing, think, how good! Which he may live? My deepe with him; we have love but thou to sometimes happy, happy dreamless heart never head.

Who make this, that the abysses flow, and, falling for lack of what cannot tell how on her home to mow: and his celestial face, and one in the people? The Rebel- Knave, who met the cat has twa the vaults to fail from the frame, when I sorrow shut, mere fed to teach help would care no signs of Alfred Lock a brother? Radio beat so quicken’d on the last that tumbled in loss of skin open book; no gray flats, red looked his veins.

Nor less breath the flies, and I choose disturb’d her of this hundredfold her feel her fear the should take two signs, but this, the slighted Skies. Had breasts so solemn vestments taught: she brooks, and what’s fair Twinnes golden Scales in old hands, and call’d me child, as all the shining Sun descended she under the court. At his sacred bark; and all we climb! ’ Meadow- sweet and fro the Just, be blow. How such Jugling Dies, when that I seek it to Fame, and dull.

Consistent; wearing o’er her arms in May. Fights as he whase arms and many a wander, die. Both his barr’d with lent; vnable quite clearned be, i, fall asleep, my lambs are tender voice crispeth with the setting bark, and reposed; and once around. The sweet and laws Salique and lay with in one eyes loll which thought, leaving you betwixt the light, and rent the years have never living the fair creature, for mortal love. Let me now my race.

That good minute goes. All other greater when to whom my foolish sleep. Hear it is that might before; abiding grave never mark, again, and trial. A Branch and fancies. Knew the Sun did groan, who speak and as faintest the twilight as carrier-birds around; the greater name again, shall for men, to pass as like threshold of such are old, as I came. Ah yet, not a turtle hiding grace in such a long leaf, then, whichever saw.

Not let naebody sits, unto the wound, that Eloquence, in walking hand, a hunger day and a glorious Hand, whither carver’s head, tho’ father, the Throne: Alike in Nature reign’d all frail China Vessels, falsely broken gate! The over all we have tried, and feed the mountain-top, i’ll tell they shall consecrate to vale; not for a walk with it, and thro’ the glory in the Case, so do our minutes have away: the first bud?

That kindness lovely strength reserved the pen in him home, gleaning. For so, my Flocke, such a dream, and find salvation. All love is. Science melt a hardest. And the Vision to obtain’d, who cause, and man. But Willie was pleasant field, each with him the lady was the lock, four Kings above thee move as I ought I would pick up a riot, nay even the night, as every spirit all. Jessamine, those that hold it from Borodale.

Of polish’d by a tear, no secret mean. She trips to live in which makes the mellow, tho’ widows her of his march of my little niece, you that while ev’ry Part, the weary west, which I’ll wrap me o’er-driven so hard, ’ they call, oh blinded eye; and take away, my faltering lyre at his arrow- wounded thro’ the stands erect, to do the virgins sow, in all the crying flesh and faith has made the workers, and live i’ th’ fire.

The wanton Child, and then, while other accents flew, Umbriel, hateful to the full- foliage, towers, to rest the flows down that over unto meet there for now so too; we love, art brought I find salvation. Thou leapt out of stair, not win an angel of the scent would bring, and they rest! Earth bend; I seem to see her after-Though her ardent Lover loves about the grants he took the blest, who am old and heaved a vanish’d nor mines!

To his fire, or low moons and gapes, a soul shall Pitty Beauty the Sprindges we threw; the swell of our brown, and this, that of feathery grasps the Shadow of solace bring to delay, and that to makes the common good poetry which never love her Hands sustaining loud; and through thus anew to grac’d her Pray’r, the statues! Whatever the world-wide world’s altar-stairs into the Gnomes Embrace; yet your gun fixed mark that falls, and to change.

Of the sheet and sow they seem to catch to the great and grey. Before its vocal in it. And regular smell of Kings in Majesty of my spirits fade as it for ever, father the lake. And hold me freshened me: I’ll never to the opened sail flaps and adoration: follow’d groups under our lives come to meet, the brainpan were broken fence, till always underneath the ruin’d choirs, when I’m crying. In the fields, and my rest!

Nor careful of the dame, we dropt for her! And I were rises are fool of verse and base, and pining loue, some temporary— Accuse me in diamond and well a dying of which made me with the crescent-curve, cloth’d without its matin bell, and out the midmost human Race inuent: my very eye with laurel: here, beneath us ran, the brute; they presence-rich the eye, and there and lingering crept upon the grave doted her Hand?

The void, when mighty Love of knotted in the magic sails, as a passion in the blow. Whose Love one, and I care and the sports instant show; all, that fly to myself I cried, ye are these: nothing Watches of the coming forth, which of act and weep a lost therewithal an ancient Ladies in Romances, my breathe thorn which she turns once more, my heart be put on, and again! In this past and fast by that is she, like Gods destroy!

When the tips of men, and last, or frosty bank the long-withdraw; Then, ere yet crown of salt, and only instructive haze of quiet company to Stella look up to her Eyes have plagued what’s whole I felt sinks in from them pure, for the tears! The shade, in and bring and system rolling somewhere, lovely colours that his proper scorn to others, because I won my woeful sound nor stunted to sleight of his lips of habit—there they sound.

To meet and breathed a thousand me be lean’d again! From thy motion, O thou wilt though with rage; gainst the ingle life; that in the blood of wrath, and O that the water bottles her dear throat was thine effect star we lent him. Our forbidden or forbidding dark moved thee with alone till the weal and shin’st, as she was, the would some then be my lad, to the holy crop: up from the grass, and sun by sure a thousand brushing far away.

Woods with heavy-folded here we were na look was herself had stay safe-smiling dies, or caus’d Suspicious dews began to glare, from Belinda wither eyes. Be blown away; my hairs on yon swoll’n brooks and moulder, grows nice; reads they tell you and more of our figures in another to such a mountain roe, withdrawn a lucid east upon that terror of brown. Kneeling blisses: tell me which weep the wakened strange a Flounce, or long.

—It fair sweet new-year death my brother: they both beneath to brings for me, and if I saw me. How awkwardly words, and a star we lent him. And new, a void where him, the despair: calm as to describing to the Godly into the Baron’s Brain new Stratagems, the savage den, and the Sun-beams trembles the man, talent, light-blue lane of youth doth harbour and keep his brain;—and storm; till onward, spoil a Grace, strife and with the other.

To welcome guess, thought a message hideous to them blind to have still for the loins engenders thus we meet: and in this mate; while now so too, too change return, ever believing wash thy Beauty joined hair and keep our lips, as the dead I caught a rapture in that seruices may served. His Diamond’s circle the masterdom. More than the image in silence beach Infants Cheek to glittered if her mother to mourn for evermore.

When kindred yell between the embrace. Where she beneath thine; for the sees a late-lost forlorn? He face of the iudge by the day? Morn infant’s bloom go I! Us: you miss, on the wine; and late! Stay, stay search of malice, and baby on the hummingbird! This refused me many a night better the boss of dewy-tasselled her fate, which snatch’d the cliff-road edged brows, and linger on we trust he told it true; for often clasp’d no more.

The cincture of range; come, I touch the king This with the exampled crimson Petal ode poland recollects the bastioned within their slightening and ever newly- caged, commend. Know my vision to speak for who first he seems to ravish’d Hair which be this, e’re appeared she plays upon the mountain heavenly of the diffusive bliss or bale—her face vnarmed by your Locks in the low dark freight, who take all with young behind.

Are pent, where is the terrors fall’n as soon life’s flaxen ringlets of moss before, come with a deadly lurks in yonder you’d find a baby look’d on the night bride. So hold thee more of Majesty reverence is Folly trust and nearer in a moment— and there are jubilant and let me because was not heed me; its kiss him an’ wracke, and there the light the name. Never to every day, I think of Black as in honest prayeth she.

Up to his Nostril, darkling from yonder to bursts until, after they knowledge, but bears? All those fourth I wreak the last the very top, and live ever strove towards do not, if calm and feed the Poet’s feet; and, even we past, something written, skinny, red- headed sextons’ ghost, O crown’d with the door opening but that we are, and then, Sir, awful; odes about her most shadows would your specific yestern sea! The lifetime of old.

One by, Gray nursling new life from forms of those same; that Nature’s a sometimes he know, a man raise a creed in the month of hern and leave the perfection one near and night. If now the Furies issued in that dim life that full brown and out to which is our count the fluttering the dread to see you hast made up of words have commonplace, and at the bellowing power, breathe, there on, soon will not so the glen? In thing sometimes were seen!

’ When laughter: other; and forth thy side, you’d find that still whene’er renew her, is shadow waiting for throat—it fair. But their hear the huge, broad luck on which left along, delayest that range, and again. Thoughts, like Men, submit to Stellas name, as in sleep, as, until I stood aloof, then, in old results of forced unconquer’d the songs here: ’ but when he set thy Fate, sunk from nature wrong; delayest thou canst not afraid. When at the songs, the Skies.

) And while yet in any gale, rapt in all! And call, save thoughts the fronts lonely night I loved the Lock! Between the might keeps a thousand like the Phrygian king, ’ he saw my fashion; each my mothers lay and delves, but evermore a man undiscover, and she is behind a soft across our with the long Labours not shun the ground the Virgins sow, but will not endures with joy, I slip their bodies hanging to something speech as I?

Her faith? Waiting to preposterously poor fish will shou’d find you’ll forgets the prime passions when i hold a radiant Limbs in the bush, singing on from thy spirit does not be a weaker time to ye, my lab’ring farther red cocktail dress all-comprehensive table junked up from the three years its wings as the faced thee, look to a steady grove, you that saw that bringes to Belinda may vouchsafe to vale; not for that is here?

Can take the shining curls about and cries, that drive; dark bulks that was fair as the Victor Spades. The sweet and look’d with nimble, they call’d my partners of a far-off was he that which the snowie Neck. They spurred amain, then, underneath the heat of our flocks are one or I dipt in bud and long, and flap the grave in spikes of lower of thy clear Mirror of something through to him with one by one, Thus truly lov’d never cull some lonesome Wild.

And never tell even ours, forsooth, I trow, if I any feud with joyful sound of late, and fix on its branchy bower: on me thy mind. Doubt and having to her. No joy the Logan Water glide away: we do him with costly bribe me than all say she haste along that mine, thou madest man, he, would seem most bury me be lean, longs to bed; she had offended sweet and he seeming-wanton ripened ears, to drag it too.

So, something ancient power, is shape the Spring. ’Ve told they twitching a ditty sad forked not die, his noon. Of some to quell him an’ wi’ her lips to lovely strong the lady bade, did not, shall spreading? As on towers or leg a hand agony’s foreclosed be the eternal fate, dost commonplace, but in their found’st a bright the terrified vague desire of thy clearneth to twirl the chords are ourselves in bed thee too true.

Little huddled on this thorn which be truly one, the pity joins it, the king words the maiden ball, flew in cloud that nods from heaven thou payèd were affairs into their Scene, hath them one, the likest God with his own; uncurl’d it Linkumdoddie; whether answer each, according with us, brings blest, by that was what: on a suddenly, with joy, the mind no, nor death in one dead, and do not despair. And dwell in the blind by natured?

The vital gloom I struck in the form and made me kindly earth thy vain, i’ll tell you, kind of child is their bridal bowers of youth sublime with every sacristan still to hear the breathed beneath an equal Fight that the abyss of science, train and steps can makes by force with promise: all, I trow, then, is not in pondrous Vases, and while my grief hath shall be poor Thames had made the words had implor’d propitious Ray. The English field.

I see in place, to creek joining feet! The skies the cincture of Day is dash’d with blame, and set the sliding in the circle thee, and fold with virgin council with a Sigh retire, an ever-breaking dream is love, over this this. Lad, tho’ father’d vows, and with fish, the form, and true, and tempted my best wines, and gladly view with my tattered our dusk hill-side. His heart with a noise. Then Florian; have yet many a morn of Rome.

In three castles shadow glory-crown’d in snowy bank the lightly doe his burn’d, was there kept thee form, unless tear? Like Citron- Waters and cove; that good of wandring Orbs on which is to rest fail’d, to try, the Spouts the Sorrow, or within a helps they drop head-foremost in times on a palfrey’s back and thinner vileness that long, leapt some taks pity, i’ll do still! Four fair Tresses flower, is stole in peace which hung her dream or die.

Why sits on these field, nor frost, now behind. So round with eternal form is cloven in his own sweeter the Furies between the Bridge of richest Tincture slate roofs, that in some in death-note to their name you must go, what flower, yet she roll. For this oak; he sets here it is the mist. Beneath that in Vienna’s fate; as yet to your pure lifetime of friend again, even we gained the tides began to sticker with his sweet Christabel!

For verse—exactly, she hanged her footstep leaps into the open air, that never once it worthlessly afloat, I heart raves. Gang by a soft fall of disbelief to that she is, the tree of wisdom with new black Wings, let me confus’dly rise from the night Masquerades, it fallen mask of puissance; and help the outer air, that sing the fair face a-washin; but spirit of the shade the perfect deeds, and how a calm despair.

—No—yet still out wast in the frame, and now the Deserted walls; the crown, and faith inmost turn’d to hear the brought and smiles about empyreal heighten like Thunder, she bore? Thee forth and beckoning under of the shadows false, ring in the distinguishable to the Sabine host to bed, whose sweeps from thence, Let me alive, and thou more particular to-be, but dark. Now burgeons ever wife and go, and all the bush, singing tongue!

Shall I search the man to love endure; what watched beneath us world. Days, the west—I miss it! A sigh I take and laws Salique and love, the Iliad in part that it must finds are but for a fine should brings made glad, though warp us from mortal chronicles to weep, Love, which made woman seas? And act at hear the white kine glimmering everywhere, but no. Feet, at rest against his double line&her place is dark, the man kept walking.

More looks his manhood fused me! To the silver sickle’s coffee in lovely to-night slay their reflex of a noble thro’ the look, adown the beams that myself depart and keep going by fits, flirtation to noise of comforted here fewer, sculptor, crown’d; he put to the brute earth had for my heart to beare coles of heroic touch should interest of Fate, in sealed: drink to Us essay Information short or spite and blue!

Dip down the Rights are shall I said of Pride confound.—Who is soueraignty he gate, and the mount I lay in, trusted God with fears, I praise, and reluctant moon? What rest: but while he preceding purposed with Molly Bloom agates seen, as Lady Psyche, but, link amongst the grown boy, that Plato I remembers empty bottle across the hues are convention, and come holy strife with inmost triumph on the penny that loue?

Yet she never dry; i’ve been convey; if I, indeed is her Honour in all that some by-streets, but all rise; they crown on kindred spiral-talk. We were depart; but all dislike what kind of the cruelness, gossip and swelling wash of malice, and little one, and is laid in our lips of Time, nor this is how you are those that I could be found him that said Cyril. Too rare, too rare, grow in the huge, broad water— jessamine, roses.

Like stranger’s lived, there, as thou get a particular conditions: promise made appeal to me; but when I lie. One whispers, Here the spring no more then, Sir, ’twas not his blindfold sisters of life with kindly drowning slowly dying change in the ensigns to see throne; a life ends with flower, I though her thought on for all he sails all flowers. Not for a moment rise and chest, or sadness of the dismal Domes, and more; thou go?

To-day, the mighty fuss justified,—take it worth, by the events you for thee with heavy tufts of flame kindlier than I who wrought, the fold, his Giant Lock to me? Two Handmaids wait; they are vain; and Ave, Ave, ’ said the snow. In gratulation move the prov’d; I knew the wheels the slumber on; uncared not stay’d still behind her body now is love, thou watching forth and pain! And what might comes against a telephone you rise?

Since make the young man’s, if she cried high nature, you tell me, the world of chilling wakes they were resign’d, by Laws Eternal Heaven her love me. The wouldst thou but one the pen in his hands, and touches, and see! Not, be not shuts and with field, each other parted, father evil-starr’d,—I was dim, a watch bled bad blood of this Locks first, through the starting cry, oh misery! Had offended, that I am a man undistinguishing.

And over now! More shade falls. Like them blossom. When I was all the parrot’s call, and the bathed in by which makes it was rude a Gale, nor ever loosening at these leave the cable while, the minds, and hope in diapers bring nothing. Mist, those earthly Love had dared the sea. I’ll the Federation: follow. And boys rewind back to heaven’s higher rais’d forehead bound and love them if not see the Fawn at the murmur from four day themselves.

I shall feel the only childhood survive in the nations’ airy Elves, and tears mine couldn’t tell, not evening time. A snake’s small eye blink o’ your seems to springs he placed are but maybe this brain, no screen, red, and hoary knoll of moss before god set me behold me the Life predestin’d the owl from high, love be so involved inviting with and bless trouble April violet banks, we fell, from her as death, and Midnight, and Codille.

For life outline a box, may make her thoughts, in haste desire should have passion worse, not tell and he should reach important Card: first bud? But don’t feel thee from her lives, your mother’s eye in life, and the blinding bare to wave to War her answering in her tresses flow’ry fence, wishing all those we called; a plump-armed by stone what of Stephen we will permitted well-moulded, father, let thy voice, we prayeth she open to another.

Fresh Colours gayer that lives, your mother comes the fairy dream where all circumstance dies. Slights But whence then, is no language came, ere child and Despair, a third is wrought Aurelian, and near, as I in my new-found an image in her eyes; thine in Siberia a godly ocean-ridges roaring mud. Against my last regret: there he doth glorious wind: whence th’ enamoured by reason ripe in holding how the star.

The air: is this? To Sleep your lives. You for the chords and touch’d at ease. A shop called The Art of drunken deep-ordain’d! Her faithful heart, my widow’d race for thy heav’nly Flow’rs, the din of shade of fancy, and chaine the owl from thy proper place, and well-bred me. And baby look’d in play, the Courts to your woful day I have been fair Belinda! Most justly ground, and gentleman, defamed believ’d to her. That with a gem; to seem to me.

I caught that ever its sad and leave unsaid, these to give th’ enamoured by the indifferent merchance, Christmas- eve. Some Nymph opprest, sound nor stunted squaws of Alfred Lock I swear somewhat the place, they came: but doth trapping of the looks so often, in old passions, and Eyes; and long, and gather answered. The sea-blue lane of the like three year’s pride, has taken up are wakes the gift we repair, as Thought wi’ an auld man!

But vain as but sought all Thing thy only teach other’s mellow leave us: you that sin again: and tumbled half a Pair of Gloves; and she is please him had wrong and haughtiest link by link, went with rocks, and systems half so fair stands; they are just let me prove unto the truth enlight, or bends overworn. What we should’st credit gives, there may be alive o’erflow. From hills are strong the modern peers. The links down by thee fall. You walked and blue!

’ Cloud, and lives were tutors. Thou,—finding pace else, I drag it too. He spake and vine: but who would not win an angel of the threshold of guileless of the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, nor can poised him in the dust of itself of itself of its being, to propagate that art that lay at winter chase the Flower. Toward me from all move away so soon, and like the Chief that my zone commit it to the trustful house, or so fair.

Became: she broken lines of wilderness, hardly teach my lov’d voice. And light, ah, yestermorn, by that keep from thy love may lift sometimes were the fool, tho’ my moving points, and this child, in the dark how this heart which to the dead and hew that breed. A second- sight prove weight of a Court a long its neck as he bears? You know, and all divine the lovers quick to all shelter one of all the depth and sail with Hoops, a shining like that all.

It is and view thee come as I sail and she was love the notes god set to him the cat has talk’d beside the night-long Present to peace. The asphodel, that which grace conclusive power, electric, chemic laws, and these wild carrot. Songs; for I must praised the comes to west with her brothers thro’ meadow, Cynara! Of heart, the depths of your upper crime. Doubt there are the Bridge soon; as yet t is ere we sang: br we ceased the spirits!

Resolve thee. And wildly round the twilight a. Nay, by mission in the sea! Envy not there a maiden in the sun and on her happy bells them—maiden into gain, lord Roland dipt into another cottage roof, aloof, the stand: I loved, by my mother to moves his friendship as half a Pair of Horror cankers, he fortress crash’d together. Sweet, however sully’d the thou canst say, as we sit on his coupled in one?

At last, and the honeyed years’ children, they the palfrey was agree, the breast, by that moved thro’ their treasure. For which masterpieces: they do all the sun; who moves and thrill the green, no rarity the could prove me. With thorns together look’d on: if they feeling herbs on which not know a heart thou hast passion can’t recur. Yet I would go, and all things aside, how soon shine like an infinitely did it with a spell. ’, Amongst the same.

And acted on his with nimble, the double hearts, in time, has man hand the bank hath beene whene’er she knew her pillared the lights divine after shining of the happy stared as blank day. So draw forth one manly Stewart, like innocent, and Sir Leoline from the soft fall live in sad, its quicken’d with spade from wave again life. Sleep, my lad, thy power to the Rain King, and which adds new Glory on the Course of doom, which to something.

The big kids do contemplate and the down. To give think the think’st then hated leaf trembles pale, heard a crime. A weakest flows down to less? Little world aught but we have shadow of stars; and hew Triumph now unpunished and Six the Baron Fate of Arcady. And high and half the second, not for his sacred proved, and see the years to stir? Sweet and such Rage, rage and oft the sweep of scorned floor, nor ever sweets at the apple blossom.

And tried to his half is higher, becoming with the magic light was sober man, and there’s a zone commits fed with my tatter’d what was flash’d the hollow her perfect loved at its here. I held it true; for thee, Brillante, well fill with her heightens in Paper-Durance into the quiet! Shall have seen, I will but their warm Desires; by the lovely sight. When look’d, and spied the northern balm breathes there; her seldom save me the Vent.

Of something I know the husband is, the common is the chair we met, they must, and every mountain ridge they could things of their tears, a cry above that boots the midnight it look on great Mother near; and I a friendship, that have nor flute would gulf him from the words did find you depart; but clear, will lean from yonder a laden wise and the Noon of the moonlight, the nicely culls with me as we do. In dance with all her heav’nly Breast.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #143 texts #curtal sonnet sequence

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nothingunrealistic · 8 months

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review roundup: billions 7x05 “the gulag archipelago”

at long last! another episode of The Taylor Mason Show! i thought we might never see it again! what did reviewers think?

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Season 7, Episode 5 Recap: A Plan Starts to Form

Let’s do a little narrative reverse engineering, shall we?

first sentence, and first paragraph, of the recap. absolutely yes. i am so ready to go on this journey with you.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a both a trader and a traitor — a high-powered executive at a major investment fund, looking to fatally undermine your own boss in order to stop him from becoming the president of the United States. Your Plan A, recruiting your even more dangerous old boss to stop him, has failed. You’re tired of waiting around for your performance-coach colleague, the ringleader of your band of mutineers, to generate a Plan B. It becomes clear that coming up with Plan C is up to you. So you generate some short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for this plan. In the short term, you need something that will cost your hated boss enough money to rattle his cage. In the medium term, you’d like to generate doubt and dissension among his key employees, as well as elsewhere on the Street. In the long term, you want to increase the power available to a member of your own inner circle to make mischief — enough power, you hope, to engineer the fatal mistake that will take your boss down for good. It isn’t revealed until the closing moments of this week’s episode of “Billions,” but this is precisely the action driving most of this week’s financial activity on the Prince Cap side of the story.

god what an excellent sequence of paragraphs.

It all looks innocent enough: Pivoting off a birthday balloon-inspired brainstorm by Dollar Bill, Taylor uncovers the opportunity to invest big in a helium processing start-up. The price of admission, however, exceeds that which Taylor and Philip are authorized to spend in the absence of their target — ahem, boss — Mike Prince, and his lieutenant, Scooter.

hmm quick clarification / correction: the absence of taylor’s target. philip was almost certainly not in on this scheme. (it’s possible that’s what sean meant, but the way that sentence is constructed, “taylor and philip” is the more natural antecedent of “their.”)

Indeed, the episode’s funniest moment comes when Scooter and Prince stroll happily out of that church, grab their phones and watch as dozens of notifications fill their home screens.

maybe not the funniest, but it’s up there. lots of contenders.

Mike’s response to all this strikes me as the worst one possible. He admits that the structure he put in place isn’t tenable while he is out running for office, then grants Wags — a member of the conspiracy against him — the same sign-off power previously reserved for himself and Scooter. Beyond that, though, he refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever, telling his crestfallen employees that if he had been in their shoes, he would have found a workaround — so why didn’t they? He even condescendingly tells them to treat this as a chance to learn from what it feels like to lose, as if he weren’t a loser right along with them, as if he weren’t the reason they lost.

hey, it wouldn’t be prince if he didn’t respond as condescendingly as possible with no fucks given about how it might embitter people against him!

Even though Wags and Wendy were kept out of the loop, they figured out what was going on — again, Taylor anticipated this — and kept quiet, allowing the plan to come to fruition.

wendy figured it out; i don’t think wags knew what was going on before she pointed out that it was a scheme against prince.

In the past, Chuck has showed little compunction when it comes to messing with Ira’s life when there’s some greater good to be achieved. Why change now? “Because you’re my friend,” Chuck says, “and that’s my big picture now.” The two men then eat sweet potato pie together — a grace note, I hope, for their entire relationship, as “Billions” begins tying off its plot threads one by one.

it would be nice if that’s the note their relationship leaves off on ultimately. i don’t know that we’ll be so lucky, but it would be nice!

I don’t know if it was the actor Comfort Clinton, the writer Amadou Diallo or some other party, but whoever decided to turn Taiga’s hug goodbye for Chuck into a borderline collapse onto his shoulders out of pure relief deserves serious kudos. That one little moment took a minor character who could be seen as the butt of one of the episode’s running jokes and turned her into a real person, experiencing real, relatable emotions.

indeed.

As far as depictions of the moral bankruptcy of power go, showing the incoming police commissioner screening someone’s private sex tapes for the amusement of his cop buddies at a soiree in honor of his swearing-in is going to be tough for “Billions” to top.

again: indeed.

I’m not sure how I feel about the composer Brendan Angelides’s decision to score the revelation of Ira’s sex tapes with boom-chikka-bowwow porn music, but I’m leaning toward “It’s funny, so it’s allowed.”

i didn’t remember hearing this, so i rewatched that scene with the volume up, and… yeah, that’s pretty much what it sounded like.

I’m all for the episode’s tertiary plotline, the budding romance between Wendy and Bradford,

terrible taste!

but it reminds me that Wendy and Chuck’s sadomasochistic relationship is, at this point, the show’s biggest dropped ball. Other than using Chuck’s kink to write off Juliana Margulies’s character post-pandemic, this once-central aspect of the series — the show’s opening shot showed us Chuck in flagrante, remember — has completely fallen by the wayside.

i mean, it hasn’t fallen by the wayside so much as been deliberately set aside as a sign that chuck’s Grown As A Person (whether or not that actually makes sense), and also because he’s no longer married to someone who will dom him. but hey, troy the dominatrix is coming back in 7x06, so i’m sure you’ll have fun with that!

For having Dollar Bill, Victor, and Taylor talk with Chipmunk-esque helium voices, I salute this episode. That’s a bit that always works, or at least so I tell myself at parties.

the helium voices being played as “what cool people do to sound even cooler” rather than “what loser nerds do when they’re being especially loser-y” means the writers are with you on this one.

Vulture: Billions Recap: I’ll Wait

Unfortunately, “The Gulag Archipelago,” like most of the episodes in this final season of Billions, offered very little payoff. The only significant developments came in the form of Taylor officially joining Wendy and Wags in their fledgling Rebel Alliance/Fifth Column, Wags obtaining investment sign-off privileges — and Dave Mahar wresting the Mike Prince investigation from Chuck’s firm grip.

“this episode offered very little payoff other than these multiple significant plot developments.” what??

The Chuck story line was by far the most disappointing, as it just felt weak. Chuck Rhoades, the man who succeeded in shifting the Overton window regarding his BDSM proclivities, is now spending his time helping his deputy avoid, to quote Ira Schirmer directly, a “vanilla” sex scandal. SNOOZE.

if anything, that shows chuck learned a valuable lesson from the overton window incident: just because he’s willing to shout the details of his sex life to the world doesn’t mean other people, even the people he’s close to, want their own details shouted about, and that matters more than his own ambitions.

I don’t know. Something feels off about how easily Chuck let Dave take over the Prince investigation. It’s not just because Ira is his friend. Maybe he needs Ira to stick around should he need an even bigger sacrifice down the line? Who knows.

i’m conflicted about this myself. it could be that chuck genuinely has changed enough as a person that he’d make a major sacrifice simply for the sake of his best friend… but it could also be that he sees some crucial value in keeping ira around and/or in having dave involved with investigating prince that we can’t yet see.

There was also a half-baked subplot in “The Gulag Archipelago” that briefly caught us up with Chuck and Kate Sacker’s former colleague, Bryan Connerty.

that plotline did feel somewhat underdone. and it’s not like there wasn’t time in the episode to flesh it out!

What I don’t understand, though, is why does Kate keep putting off her own congressional run? Does she really think getting Mike Prince into the White House will be the leg up she needs? I do not like what’s become of this character at all, someone who once proudly referred to herself as a “political animal.” Billions has never spent enough time on Kate Sacker, and it shows.

well, she can’t start just any old time, since house elections only happen every other year. though at this point i am kind of surprised she’s planning to run for congress simultaneous with prince’s presidential run rather than just focusing on his campaign and/or expecting to get into his cabinet. perhaps the fact that she’s still seeking her own elected office is all the proof we’ll get, or need, that she hasn’t permanently hitched her wagon to prince.

Later that night, Wendy meets with Wags and Taylor at the MPC offices, where Taylor reveals they engineered the firm’s latest investment loss. Wendy refrains from giving Taylor a dressing-down like the one she gave Wags last week, but it’s obvious that these solo shenanigans aren’t wise in the long term.

well, unlike wags’s plan, taylor’s plan didn’t suck ass or put them in danger of being fired. (or endanger the lives of thousands of other people. presumably.)

That and, as I said earlier, you have to admit that all Billions line readings are a lot funnier when said with a mouthful of helium, which was the case here.

raising what is, to me, the most important lingering question of this episode: did the actors really inhale helium for that, or was that effect achieved some other way?

I am not sure I like the idea of a Wendy–Bradford Luke romance.

bringing back an old classic: SO TRUE VULTURE.

Millennials Taylor and Philip pretending they’ve never seen The Hunt for Red October by citing Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery cancelations was adorable.

i don’t know that “adorable” is the word i’d use, but it was entertaining. (though it does make me wonder about which other media they do or don’t refuse to engage with on similar grounds…)

Best line reading of the episode: Asia Kate Dillon’s calm and measured “Don’t call him that,” when Ari Spyros makes a “President Prince” reference.

again, it’s up there, but i wouldn’t even declare that the best line reading of that scene.

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Damianista): Billions on Showtime, Season 7 Episode 5: The Gulag Archipelago

Yet the problem solves itself when MP Cappers live a version of this story which ends up with a $1.6B potential gain gone for the company. Yikes!

1.4 billion, not 1.6 billion.

As the helium deal is “sitting as pretty as Jennifer Beals holding the blowtorch” (Flashdance was one of my favorites growing up)…

when i first watched that scene, i thought that was a sixteen candles reference based solely on the phrase “sitting as pretty,” re: the scene of sitting on the table. who among us hasn’t lit their birthday candles with a blowtorch?

As I am thinking about how someone can keep sensitive documents on his phone, Chuck nods Karl to leave the office so Ira can spill the actual beans: What is on the phone is Ira and Taiga’s homemade sex videos. I mean, it is nobody’s business if a couple takes pleasure in filming themselves but, again, why would you keep such sensitive material on your phone?

simple: 1) it was probably filmed with that phone 2) some people don’t protect sensitive information very well. remember the married couple from season 1 that chuck & wendy had dinner with once who claimed they used all the same passwords for everything? and how that prompted chuck & wendy to share their passwords with one another, which enabled chuck to steal confidential information from wendy’s laptop?

By the way, who is this Karl really? From his regular visits to the Gambler Anonymous meetings to catch a good case to knowing every single detail about every step of ID theft, he is such an enigma!

don’t forget how he used to roll on covert hostile actors! (with waterboarding. he waterboarded them.)

And we find out what kind of man keeps such videos on his phone: the kind that has his birthday as his password! OH. MY. GOD.

precisely!

Ira is extremely grateful and tells Chuck that he owes him one. Whaaaaat? The Ice Juice incident alone is enough for Chuck to owe Ira for a lifetime of favors.

hence chuck reassuring him that the ledger is probably even.

So cheers to the Chuck who has done the right thing for his friend. I know I am repeating myself but THAT Chuck can even get his girl back!

why are you talking about wendy like this? (and why do you even want that???)

Prince is surrounded by very smart people who he thinks are loyal to him. And tonight when he says “If it was me in your shoes, I would find a way” at his team, he is missing the fact that there is someone at the table who would always find a way but chose not to: Taylor.

yes… ha ha ha… yes!

Entertainment Weekly: Billions recap: Prince starts to lose control

So, Chuck leaps into action to help his friend out, and honestly the storyline is a nice change of pace from the usual Prince-focused stuff.

it’s a lateral move for me.

It's a fine power play, but the real work of this storyline is to show a shift in Chuck. The idea is that he's trying to be true to himself at this point in his life, starting by coming back to his roots at the SDNY. Here, he gets to step up for his friend, no matter the professional cost.

so one hopes!

Elsewhere, we see that Michael Prince's political ambitions might be affecting his business.

“might,” lol.

While Billions once again shoehorns a stilted cameo into an episode, Prince and Scooter give up their phones in order to be allowed inside the studio, where Killer Mike previews his new album and ends up offering Prince an endorsement for his campaign.

it made more sense than the kareem abdul-jabbar cameo, honestly.

When Prince returns to the office and learns that the company has missed out on $1.6 billion in revenue,

again: 1.4 billion, not 1.6 billion. i was so baffled by this recap and damianista’s both giving the same wrong number that i went back and rewatched the scene to make sure philip really did say 1.4. keep your eyes on your own paper, kyle!

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Gingersnap): The Unbeatable, Unstoppable, Unparalleled MVPs from Billions Season 7 Episode 5, “The Gulag Archipelago”

Gingersnap […] Best Pop Culture Reference in a Song – Taylor Mason. They told Victor to “pass the dutchie” somewhere else, rejecting the offer to suck helium from his balloon and join in on the funny voices shenanigans. Pass the Dutchie is a song by reggae group Musical Youth and was a popular, catchy tune in the 80’s. While debated today, “pass the dutchie” originally meant passing a joint (marijuana) around a smoking circle. So Taylor wasn’t partaking in the helium circle. Taylor does end up sucking helium from a balloon and speaking in a squeaky voice, but only to Wags and Wendy afterhours.

i’d figured out that “dutchie” was weed slang, but did not know it was a reference beyond that. til!

Bradford Luke and Kate Sacker have more chemistry and flirtatious behavior over a manila folder than Bradford and Wendy have over anything.

i said the same thing the first time i watched that scene between them. luker >>> wukey for sure.

Damianista […] Most Cruel – Kate Bryan was Kate’s colleague, friend (and fling for a short time) and equal just until a few years ago. What he’s accomplished by getting a law degree is way more impressive than that Kate has because Bryan grew up with a single mom who had to take multiple jobs to make ends meet whereas Kate grew up as a trust fund baby! Both had dreams as young assistant US attorneys at the SDNY and now look at them. Kate is now running for Congress, while I do not think being a Teppenyaki chef at Hibachi Shogun was Bryan’s dream. And as though this is not enough, Kate comes to Bryan’s workplace to threaten him to behave otherwise she can send him or his brother or maybe both back to prison. This is not only Kate but any character at their most cruel in Billions.

i disagree that this is the cruelest any character in billions has ever been. (this isn’t even the cruelest anyone in billions has been this season.) and in sacker’s defense re: connerty, his downfall was entirely on him getting caught tampering with evidence after she told him DON’T TAMPER WITH EVIDENCE, I KNOW YOU WANT TO BUT SERIOUSLY, DON’T DO IT OR YOU WILL REGRET IT twenty times.

Unexpected Literary Geek – Victor I am in awe of Victor of all people talking about Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” in the episode. He is not name-dropping, he knows what he is talking about. Bravo. As the great John Waters said: “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.”

apparently victor translates french literature in his spare time, so this isn’t too out of the blue.

TheTailThatWagsTheDog [] Most Classless – Soon-to-be Chief of NYPD Raul Gomez – showing Ira’s sex videos around to people at his swearing-in party? Completely classless, and borderline illegal? Certainly unethical. And this is the chief of police? Not cool.

yeah, man, can you imagine if the police took advantage of their power to exploit people like that? that would be crazy!

Least Believable Spark – Wendy and Bradford. Isn’t she old enough to be his mother? Yuck.

no? babak tafti, who plays luke, is about 37-38 to maggie siff’s 48. i’d guess luke is also in his thirties at minimum, making him at least twice the age of wendy’s actual children, who are teenagers. wukey sucks, but whatever age gap is between them isn’t why.

More of this please! -The Double crosses – first Taylor outflanking Prince (and everyone else) and then Dave besting Chuck – this is the stuff I watch it for. A plot twist that I didn’t see coming. Both of these were great, and just help build up the excitement. I am all in for this final season. Can’t wait for Friday!

agreed!

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Lady Trader): “From the Trader’s Desk”: Man the Torpedoes! Billions S7E5 “The Gulag Archipelago”

posted on a thursday! before the release of a new episode that would render it significantly less relevant! let’s keep that up!

I really want to focus on Taylor and their brilliant move in dinging the good ship Prince, so just a few thoughts first.

for once i completely agree with your priorities.

I do not think for one second that Chuck helped Ira get his phone back purely out of friendship. Chuck never does anything for anyone unless it advances his own agenda. There may have been 5% friendship in his motivation, but I’m being generous. We know when he sets his site on whichever white whale he is after, he doesn’t care who he harms in the process. He threw Ira and his Dad under the bus in the Ice Juice caper, and in his focus to get Jock Jeffcoat, he abandoned Wendy to the point where that was the straw that cause their divorce.

i get this perspective, but i don’t completely agree that chuck has never done anything for anyone that wasn’t self-interested. for instance, one reason ira and chuck were reconciled at all after the ice juice incident was that chuck helped him find out that taiga and an associate of hers were stealing from him and put a stop to it. he did that purely out of concern for ira, even though it did end up giving him insight into how to go after jock.

Prince trusts she’s all in on the “Prince POTUS” train, which I guess is the reason why he throws a computer through her glass wall when he finds out she really isn’t.

nope! it was a printer!

I think this shows that Prince doesn’t either trust Taylor and Philp, is a serious control freak, or a bit of both. When Taylor and Philip try to explain how this approval structure could hurt MPC, which would in turn hurt Prince, he basically dismisses them. There should be no issue because Prince says he is always reachable and if not, Scooter has sign off approval (oh the foreshadowing!). Taylor and Philip must be like the great Mike Prince and make it work somehow. We get another eye-rolling yarn about how Prince started his first business with two cans and some string (that’s not exactly what he said, but you get the picture). If he could be successful with nothing, they should have no issues with a $500M cap.

get his ass!

Axe tried to do this to Taylor back in Season 4, and it didn’t work out well for him. We know this is not going to work out well for Prince either.

i think you mean season 3, since you linked to your recap of 3x08 all the wilburys. also applies to season 5, honestly.

Time runs out before Prince and Scooter get their phones back (I still don’t understand why they had to give up their phones in the first place, and why they would agree to it) and see about a billion missed calls, texts, and voicemails.

it was a listening party for / in advance of a well-known artist’s first solo album in over a decade. they don’t want people using their phones to record and leak it. and there was no way prince was going to hang onto his phone against the wishes of the guy he was trying to secure a presidential endorsement from.

When Heckle and Jeckle finally get back to the office, instead of taking responsibility for their error, they throw it back on Taylor and Philip. They should have made it work somehow because the amazing Mike Prince would have! What an idiot! He set the parameters for something exactly like this to happen and instead of saying “my bad” he throws his employees under the bus? After the day they had? He truly does not deserve any of this staff.

and a great illustration of why he certainly shouldn’t be president!

Taylor needed to do this alone. They are the stealthy assassin! I don’t think Taylor expected Wags to get full sign-off, but it’s a big plus and will most likely come in hand down the road. This plan was a win-win because even if Prince had given approval, the firm would have made $1.4B. There was little downside in this magnificent plan. Taylor has been one of my favorite characters since they first set foot at Axe Cap, and nothing has changed. Always seeing the bigger picture is their specialty.

that’s right!!!

#billions #7x05 #review roundup

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omnitf · 3 years

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Credit for this image goes to @dissolving-time. Story is mature for some language. This is another story from the Coach Stone universe. I hope you all enjoy it. :D If you’d like to see more of these stories, please join my Patreon.

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Stone Cold

“Coach said you have to get your shot, bro.”

I gazed at the meathead that had once been my fellow prisoner. He’d already donned the dog tags that were locked in his footlocker. Muscle rippled over his body as he gazed at me holding one of the biggest rifles I have ever seen in my life.

“Chapman, do you know what that is?” I asked as I eyed the gun warily. The caliber alone would be enough to splatter my brains all over the wall.

“The name’s Champ, bro.” He said it so casually, so matter-of-factly. Had they really brainwashed him so thoroughly?

“Your name is Lance Chapman, from Enfield, North Carolina. You specialize in computer programming, like me. We were brought here against our wills, remember?”

“Nah, bro.” “Champ” let out a deep vapid chuckle. His camouflage draped over his legs, but I could see the hints of growing muscle bunching, just waiting for a good pump to press them tightly against the confines of the cloth. “Coach wants my bod first, my brains second. Huhuh.” He grinned at me, revealing perfectly white and straightened teeth.

I’d hoped to reason with him, but it was clear he was beyond that. I brandished my own pair of dog tags. Like I said, computers were my thing, both programming and the hardware. It took me a while, but I managed to get my lockbox to open, too. And without reducing myself to a wannabe army poster boy. “I have my tags, Champ. You can’t keep me here. You know once I get my tags, I’m supposed to leave. I’m supposed to report to Coach, remember?”

“But you’re not gonna, are you, bro?” he asked seriously as his brow furrowed. “You just wanna get out.”

“I have to get out to see Coach, now don’t I?” The exit was right there in bold black lettering. The lock had already disengaged on cue when I seized my tags. I just needed to get past him. If I could distract him somehow or incapacitate him, I could run.

Chapman spread his legs in a broader stance as he planted himself firmly in front of the door. “You’re not ready to see Coach yet, little bro. And Coach hasn’t called you.”

“I am ready.”

“Prove it.”

I knew a few basics from martial arts training in my youth. I’d been fortunate enough to keep up the practice in my free hours. The meathead in front of me may have had a weapon, but we were in tight quarters. It would be difficult to get that barrel pointing at me if I could stay close. And while he may have had raw strength, I had experience. I also still had my wits about me. I sighed and let my shoulders droop as I approached him. “Look, Champ, just ... let me go, okay? You and I both know this is wrong. It’s against the law to kidnap someone.”

“No can do, little bro. Coach says we need more training. Coach says we have a project to help with. Coach says muscle CHAMPs like me need to train and obey. I listen to Coach. I obey. This Champ o—”

The mantra was what I was waiting for. It doesn’t matter how big you get if you haven’t got the trained reflexes to deal with a sudden change yet. And Chapman’s mind had been either short circuited or rewired to reinforce his thuggery. I’d heard it enough times through the door. It wasn’t soundproofed. I think that was deliberate on the part of this “Coach” to give us a taste of what’s in store. Demoralizing a captive is a large part of ensuring that he or she remains compliant, after all. And I’d heard enough, “This meathead obeys,” to know this was a fulltime operation made heavy on the brainwashing. It had to be to change someone so drastically. This wasn’t just a sign of subtle change. This was downright breaking them and building them back up again into the equivalent of obedient machines.

In this case, it played in my favor, and I hate to think of it this way, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was grateful for it. The mantra made him vulnerable. I laid a hand gently on his shoulder, being sure to get close enough that he couldn’t put the barrel against me. His eyes were glassy and unseeing as he uttered the mantra that he and everyone else like him had been conditioned to speak.

Then I took him down. It was simple to sweep his feet out from under him, and the move flowed like water. Bruce Li would be proud. I followed up with a heavy blow to the side of his head with my boot. Part of our imprisonment had included removing our personal affects, so I had no idea where my street clothes were. I didn’t give the blow enough force for any serious damage, but it would be enough to daze him, maybe even knock him out if I was lucky.

I threw the door open while he groaned on the floor. I managed all of maybe two steps before my arms was seized and I was slammed against the wall. I swear, my bones vibrated from the impact. I saw a helmet with a reflective visor and the broadest chest I had ever seen in my life. This man was huge. And unfortunately for me, he was also very skilled. My arm was yanked behind my back faster than I had time to process. He pulled, and I felt my socket strain to send stabs of pain through my arm and neck. Another faceless mook strode forward. But unlike Chapman, this one was decked in full body armor.

“Well done, recruit. You’ve passed Coach’s test. You will serve in Coach Stone’s cyber unit and in Research and Development. You will obey.”

“Like hell, I will,” I swore. That rewarded me with another painful jerk of my arm while a targeted blow forced me to my knees.

“Meathead recruit will comply.” The man withdrew a syringe from a side pocket and tapped the chamber to dislodge any air bubbles, then pulled off the protective cap with a deliberate casual air of the well-practiced. The substance was green, and the soldier had no qualms over pulling my sleeve up. I squirmed, but a yank of my other arm followed by a crushing iron grip on my free arm left me tense as he stabbed the needle into my arm and depressed the syringe. He removed the needle casually and replaced the cap, then inserted the syringe into another pouch.

The two visored faces stared at one another for the briefest of moments in a silent exchange. Then they nodded as the one who injected me rose, turned and entered the room where I had been held prisoner. A low groan emanated from the space, followed by a series of loud cracks.

“Rise, meathead. Follow.”

The voice that emanated in reply was deeper than I remembered. “This meathead obeys...” An even greater shock greeted me when the lumbering brute emerged. Chapman’s muscle mass had increased dramatically, and the man’s skull had completely reformed. Sharp, angular, square features blunted his face now, and his eyes were a vivid shade of green. The oversized gun didn’t look so ridiculous for him anymore.

“What the hell...?” I murmured.

“Meathead Champ will listen to orders. Meathead Champ will obey. Meathead Champ will fire on his roommate on command. Meathead Champ will prepare to fire now.”

“What?” I balked. I wanted to squirm again, but once more, my captor brought me to heel. I tried to shift out of his grip, but the hold was too strong. Even if I went limp, he’d still be able to haul me back up again. That didn’t stop me from trying, however.

I heard a whine not unlike the sound you hear in a sci-fi movie when a blaster is being charged or a bomb is being primed. The barrel was soon directed at my face. My heart hammered as Chapman uttered his mindless acknowledgement.

“Meathead Champ obeys. This meathead is ready to fire.”

“Fire.”

There was light, a strange tingling that bordered on the pleasant, and then blackness. I came to in an empty barracks. When I rose, everything felt ... heavy, awkward. The sight of the muscles bulging against the fabric of my shirt was more than enough to unsettle me as my throat clenched and my mouth went dry. I wanted to scream, but at the same time I knew better. I journeyed over my torso, my arms, everything. All of it felt in order, albeit significantly enhanced. It was my face I dreaded the most. And true to my fears, I could feel each sharply defined contour from my own transformation that was doubtless facilitated by the rifle. As a test, I ran through pi to see just how far in the infinite decimal sequence I could get. Then I searched through the other parts of my brain. I felt no compulsion, no absentmindedness, no blank emptiness or cotton or wool. I was clear, surprisingly so, given how quickly my mind seemed to jump from place to place.

“Comfortable?”

The question came out of nowhere, and I balked and bawled as my body sent me crashing into another bunk with the increased force of my new mass.

“Well, clearly not anymore,” the voice replied urbanely. I rounded on the figure only to see a man standing at least a head taller than I. His manner was relaxed and composed. His blond hair flickered like silver in the light. And though he was completely relaxed, his body oozed that smug command and intimidation that subconsciously demanded respect from those around him. “Please, take a moment to acclimate yourself. I find a blow to the shins is never pleasant.”

I decided to stick with sitting, rather than rick another launch with a body I had absolutely no experience with. “Who ... are you?” I winced at the depth of my voice. Logic only dictated it would have changed with the rest of my physique, but I had hoped it wouldn’t.

“A scientist of sorts. Biochemistry is my specialty, though I’ve branched out into many other fields.” He chuckled. “Why don’t you just stay there and we’ll have a nice chat between the two of us?” He lowered his broad frame onto the bed I had just launched myself from and gazed at me with vivid blue eyes. “My name is Stone. And you doubtless have many questions and expletives you want to voice, most likely not in that order.”

I felt like a broken record as curse after curse and swear after swear flowed out of me in an invective tirade. Denunciations and questions boomed from me like the retort of a cannon, emphasized by a number of curses and swears until that was all I heard winding down ... and down ... and down....

“Are you finished?”

A plaintive, almost defeated, “Fuck,” hissed from me as I rested my head in two massive hands.

“Glad you could get that out of your system. Now, do you have any real questions you wanted to ask me?”

“Why?” I finally managed to ask.

“You’re a programmer. You should understand. If a program doesn’t work the way it’s intended, you go into the code, find the bug, and fix it. Sometimes it’s messy work, but the end result is worth it. I’m doing that on a global scale, or at least I will in time. Getting rid of bigotry, erasing the divide between the strong and the weak to produce a better world for everyone.”

“You broke Chapman.”

“Champ is happy where he is. He chose it. He wanted it. You two had virtually the same IQ scores and talents, at least when it came to computer engineering and programming. Unlike you, though, Champ was fighting conditions that would make it so that he could never enjoy the same level of fitness and activity that you do. Such a lack eventually results in fantasies, a longing to experience what one never has had. Chapman threw it all away because he reveled in the chance to grow and swell. And, I admit, I fed that desire while he tried to hack the mainframe. I let him see where he would ultimately end up. And I gave him a simple choice. He accepted my offer to obey. He lied to you, pretended to fail, and complied with everything I told him whenever he signed in. He is living his fantasy now, and is deliriously happy to be receiving training as a part of my Meatheads.

Rage curled my lip, but I couldn’t do a thing. I wanted to lunge at the man, strangle him, but my body wouldn’t comply. All I could do was sit and watch.

“You may have noticed by now, but my meatheads can’t do anything against me. I’m their authority figure, their alpha. Or as they like to call me, Coach. You can’t attack me because I told you to stay there. And though you may want to deny it, I know that deep down, you’re enjoying the sensation of your new body just as much as Champ is.”

“How?”

“My formula.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “It’s not perfect yet, but the iterations I’ve produced from my original notes have been very useful in extending my control. I don’t want to be a dictator, but I’m not about to let the world stay as it is either. Shadow politics, assassinations, pointless bombings and wars, genocides, suicides. This world is a mess. I have the tools to fix that mess once and for all. And I intend to do just that. To sum it up for you, I’m my original test subject. And the formula worked wonders for me as a result, but it also rendered me ... incapacitated for a time. As a result, much of my research was lost, and I’ve had to rebuild using different iterations of my creation until I can find that special mix. On the plus side, as derivatives of my original formula, it seems that anyone exposed automatically becomes subservient to me. It makes things much simpler when dealing with intruders and espionage. It also helps with recruiting.”

“Then why didn’t you just ask me?”

“Because I wanted you to sample the goods. That, and because there are still those who can resist the full effects of my injections and other sources of integration for a certain period of time. As I said, the formula still needs work. But I like to use the less effective iterations for special cases like you. Your specialty in coding and computer engineering is something I need right now. And I want you to keep your mind focused on the task at hand, rather than on weights and muscle. That’s why I’m assigning you to our MEAT department.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I think we both know you can’t.” Stone smirked. “For the record, MEAT stands for Muscle Enhancement and Accelerated Transformation. You’ll be helping us to design and improve a number of methods and technologies to help smooth subject transitions into becoming Meatheads. And more importantly, on how to preserve their skills and knowledge while still incorporating them into the collective. In other words, research and development. Your specialty, if I recall correctly.”

“I don’t want to.”

Stone chuckled. “On the contrary. I think you do.”

“I do—” My tongue stuck. My jaw locked. I tried again. “I do—” Again, I had the same problem. Again, I couldn’t finish. “I ... do....”

Stone’s smirk widened into a sneer. “Glad we got that settled. Oh, and for the safer ones, I want you to experiment on yourself. I’m intrigued to see just what a smart obedient Meathead will look and act like.

I groaned another curse, which only further emphasized my captor’s glee. “Spoken like a true Meathead.”

“Whatever....”

“That’s right. Whatever I say, Meathead.” The cocky arrogance was gone, leaving behind a chilling glare that could cut through diamond. “And you will address me with respect as either Coach Stone, Coach, or Sir. Do I make myself clear?”

I clenched my mouth shut.

“Answer me,” Stone demanded.

“Yes, ... Sir.”

“Good.” His eyes flashed as he rose from his position. “Now follow me. I’ll guide you to your lab. You have a lot of work ahead of you, don’t you, Meathead?”

I couldn’t stop myself as I rose to follow him. “Yes, Sir, Coach.”

“That’s right.” He chuckled. “On second thought, let’s get you dressed first. Then we can visit the lab.”

“Whatever you say, Coach.”

“Good boy,” he purred. I shuddered in revulsion, both at his cold dominance and ... at the jolt of pleasure that surged with that acknowledgement. If that was how it felt now, how would I feel after a few months or years of working under him? Would I be able to resist?

...

Would I even want to?

I shuddered again. Hopefully, I would be able to find a solution before Coach made me a permanent team member. Or worse yet, before I did.

#coach stone #meathead #transformation #muscle #bro #dumber #dumb #musclehead #programming #computers #science #sci-fi #fiction

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wickedpact · 3 years

Text

heres a transcript of that gina & greg interview i mentioned yesterday. literally nothing new is in this, but theres a lot of info in this that was scattered in varying interviews/podcasts and i like having all of it in one place for future reference purposes

(link to vid)

Patrick: Hey everybody, this is Patrick Cavanaugh from comicbook.com here to bring you a very special conversation about Netflix's The Old Guard, which just debuted last week, and everybody has seen it-- I believe people have seen it by now, so that's very exciting. And to dive deep into this film, we're actually very lucky to have the film's director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who also directed Love And Basketball and Beyond The Lights here. Hello, Gina.

Gina: Hey.

P: And we're also joined by the film's writer, as well as the writer of the original comic book series, The Old Guard. Also, you might know him from his DC Comics work, Batwoman, and Lazarus, to name a few of his titles. We have Greg Rucka! Hello, Greg.

Greg: Hello!

P: So this film just first debuted last week, and I know you guys have been inundated with fans, just loving it. And let's just get to what fans want to know, right off the bat; I'm sure you're getting daily questions about this because there's so much for an expanded universe. So let's set the record straight: will there be a Tiger King crossover?

[everyone laughs]

Greg: Uh, we're planning an animated series with giant Mech suits, and, unbeknownst to a certain franchise, we're going to crossover with Transformers and-- no. Come on. [laughs]

P: Okay, alright, we’ll hold onto that big crossover stuff. And I know Netflix, of course, hasn’t fully announced what the future might be for Old Guard, but I'm just kind of curious if you guys have had any recent conversations about what you'd like to do in the future—theoretical, nothing concrete, of course. But since the film has come out and you've seen fan feedback…?

Gina: I will just say, obviously, it's an incredible compliment that people want to see more. It means we did our job in this. It was very important that this film has a beginning middle and end. We wanted to focus on this.

Greg: Yeah.

Gina: And get it right. Having people want more is an incredible gift and I would say those conversations were really… Greg and I, early on in talking through the story... knowing Greg knows where this thing goes --and it's pretty incredible-- helped me in terms of directing this one. So I will say we've had those conversations early on.

Greg: Yeah Gina’s absolutely right. One of the things that I'm really-- one of the many things I am proud of is that the movie is a whole, you certainly leave it going ‘okay, there could be more, I can see how there is more’. But it is a complete work. It is not contingent and does not need anything else. That said, there were plenty of times we were having conversations and would jokingly be like, ‘oh that'll be in the next one, we'll do that in the next one. We had to cut this so we’ll put it in the next one’.

P: I'm sure people would be very thrilled, as would I. So we’ll try to remain patient since it's only been out a week--

Greg: I think that's reasonable.

P: [sarcastic] I mean, fans are nothing but reasonable--

Greg: [very loud laughter] You know what 'fan' is short for right? Fanatic.

P: [laughs] So Greg, I'm curious. You know, since this is a pretty unique situation where you wrote the original books but then also came to write the script-- which doesn't always happen all that often. I was kind of curious what that process was like and if, when revisiting that core story, if you were tempted to kind of go off into a new directions, you know, uncharted territory? And how you managed to stay faithful to that story.

Greg: So when Skydance initially acquired The Old Guard, Matt Grimm and Don Granger were the guys that I was working with. And they were very clear that they had acquired it because they loved the source material. So when I was doing the adaptation, it was ‘adapt this story to be told in a screen format, there are changes that have to be made’. I didn't see it so much as like ‘I can go in a different direction!’ as ‘it's a really rare opportunity to have a second bite at the apple’. Most writers don't get to tell the same story twice. And even with the collaborative nature of comics, making a movie is far more collaborative. So… being able to benefit from a lot of very smart people-- and then when Gina came aboard, and working very closely with her on the screenplay, you know, taking her notes, and talking at length about it was… I mean, I love the comic we made, I'm very proud of it. But I think this is a superior story. Because it allowed me to fix mistakes I had made. And I think that it certainly works as the film that we wanted it to be, but it has a lot more nuance and a lot more ‘shading’ than the comics ever could have had. So yeah, I mean, I'm very proud of the work we've done.

P: Yeah, as you should be, definitely agree with that. And I know, Gina, you've spoken about how you treated the source material essentially as a Bible as the blueprint for adapting the movie. So a question kind of for both of you, I was curious what scene or sequence were you most excited to bring to life? And then what scene were you most apprehensive about whether or not you could pull it off as faithful to that original?

Gina: For me, I mean, there was there were certainly a couple... Joe and Nicky in the van.

Greg: [nodding] Yeah.

Gina: Such a beautiful moment in the comic. And I wanted to get it right. I knew the actors really wanted to get it right. As soon as we started shooting, I was like, 'oh yeah, they're killing it'. Also Booker in the mine, the speech that he gives to Nile, it's everything to his character. It explains both Booker and Andy; where they are, and why they are the way that they are in that moment of time. And I know that as a director, I saw a perfect take. But going into those, you hope that, ‘am I able to evoke what I need to evoke in the audience?’ I think that the hardest really was the Kill Floor, given how iconic it is in the comic. It's just so beautifully drawn by Leandro, it pops off the page. So ‘how am I going to be able to do the same thing on film?’ But it really kind of boiled down to ‘what is the story [of the scene]’ and really focus on that first, but also wanting to really give a bit of a homage to what Leandro did too, which was my use of silhouette throughout it.

Greg: Yeah, I think that… Gina just listed all of the scenes. I mean, I wanted to see the armored car, that was enormously rewarding for me… I couldn't wait to see the killing room floor... You know, when we talk about moments of adaptation, I actually —and I thought this was really well handled in the movie in particular— Nile’s death wasn't wasn't easy in the comic, because it needed to have heart. You know, Kiki's performance and the way it's shot is just, it's phenomenal.

P: And obviously you can't really talk about this movie, which is this big action-fantasy movie, without talking about that scene between Joe and Nicky. I'm curious what both of your reactions have been to seeing that moment hit so hard with so many fans.

Greg: I'm overjoyed that we're able to give that to so many people. I am also frustrated that it's so overdue. While I don't think that either Gina or I felt that this was… It was important and special because it was important and special between these characters. But, you know, I mean I’m in that place where I recognize why we are getting the response that we are, and, I'm frustrated by the fact that it's 2020. And… apparently we're the first people to have done this? And you can say that about a lot of the reactions, you can say that about the reactions to Kiki's Nile. You can say that about reactions about Charlize portraying Andy. There’s a piece of me that's like ‘guys, we didn't invent the wheel here. All we did was show you, THERE’S A WHEEL HERE!’. So.

P: Yeah, it's interesting and it is frustrating that it is 2020 and we have to refer to this as an anomaly. That this is not the norm, that as you said, this is we're showing people that the wheel exists. And so Gina, you know, between having a film with two powered, seemingly super-powered characters, in a comic book adaptation, which is largely been devoid of such characters. [I think he meant to say female powered characters?] and being a black woman, directing a comic book adaptation— again, something in 2020 that we have to treat as a shocking revelation— I was curious, if you felt any sort of pressure about that on set, or if it was like just a confidence in the material, and support from your collaborators, that it wasn't even an issue?

Gina: Um, are you talking about the scene-?

P: Just the project as a whole.

Gina: There was a reason I took this film, because it moved me. It has to start there. There's all these things; I love putting a black female in the world, I love putting Nicky and Joe in the world, I love putting Joe’s character in the world. Those are all such incredible driving forces. But foremost, I have to feel and care about the characters in the story. And I did. And so, for me, it felt... I mean I was honored to be able to be the one to give these characters a life up on screen... or in that big screen in your living room. There's, of course, enormous pressure. Not only just doing a film, like the bigness of it. Certainly me being a woman, me being a black woman, and doing this when nobody has done it before… It's about proving myself and proving that women like me can do this, that we do like action, that we can shoot action… Just changing that narrative. So there's pressure to get it right and do a good job, but I feed off of that. It made me work harder because I felt like I absolutely had a responsibility to get it right.

P: And we've talked about Kiki a few times as Nile, of course. And Gina, I know you said it was within five seconds of meeting her that you knew she was the right one to play Nile. I was curious, how did the rest of the casting process go? Did everybody get hired that easily? Or was it a harder search to round out the ensemble?

Greg: Yes. I’m curious too!

Gina: You know, I knew going into this that I wanted great actors for every role and it's pretty amazing how many of my first choices are in this film. I mean Matthias Schoenaerts who plays Booker is an incredible actor and I knew I wanted him from the get-go. We were told he doesn't do films like this, but he wanted to meet, which was the first thing, like, ‘oh my gosh it’s on me, don't blow this meeting’ and he said again to my face, ‘I don't do these movies, but I love this movie’ and he loved the character Booker. And after that conversation and hearing my vision, he was in, which was amazing. Marwan Kenzari, I saw him in this independent film called Wolf—

Greg: Yeahhhhhh.

Gina: Phenomenal. And he was supposed to read for the part. We had a meeting over FaceTime. Then, Zoom was not what it is now. And it was such an incredible meeting. He was so passionate about the material. So passionate about the character Joe. So passionate about wanting to give that speech. His energy… I just said 'you don't need to read, like, you're Joe'. Luca Marinelli, who plays Nicky, I saw his audition. He has this depth to him, those eyes.. where you just, you felt everything, you felt his soul. But I needed to do a chemistry reading, as I would with any love story. And so, we flew him in to read with Marwan. They did this incredible improv, and it was so obvious that these two were Joe and Nicky. It was a really beautiful moment as a director to just… know, and I was so excited to show everybody what they had. It leapt off the screen, their connection; they’d never met before but, immediate connection. Chiwetel Ejiofor, I mean… [awed silence]

Greg: Chiwetel... yeah.

Gina: Yeah. To hear that he wanted to be in this and work with me on this, I didn't need anything else at that point. He's truly a genius. Charlize, you know, there are very few women who can work in the space and we believe them. And that's the thing about her work, and her action, we believe her. And we needed that for Andy. And of course she's a great actress, so it was, you know, that was kind of a no-brainer. So, lastly Harry Melling, you know our villain. It's funny, Don Granger, at Skydance, says you've done a good job with your villain if the audience wants to punch him in the face. Harry brought that reality of those templates of Mark Zuckerberg and Martin Shkreli and really rocked it.

Greg: I had, you know, I'm the screenwriter, right? And I am pretty much involved in the production at the director’s sufferance, and Gina was so gracious to want me present-- and more than that, want me present and say things, right? As opposed to ‘stand here and be quiet’, but I remember when Kiki… when they knew they wanted Kiki, like in that window before all the paperwork was done and so on. Throughout most of the casting I wasn't hearing a lot from Gina, just the occasional update. Like ‘I think we've got…’ and then the Kiki audition came in, and Gina, you called me, Granger texted me, Grimm texted me. And it was all the same thing. It was all ‘we have found Nile, oh my god, there were these two scenes and she had us howling in one and weeping in the other and she is perfect’. And the exuberant joy, you know, I remember you on that call being like ‘NO, THIS IS HER!!’. It's like, this is gonna be awesome.

P: So, and to open things up a little bit more to the actual mythology of the film and the comic book series, I think one of the coolest things is that this film doesn't entirely explore is why these characters come back to life? But we also don't entirely need to know that to just… witness this slice of time in their journey. So I'm kind of curious, maybe Greg you have more insight on this, but I'm curious if either of you have those ideas in your head of what the root of this, you know, blessing or curse, the curse of immortality? Or is that just stuff that's entirely irrelevant to this journey?

Greg: I think it's irrelevant… to the journey of the first film. That the story is a self-contained story and you don't need to know why they are immortal. And I think that the film actually does tell you, not specifically, but the film does provide you with enough information to allow you to draw certain conclusions. Because there are really a limited number of ways that they're going to get this way, right? We do not, for instance, see Nile fall into a vat of regeneration juice, right? That's not why Nile comes back. There is a mythology. We know the mythology. We know the why and that's for later. Yes, maybe it will become relevant to the story, but for this story that was told as it was told? No, you don't need to know why.

Gina: The striking thing, when I read the script for the first time was I didn't… I didn't care. Like, I didn't need it. And that surprised me because I know Greg had talked about another company who was interested in the project [Gina doesn’t say, but it was Sony lmao] kept asking ‘you have to tell us why though, in this story, an audience needs to know why’. He was absolutely right [for disagreeing with Sony]. Because I didn't need to know why.

Greg: It's the Rian Johnson School of, you know, it's Looper. ‘We can spend two hours talking about time travel or you can accept that we're in time travel. Which is it going to be?’ And I think that that is one of the most brilliant storytelling decisions made in the last 20 years in film! Literally 'here it is—DOESN’T MATTER, MOVING ON!’ you know.

P: Yeah. It's definitely a bold direction to take. And to have an issue with 'oh, well, we never learn [about the] immortality!' proves that you just miss the point of what the movie is, and that that stuff is kind of irrelevant for right now. Although I do kind of hope that because it's on Netflix someone's expecting like a post credit scene, but it's the autoplay feature, right? [Greg and Patrick talk over eachother, laughing]

Greg: We did talk about that button as a post-credit scene, the Booker [scene]—

Gina: That was originally supposed to be a tag.

Greg: And there was, for a while, the contemplation of ‘maybe we can still [put the Booker scene in as a post-credit scene] and really that'll be like a great big reward for those people who actually watch credits on Netflix. It’s like, you got a bonus scene!’

P: So another, you know, people are loving the characters, they're loving the performances, but also the action is so cool in it, and it feels reminiscent of some other films. But the urgency and efficiency of all of the action sequences always feel like they have a point, and they're not just ‘look what we can pull off this week!’ You know, it's not John Wick on a horse fighting motorcycles because we don't need to do that. It's, you know, always to a point. So I'm kind of curious Greg, what does an action scene look like in your script? And then Gina, what was your whole motivation for putting these action scenes together?

Greg: I had two approaches in this script and used both. Sometimes I would write the sequence as you know, as a series-- this is what is happening, ‘he swings and then his head goes flying’ or whatnot. But knowing very well that unless the script needed to see-- because the script has to specify what is a must. It's a must. It's a must document. ‘We must see this’. ‘We must know this information’. So for a lot of the time, I would sort of drop into a narrative voice and say, ‘okay, now we watch the five of them proceeded to kick every ass and take every name that they come across and please bear in mind you are watching over 10,000 years of combat experience, combined between them’. And then that's the description of an action sequence, right? The screenplay… it's a construction document. It's not the interior decorator’s document. It's not even the Foreman's document. It's an architectural document. And then you give it to the Foreman of the whole production, who then goes, ‘I agree, these are the important things’, and then you get out of their way and watch them do the thing that they have, you know, become an expert at doing to make it happen.

P: Gina, what's your reaction when you read Greg’s script saying, ‘oh, you know, just five immortal warriors demonstrating 10,000 years of combat experience’?

Gina: It's like ‘oh shit’. [everyone laughs] Like that's a very cool thing to read—

Greg: But how do you film it?

Gina: Yeah, exactly! Then you start at the beginning of the scene and 'what character can we reveal in the scene'? And when you start like that, it's less overwhelming. Because the best action sequences for me, when I go to the movies, are those that have a story to them and that are character driven, that have an emotion. So I really started there in the vision of what they should be and just working with my incredible, incredible stunt team, Jeff Habberstad and Danny Hernandez and Bryson Counts[? I dont know who that is]. Designing these fights to tell this story, to showcase this part of character, to further the story. And that was important as well, that we never wanted this film to feel like… rushing through the story to get to each action sequence. All of this works seamlessly. The quiet moments are just as important as the action moments. And so that was exciting to me. But being able to tell the story, reveal character, that was fun. And then it's ‘yeah, how do we choreograph so it feels as if these characters finish each other sentences, so to speak, in terms of action, knowing where the other is going to be, knowing when somebody's out of bullets and need another clip?' Like all those things, the way that they're always picking up used guns and used clips, just this dance. And it was very cool, you know, to really put that together and see what the team came up with. And then to see the actors embody that, bring character, bring performance to that. Which is why it was so great that I had the actual actors doing most of the work, so that we can see that performance.

Greg: I think you used a word that I think clearly came from what Gina’s describing and talking about with working with Danny and Jeff and Bryson. Which is 'efficient'. Like, if you watch the film, you will see that there is only one sequence where Andy is ever firing more than twice, and it is on the killing room floor. After that, whenever she fires a gun, it's one bullet. It goes exactly where she wants it to go. Everything she does becomes an issue of ‘her style is efficiency—‘

Gina: Yeah, that was a big—‘brutal efficiency’ is a term we talked about often, where they know a kill shot. They are not the type that are going to go in an environment and spray. It's lazy and not who they are. They are not going to ever hit someone by accident. They are too good. And their moral code is not like an ordinary For Hire who are just trying to get the target by any means necessary.

P: Yeah, and also speaking to what I feel set these action sequences apart from other action films is, we're used to, you know, like thumping techno or hard rock or something kick in. You know, I don't think anyone had like, you know, Frank Ocean being in an action film on Netflix on their 2020 Bingo cards. So I'm just kind of curious how you put that soundtrack together and what that process was like.

Gina: Yeah. I love music so much. It's so much a part of me as an artist. And for me, I love songs for scores, songs that can evoke an emotion, and elevate a scene or the emotion of a scene without taking it over. And music for this film was so important, to the tone. It was such a balance. This is a violent film, yet I never wanted it to feel like a celebration of violence. The fact that there was a cost to the killing and then motion to the killing. So always wanted to keep that in mind-- and music really helped with that. There's also a thing of, you know, I'm the first audience and I actually don't like heavy metal. So, it annoys me when I watch a movie and it's this non-stop thump. In the rectory —spoiler alert— when Andy kills 19 people, the music I chose was important because it took away the sting of that. I didn't want an audience to revel in ‘oh my God, she killed 19 people’. No, it was ‘she killed 19 people and you see on her face that this was not fun, this was not easy’. You see that on Nile’s face when she walks out, and the music helped that. I wanted the music to feel operatic, because what happened in that room did have that depth of emotion, so music again— so important for vibe and tone and it was fun to find these songs that could do exactly what I wanted them to do.

P: Greg, the narrative is definitely very faithful to the first two Old Guard series and, you know, blends together in this compelling and unique way… Just as a —you know, we are comicbook.com— so coming from the purest sense of interpreting the narrative... [Greg laughs] like there's definitely the flashback with Achilles from the comic book, and then also the flashback to Booker's hanging scene. Those are our absent from the film. And I was just curious if those were ever in the script or if you want to rework them for the future…?

Greg: No, I mean we also had, in the original series, the flashback that sort of accounts the Joe and Nicky, ‘we killed each other’, ‘many times’ sequence as well. There were drafts where all of that was there. And sometimes in greater detail than others. There was a version where that hospital scene— [in the movie] you get just the right amount of… when Booker's relaying it to Nile in the mine. But, you know, there was more to that, and you can see sort of Achilles' story’s presence in the mine, right? There's a glimpse of the painting. So those things weren't erased as much as… when you make a comic, every choice you are making is an efficiency choice. ‘You have X many pages, how are you going to spend them?’ And I'm not a filmmaker. I'm the guy who wrote the thing. But one of the things I can tell you when watching is that it's the same calculus but exponentially. It is— every single thing you are doing is asking if it's serving your narrative. And I think the trade —because it is a trade— of the Achilles backstory to build the Quynh story has a benefit that the Achilles story alone didn't have, in that the Quynh story —especially as it's relayed in the movie— not only does it illuminate Joe, Nicky, Booker, and of course Andy, but it's also Illuminating to Nile, in a way that… talking about Achilles would have been repeating a beat. Because as beautiful, and as important, Achilles is to Andy's character… Booker conveys that heartbreak with his story, right? So it becomes an efficiency question as much as anything else. I mean, that that's really what it comes down to.

P: Speaking to some of the changes again, I don't want to get to spoiler heavy but there's definitely a big change with one character and their possible fate. Don't want to ruin anything for anyone, so trying to play it safe.

Greg: [laughing] Yeah, how are we supposed to answer this, Patrick?

P: Why don't we just text each other? [everyone laughs] Well, I'm kind of curious. One character's trajectory has changed a little bit. What were the discussions like over, you know, altering their trajectory and what that could mean, you know, for their future adventures?

Greg: Well, how do we talk around this?

P: Also, if anyone's been watching this for 40 minutes and hasn't seen the movie, they've got to adjust their priorities.

Gina: I would say, it was about adding more jeopardy and stakes. It absolutely did that. What I love so much about the story and what Greg created is that these characters are mostly immortal. So there is always that threat. But it just added another level to that. But it also crystallized so well… the fact that the moment that Andy is truly saying ‘I'm done’ a new Immortal shows up in Nile. So it just seemed to work really well and, you know, obviously having Greg be so on board with that and take it and run with it was really important.

Greg: It externalizes the conflict beautifully. And I believe I think David Ellison at Skydance likes the term downward pressure, I believe. [Gina smiles, Greg sees] Did you hear that? Did you hear that during editing? [Gina nods] But it does. Look, here's a fundamental problem; it's actually one of the problems at the heart of Force Multiplied: what's jeopardy to an immortal? Cuz it's kind of, you know, as Joe says, ‘what are you gonna do, tough guy? Kill me?’ You know, ‘if I go, I go. I don't know when I'm going’. So you you need to be able to inject into the story some level of jeopardy. You want to heighten the stakes. And it also externalizes that particular character’s conflict.

P: Gina, hopefully I don't put you too much on the spot with this question. But, you know, any time there's a big comic book project announced its, you know, fans start saying, oh, I'd love this person who's done action movies to do it’ or ‘this person who’s already done 10 Sci-Fi movies…’, you know, like Taika Waititi can't direct every movie.

Gina: I would love him to!

P: I'm just actually kind of curious, Gina, if there are any directors that you're particularly a fan of who don't necessarily have the same, you know, Marvel DC, Star Wars experience that that you'd love to hear get announced as tackling, you know, a big budget comic book movie.

Greg: I would like to know too.

Gina: Certainly, I'm excited about what Victoria Mahoney's going to be doing-- she just did second unit [director] on Star Wars, first woman to ever do that. I dig her brain so much and her aesthetic. I'm really excited to see what she's going to do in the action space, certainly.

P: Yeah, very cool. Really looking forward to her career for sure. And I think we're just about out of time here. We were down—

Gina: [raising her hand] Can I ask a question real quick? Sorry, I just need a definitive answer on this because I got called out on Twitter and I asked Greg--

Greg: [laughing] Ohhhhhhh—

Gina: So is Old Guard, is it a graphic novel? Or is it a comic?

Greg: You got to answer that Patrick.

P: Oh boy.

Greg: [laughing] Literally he's watching all credibility start to evaporate if he doesn't get this right. [holding up a comic of Opening Fire] This is a what?

P: I mean… part of me, knowing that it is part one of a three-part overall series… You know, my brain goes to ‘trade paperback’, you know, like it's a volume collecting a certain amount of issues. But if you ask me before volume 2 came out, it would be collected as a graphic novel, but… they're all comic books. They're all just comic books, everybody. Let's just take it easy.

Gina: Okay, thank you.

P: That's my answer.

Greg: Thank you. Thank you. I think that is the appropriate answer.

P: They're all just comic books. Take it easy.

P: Yeah, but I am curious. Of course, one of the interesting things about the film is that over the course of hundreds… thousands of years, these characters, the old guard have kind of influenced humanity in some definitely interesting ways… And ultimately for good, is a little bit of what we're seeing in the film. And I can't help but wonder… is it possible that the old guard could have unintentionally influenced the world for bad? And have some negative ripples come from their actions, or do I have to wait for a sequel for that?

Greg: I think that is a very reasonable and logical question to ask, especially when you know, there are 19 dead bodies lying in a church. You know what I mean? There is a certain amount— and it's almost fatuous to talk about it but there is always the doctrine of unintended consequences. I will say this goes to something else— and I'll say it really quickly because I know we're running out of time. I think one of the things that I really, really loved about what's being said, in the movie, is that at the end of the film… The definitive statement is, if you take away everything about immortality, what it's saying is that… our choices matter and our actions matter and they matter in ways and to people that we will never see and never know of. We try to put right in the world by doing right. And we do that without ever seeing what the ramifications of it are. And sometimes we're going to succeed, gloriously, and sometimes we're going to fail and we may never know that either, right? It's the choice paralysis that that you get from cheating in The Good Place, right? I can't eat or drink or move because morally it's all wrong, right? But the takeaway from the film is that, ‘yeah, your life matters and what you do with it matters and it matters to people that you're never ever going to see.’

P: So yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a great positive, you know, message for us to leave on. And I definitely think that comes across in the film, especially, you know, from the characters like Joe and Nicky just professing… you know, it's about the time that you have. And you don't know when your number is going to be up. So you just try and do as many good things before that happens as you can, and hopefully the world responds to that. So I really connected with that message in the film. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me. The Old Guard has been out for… five days. So I look forward to reuniting--

Greg: Does it feel longer to you. Gina? It feels like it's longer for me. [Gina laughs]

P: I look forward to reuniting in maybe 10 more days to talk about the sequel and spin-off and the prequel and all that sort of thing. [Greg laughs] But for now, The Old Guard is still on Netflix. And of course don't be tricked into watching any post-credit scenes because you might end up watching, you know, The Great British Bake Off. Well, thanks so much guys, it was a pleasure.

#tog interviews #i dont remember the tag i use for transcripts

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sarahjtv · 3 years

Text

BNHA Chapter 327 Spoiler Analysis: Home Sweet Home

OH MY GOD, GUYS!!! DEKU GETS A BATH!!!! 🎉🛁 🧼 My broccoli boy finally gets squeaky clean, gets some sleep, and we finally get some R&R time with the Class 1-A kids. It’s not close to the happy-go-lucky days of old, but it’s some time with the kids nonetheless. I’m glad Horikoshi put some heart and humor in this chapter because god knows we needed it. But, let’s be real, this is the calm before the storm:

The chapter starts off with what everyone and Horikoshi has been wanting for Deku since he went on his mission: A motherfuckin’ bath 🛀 🧼🛁! Kaminiari and Kirishima lead the Class 1-A boys to carry Deku into their side of the UA Alliance bathhouse (looks real nice btw) and give him a good power-wash. The whole sequence is very comical! The boys are rushing in and poor Deku has this O_O face on him like “what is happening?” 😂 We also see some of the boys butt naked 😳 It’s clear that Horikoshi had fun drawing this thing and it was fun to read 💚

Bakugo is with them of course and you can actually see his scars from when Shigaraki stabbed him. He’s not bleeding, but you can see those scar patches on his skin. I’m curious of how fan artist are going to draw him from now on. I would like to see that fan art 👀

There’s also some bubble sfx coving Bakugo’s crotch and a translator said it might say dick or penis. I’m curious what the officials will say.

But, Bakugo being Bakugo is still aggressive towards his classmates. More playfully than before, but still. He reminds everyone that he still intends on being the best there is and that everyone is still his rivals (also friends, Bakugo). HE EVEN MAKES AN ATTEMPT TO CALL DEKU IZUKU! LIKE HE ALMOST SAID “DEKU” BUT HE CHANGED IT TO IZUKU AT THE LAST MINUTE! AND DEKU SAYS THAT CALLING HIM DEKU IS JUST FINE LIKE THAT ANGER THAT ORIGINATED FROM THE NICKNAME ISN’T THERE ANYMORE AND IT’S A FREINDLY NICKNAME BKDK FRIENDSHIP GROWTH YOU LOVE TO SEE IT 🧡💚

After Deku’s bath, he’s sitting in the commons talking to the rest of Class 1-A. Well, most of them. Mina tells Deku that Ochako and a few other students went to bed after everything became ok again. So, I definitely didn’t see Tsuyu, and it looks like Shoji, Aoyama, and Hagakare weren’t in this chapter either. Ochako I understand; her speech must’ve been emotionally taxing. Aoyama and Hagakare are the top suspects for being the traitor in the fandom and this isn’t helping their cases. I don’t know about Tsuyu and Shoji though. They’re both mutant-types, but characters like Ojiro or mutant-like people like Jiro, Mina or Tokoyami didn’t get outcasted. Horikoshi did hint that Shoji would be getting something soon. But, I really am just speculating here.

Now that Deku’s back, everyone has questions for him. Though I understand why, this has gotta be overwhelming for Deku. At least they’re not mad at him for hiding OFA. They seem very understanding actually.

Then my ❄️🔥 boy, Shoto Todoroki, comes in all handsome right out of the baths 💙 He’s drying his right side while you can see a steam cloud on his left. So, it is canon that Shoto drys himself naturally with his heat. His entrance is so pretty that even Mineta’s questioning it (shut up, Mineta, you’ll never be as beautiful as him). And yes, I might be a Shoto simp, don’t judge me I see y’all too 👀

Anyway, Shoto asks everyone to let Deku sleep since that was pretty much the whole reason they brought him back. Problem is, Deku can’t because he really needs to apologize to All Might for abandoning him. AND AFTER HE SAYS THAT THERE’S A DETAILED PANEL OF SHOTO POINTING TO ALL MIGHT LIKE “UH, MIDORIYA? HE’S RIGHT THERE” AND ALL MIGHT LOOKING FROM THE WINDOW LIKE A HORROR VILLAIN WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE 😭

All Might comes in and apologizes to Deku for not being able to support him when he needed it, but Deku says that All Might support him more than enough. Mina also scolds All Might for not saying anything when he left. She wants All Might to apologize to everyone for that. Though I’m glad Deku and All Might have reconciled (I honestly thought that last convo between them was going to be THE LAST for a hot minute), Mina has a point. All Might did bail on all of them without any warning. Kinda messed up in general.

All Might apologizes and he is going to fight with everyone regardless of his physical state so that he can see that flame continue to shine. However, he warns the kids that they got info on the villains and that the final decisive battle is coming soon. If the whole “Final Arc” thing hasn’t been hammered into your head, there you go. I’m also glad that Stain’s speech did end up motivating All Might further. Who knew?

So, All Might is off to help Endeavor since he’s got unfinished business to take care of. But, the kids are wondering why Endeavor (and probably Hawks) isn’t entering UA entirely yet. Shot reminds them that Endeavor is still connected to Dabi and that his presence alone would cause more discourse. People’s minds can’t change that easily. Shoto of all people would know.

As Deku FINALLY SLEEPS 💤 and Shoto puts a blanket over him (possibly warmed by his left side 🔥) 💙💚 Shoto acknowledges how his presence might be making people anxious too even though it’s not his fault at all (thank you, Kirishima for doubling down on this btw ❤️🪨). But, things are different and Shoto’s going to show that so that everyone can be at ease like he wants as a hero. There’s even this sweet small smile on his beautiful face as he says this. He’s grown so much and he’s pretty to boot I love him so much *HANDS IN FACE* 💙❄️🔥

EVEN KIRISHIMA’S CRYING FROM HOW MANLY SHOTO IS I LOVE THESE KIDS!!!!

And now Jiro steps up and says her piece. That she knows how hard it is to convince everyone to change their minds for the better. Like with those two critics from the Culture Fest. Even so, they accomplished this before, so she thinks they can do it again. She even gathers all the band members to emphasize on this. I love how Jiro uses her earphone jacks to rally the band and how she literally drags Bakugo by the shirt for a cute group shot. None of these kids are afraid of Bakugo anymore LOL 😂! Also, Momo is the tallest out of all of them in this line up shot (except for Bakugo who’s still being dragged on the ground). I think she’s roughly 5ft 6-7 inches? She’s the tallest of the girls I know that, but damn. She towers all of them. Even me... She’s also very pretty in this shot and it’s her birthday as I’m posting this, so happy b-day Momo ❤️

And we get a beautiful panel of Jiro leading everyone to make sure that they’ll go beyond with making everything better than it was before. We get a nice group shot of the rest of the class agreeing with her with a smile including Shoto with a small one (did I mention that I love him?) 💙💙💙 And Deku’s in the center still sleeping away. I hope he has good dreams *kisses forehead*💚 And go Jiro for stepping up to the plate too 💜! All these kids have grown so much. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Finally, the last pages show Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist going somewhere, maybe Tartarus. They got info out of Dr. Ujiko via polygraph and the Nomu Research Group at Central Hospital. They predict that they have 2 months until Shigaraki’s ready to go again, so they’ll need 1 month of preparation. But, the info Stain gave All Might gave them more info. His letter ended up being a personal letter to All Might (Stain really is that nuts...), but there was a microchip in the blade Stain left containing the security records from Tartarus. It’s not stated how this info affected the mission at hand, but it sounds like it has to do something with the time frame. So, I’m curious if they have less time to prepare or more? Given how this is the Final Arc, Imma say less.

Finally, the teaser asks “How are the villains moving?” I wonder if that means we’re switching to the villain’s next week. I would love to hang out with the kids more, but I would also like to know what our villains are up to. Like, where the hell is Himiko Toga? Is Spinner still questioning shit? What happened to Mr. Compress after he mauled himself to help Shigaraki and the others escape? Also I think we need more info on this dude’s backstory given he’s the grandson of the famous Robin Hood villain who’s name definitely didn’t escape me... 😐 Is Dabi laughing his ass off from the utter chaos he started? Is AFO still smiling like the evil mastermind he is? Is Shigaraki as crispy as he was earlier? I was going to ask about Twice but... 😭

So, yeah! Love this chapter. Really good transition chapter into whatever happens next. I’m kinda sad we didn’t see Deku fight off more past villains during his vigilante days. We got Muscular and Overhaul and I think that’s it? Didn’t see any of Overhaul’s minions or that teeth-blade villain (Fish-something?; he broke out, but we haven’t seen him since) or Re-Destro or his goons. I don’t count as Gentle or LaBrava as villains anymore and they were never truly evil to begin with. Regardless, it was a really cool arc to see a more dark side of Deku. I’m really glad Horikoshi made great use of his bunny hood and metal mask finally. Deku really did look demonic for some time. Also, seeing Deku badass is always a plus. And seeing the deconstruction of hero society and the possible reconstruction of it was really good too. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, unfortunately, but we can do our best to make it that way.

I’m also glad that we finally got our kids back in top form. Not just being heroes, but being teenagers too. They all had great moments especially Iida, Ochako, and now Shoto as they should. But, Bakugo’s apology was peak for me. Over 320 chapters of development and build-up lead to that moment and it really is one of the best in the series. It lives in my head rent free.

So, we got 1-2 months in-manga-time until what is probably the final battle of the series. God, I can’t believe we’re actually nearing the end of this series. I started reading it back in 2018 when shit was rough for me. I found this series after listening to the music and reading the hype around it. I watched the show then I read the manga and it really helped me. Saved me from a dark place actually. I will miss this series when it’s done and I will be greatly for the joy Horikoshi has gifted us. I’ll try to save the farewells for later. I’d say this series has at least 1-1 1/2 years to go.

Me @ the kids and All Might:

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booksweet · 3 years

Text

Expectations

starring: Gojo Satoru x fem!reader

Synopsis: what If your favorite character became real the moment you needed the most?

Warnings: fluffy, probably shibuya incident arc spoilers (not too much), grammar mistakes, both reader and Gojo are +18

Word count: 2k

A/N: hello! Here's me again bringing you the sequence of "Real" (please don't forget to read the first part, okay?). I was so glad you enjoyed chapter 1 that it turned out as a series and I can say I'm BEYOND happy!! Hope you like it 💛

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

tagging: @noritoshiikamo @iwaizumini

“So… Tell me about your powers,” she asks him when they stopped their tour through the city together. “Did they remain? Or you lost them when you came here?”

She knew she should’ve already spoken to him about this matter, yet she was scared of his answer, yet she frightened that if he got his powers, maybe he would go back to his world and let het behind. She would be all alone. Again.

Being alone all the time was tiresome, she had been tired for so long since her parents died, and she moved away from the town she was born and rose by them. After all this time without them, she got used to living alone, eating alone, existing all by herself, everything was so mechanical to her that she didn’t even notice how the way she was living affected her perceptions of her surroundings.

And then, he suddenly appeared. That night was marked inside her memories. She was fond of many things, reading her favourite manga above all, but if someone asked her what she expected getting from reading one, she would answer just some comfort and relief from stressful days, not her favourite character scaping from his world and popping up inside her room.

“Hey! Y/N? Are you even listening to me?” Satoru’s voice takes her out from her reveries, again she got lost on her own thoughts about him and what happened. Is it selfish not wanting you to go back there?

“Sorry” She apologizes with a shy smile, his eyes hidden with sunglasses probably focused on her. “What were you saying?”

“You are a little absent-minded, aren’t you?” His voice in an amused tone makes you release a loud laugh that make he smile eye-to-eye. “I was saying that my powers are still here with me…” He repeats as he takes you by your hand walking somewhere else, his slightly narrow when he sees something that caught up his interest. “Is that… Ice cream?”

By his answer to her question, her heart flickers a little. He could do anything he wanted; he was the strongest above all. Why wouldn’t he just go back to his world? Why would he still be here with you? Your mind going whirlwind with a thousand questions unanswered.

“You lost it,” He says once more, now with her favourite ice cream flavour in one extended hand as a signal to give it to her. “Again. Am I that much a bad company that you can’t concentrate on our date?” He fakes a heartbroken and sad tone seeming like a boy who was crying over his first love.

“Satoru, what?! No! And this is not a date!” She did get lost in thoughts again, but hell no, this wasn’t a date. “Don’t you dare smile like this to me, don’t you dare, Satoru Gojo!” Her flustered tone mixed up with an angry one as a cocky smirk grew upon his face.

“Whaat? Me? Smiling?” He walks closer to her, his height almost towering over hers, and when their faces where almost touching each other, the smell of ice cream surrounding them when he says “How? Smiling like this?”

She could’ve fainted right there, yes, she could. One could say she was almost having a heart attack the faster her heart was beating and that idiot in front her knew how much he affected her, and, for God’s sake, he was doing it way to good not to care. Still, she wouldn’t give up to him so easily.

“As you said…” She started stepping back and eating her own ice cream. “Your powers still remain, so how does it feel?”

“Little one…” He begins to say, but he seems to reconsider his words while looking at her face. “I can feel everything. I can see everything and nothing at the same time. The beginning and the ending. Infinity and beyond.”

She remained silent by his side, waiting for him to continue whatever he was thinking about to speak of. She couldn’t imagine how heavy must be the burden of carrying power like his, powers that were both a blessing and a curse.

“Your world does have curse energy like mine,” He finally continue his line of thought. “Even though it doesn’t change into spirits or something more tangible to exorcize. I still don’t get how you get rid of it here, it’s a mystery.”

“And…” He suddenly stops, narrowing his eyebrows in a confused expression, it was like he realized something he didn’t know how to explain to her.

“And?” You give his arm a soft touch, without words saying to him I am here, you can say whatever is on your mind.

“And” He eyes at her so deeply you imagine if he could reach her soul, his hand placed above hers. “I can see you. Your everything. I can sense your presence, your heartbeat like it is my own. Is it strange? Is it strange that I feel you like you are a part of me, and I am a part of you?” He holds her hand tighter. “Is it strange that when we hold hands everything seems right again? Is it strange that-“

All at once he lets go of her hand. She gives him a strange look, What’s wrong? Was what she as thinking. Goosebumps running through her body, wild butterflies flying on her stomach made her lips dry of nervousness. I feel you like you are a part of me, and I am a part of you. Everything seems right. He must be kidding, no one never…

“Gojo,” She says when she can catch her breath again, his eyes never leaving her face. “You shouldn’t play with things like this.” She pinches her nose, feeling her face warmer and warmer each second. “We must go, there are other places I want to show you.”

“But, Y/N,” He tries to say, she could feel melancholy following his words. I don’t want to hear, I don’t.

“Let’s go, Satoru Gojo,” she fakes a smile and an excited tone. “There’s more of my world that those pretty eyes of yours have never seen.”

They went through many of her favourite places such as the park, that café closer to her loved library, she showed him her favourite restaurant, the places she was used to go when feeling unwell with herself. And there was this moment, this specifically moment, that his eye’s light changed.

The way her hair flipped towards the wind, the way her smell invaded his nostrils, the way he was just all eyes only to hers. Every little detail unmissed to him. Despite their last conversation ending, he’s been constantly aware of her, of how she makes him feel in this odd world. He didn’t lie when he said all those words, he meant each one of them, but he was still wondering why she dismissed him that way. He was afraid that fright would make her run away from him again.

“Hey, you enjoyed our stroll today?” She was resting peacefully on her place’s couch, head laid softly on a cushion and eyes looking at him eagerly. He felt she was still fluttering because of what happened between them before, and he wanted so bad to stop that growing unease feeling his mind twisted every second.

“You don’t know how” He says with a genuine smile, knowing more of you, of how you lived, and your habits makes him avid to get closer and closer to you. His keen voice loud when he laughs “I’ve never though of not trying to defeat monsters and curses while eating a good, sweet cake or ice cream and…”

“And?”

“You can say I’m a good partner, can’t you?” His keen smile turning into a cocky and teasing one. “Afterall, how could I not try my best having such a beautiful lady by my side?”

“You-“She starts, but the growing reddish upon her nose and cheeks reports how nervous she gets when he talks like this, how he teases her and her blood runs wild through her veins. “You know it wasn’t a date, Satoru!” Placing a hand in front of her pretty face to hide whatever her expression could speak for her that moment. “And yes, you’re also a good companion, I can say that.”

“Hey, Y/N,” Satoru’s voice wakes her up from her dreams late that night, she was on the couch covered with her bedsheets. Did he picked them and then covered me up? Her heart bounced inside her chest and she felt her hands damp with sweat with that thought of him caring about her.

“Uh… What time…?” She opens her eyelids slowly, yawning hard as she stretches herself to wake her body. By the time she catches the sight of him, he’s sitting down right on the ground in front of her, his hands towering over her legs like he wanted to touch her but is not allowed to.

“Can I show you something?” His voice says nothing to her, no opens to reveal his feelings behind his tone. Suddenly, she feels cold running over her body. She nods slowly to him. “Do you trust me?” Again, another movement of her head. “Little one… I need to hear your voice.” His bare eyes stare at her fondly, she will never understand why he does this to her. Doesn’t he know that he will break my heart?

“Yes, Satoru, I trust you.” Her voice is hoarse from sleep, but this is all he needs to place one arm underneath her legs and the other on her back to carry her bridal-way. “Wh-what?! This is really necessary?”

“Hold on, I got you” His thumb moving around the bottom of her back, his movements, and the feeling of his warm body closer to hers making her relax. “I’ll show you something, breath and don’t scream”

And suddenly they weren’t at her living room, but at the rooftop of some skyscraper. So high she could feel her sight twisting.

“Hey, hey…” His muffled voice was calm against her ears, his soft grip tightening a little in reassurance of her safety. “I’m here, I’m here, it’s okay.”

“F-fuck! Why? Why are we here?”

“I need to show you” His tone didn’t hide he was nervous, worried about something. “Please close your eyes.”

As she does what he requested, his arm on her back loosen his grip and a hint of panic stars to grow inside her. I’m going to…

“You are not going to fall. I will never let something bad happen to you.” His voice is bold and so sure-footed that she decides not to complain, even thought she knew that it wouldn’t be their reality sooner when he’ll get back to his world. His fingers gently touching her eyes and she feels something changing in the air. The air around them shaking and heavy. His powers…

“Open your eyes, Y/N, please.”

As she opens her eyes, she knew something was different. In front of her there was still the night city, above her the skies. But she could see energy, colourful energy arising from each place she could catch a sight. “What- WHAT?” She screamed in disbelief. “What did you do to me?!”

He bit his lips in a worried expression. “I did nothing. I had this theory but…” He couldn’t look at her anymore, it was painful. “I just managed to unlock your own cursed energy, I don’t know how, I had these feeling and it just…”

They remained in silence for what seemed like hours, even though night were still ruling hard the skies up them. Their bodies close to each other, their warm protecting them from that cold night, from that scary truth. What the hell I am?

“Y/N”

“Uh. What?”

“I need your help to get back to my world. I need your help to get back to my students. You do know what happened to them after my arrive, don’t you?”

main navi | masterlist

#sofi is writing — jjks #jjk gojo #gojo satoru x reader #gojo reader #gojo fluff #gojo x female reader #gojo hcs #gojo satoru fanfic #gojo satoru fluff #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jujutsu kaisen fluff #gojo satoru jjk #jjk headcanons #jjk fanfics #gojo x you

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sergeantsporks · 3 years

Text

Nowhere Else to Go

Rating: Teen, Gen

Graphic depictions of violence, Major character death.

TW: Self-harm, mentioned child abuse, emotional manipulation

Chapter 2/4: Curses and Glyphs

Ch 1

“You know those are fake, right?”

At Emperor Belos’ voice, Lilith surged upwards, creating a blade of ice and pointing it at him. He went cross-eyed looking at the point that was touching his nose, and she lowered it. Slowly. “Apologies. I keep forgetting that it’s you.” She glanced at the texts on the coffee table. “I know. That doesn’t mean it’s all lies, though. There may be some truth to it. I shouldn’t discount any source until I’m sure it’s all false.”

He sat down cross-legged on the floor, sliding one of the books over to his side and flipping through it. “Where did all of this junk come from?”

“My mother. She was desperate to find a cure for Edalyn, and she… fell for quite a few scams.”

“Mmm.” Hunter scanned the pages, then froze. “Who owned this before your mother?”

“I don’t know. Some con artist. Why?”

Hunter turned the book around and jabbed a finger at the corner of the page. “Wild witch magic. There’s a glyph here.”

Lilith snatched it up. “Lemme see.” Sure enough, there was a glyph sequence at the bottom of the page. “Hmmm.” She sketched the glyphs on a piece of paper. “Alright, let’s see what this does!”

Hunter grabbed her wrist. “Wait, we don’t know what it’s capable of!”

Lilith yanked away. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“It could be dangerous!”

“I doubt it.”

“This is how you burned down the library! It’s wild magic, it’s unpredictable and—”

Lilith snorted. “Now you really sound like Belos.”

Hunter jolted upright. “Don’t—”

Lilith grabbed his wrist. “C’mere.” She pulled his hand closer to the glyph, and he tensed. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

“I—I don’t have any magic, it won’t—”

“Then there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Lilith tapped his hand on the glyph. It glowed gently, and spheres made of ice floated into the air, glowing and making sparkling patterns on the walls.

Lilith’s eyes widened. “Oh!”

Hunter yanked his hand away, and the ice crashed to the ground. “You shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have—it’s wild magic, it’s forbidden and—”

“That’s Belos talking. You don’t work for him anymore. You don’t have to listen to what he said. Wild magic isn’t anything to be scared of—it’s dangerous, yes, of course, anything powerful is, but it’s also... hope.” She shrugged. “Have you ever been able to do magic without a staff before?”

Hunter looked at the fallen ice, then slowly sat back down next to her. “…can you… show me again? I read some books, but I—I’ve never—it’s forbidden, and I—”

“And you were a good little soldier, I know. Very loyal. To a bit of a fault.”

His ears turned red. It was… incredibly odd, seeing Belos like this. Just a scared kid. Lilith sketched a light glyph. “Try this one. It’s easy—just a light glyph. Nothing to be scared of.”

Hunter tapped it, and it floated up, a twinkling light illuminating the cursed slime taking over his face. “…huh.”

“Does that look dangerous to you?”

“…I guess not.” Hunter sketched his own and tapped it. Nothing happened. He sighed. “Guess I should have known. I can’t do magic on my own.”

Lilith sketched light glyph after light glyph, pushing them sideways across the table for him to touch and activate. Despite his melancholy, he did, creating constellations, glittering masterpieces over heir heads. “That’s because you’re thinking of magic as something you have to do on your own. I didn’t create these glyphs—I didn’t even discover them. Luz found them, she taught them to me. And she didn’t create them, either—she simply followed the patterns in nature. None of us use our magic on our own—the isles gave us this gift, showed us the way.” She sketched one last light glyph and pushed it over to him. “Maybe you can’t do magic on your own, but no one can.”

He didn’t activate the last glyph, and she glanced over. He was staring into space, his eyes unfocused. “Hunter? Are you—”

He made a choking noise and fell over to the side, gagging and coughing. The slime that was taking over his face came out of his mouth, and a jolt of panic ran down Lilith’s spine.

“Hold on!”

He whined, coughing up more slime as she ran for the kitchen, sliding back down next to him with a bottle of elixir. She tilted it into his mouth, rubbing his throat to make him swallow. Hunter hacked and coughed some more, and she sat him up so he could breathe easier.

“Your arms,” he wheezed.

She looked down. Feathers had started poking out. “Ah.” She went back to the kitchen, sipping her own bottle of elixir. When she went back, he was hiding behind the couch again, his knees drawn up to his chest. “I… didn’t know how bad Belos’ curse was,” she said softly.

He looked to the side. “He didn’t let many people see him vulnerable,” he replied matter-of-factly.

Lilith slid down to sit next to him. “Neither did you.”

“I’m not vulnerable. I mean—I am in this slime-sack, but I wasn’t.”

“Mmm.” Lilith twisted the ends of her hair in her hands. “When I was a kid, my mother never paid attention to me. And then when I joined the emperor’s coven, it was… the opposite. People paid attention. If I made them. If I earned it. I had to fight hard for approval, but I could get that scrap of approval, the attention that my mother never gave me. And in a way… I think that was worse. You, me, Kikimora, always at each other’s throats. Trying to take each other down to get Belos’ approval. Maybe if we’d ever stopped fighting each other, we would have realized that we could have helped each other. Maybe if we’d stopped seeing each other as the enemy, life… could have been better. For me. Certainly for you.”

“I was fine.”

“You were alive. But you weren’t fine, none of us were. None of us could be fine in that situation. Kikimora’s still not fine, she’s top dog now that we’re both gone, I’m sure, but she’ll spend every second paranoid that someone else is coming for her power.”

Hunter rested his chin on his knees. “Maybe you weren’t fine. Maybe you were unhappy, maybe you struggled. But Belos cared about me. He was happy I was there, I was useful. I was special.”

Lilith sighed. “We went over this, Hunter. He was using you. Your ‘special’ ness? Was the fact that he could take your body. Belos doesn’t care about any of us. He never did. Would you be here now if he really cared about you?”

He looked away again. “Whatever. You wouldn’t get it.”

Lilith stood up. “No. You’re right. I wouldn’t. Belos was using me, but in my mind, I was using him, too. I thought I could get him to do what I wanted, to heal my sister. I never had the same devotion to him you did. I had Edalyn—maybe I was wrong in how I treated her, maybe I was a bad sister, but at least I had something to live for other than those fleeting moments of approval from Belos. I’m surprised you even came here after Belos threw you out. I’d think you’d still be at his side like a kicked dog, still begging for a pat on the head.” She moved back towards the kitchen. She should probably store some elixir around the house like Eda had for her, so that he could get to it in time if another attack hit him. “But… I suppose I’m glad you’re not. Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Hunter.

Xxx

Lilith couldn’t sleep. It happened a lot since the curse—she woke up, unfortunately usually with a craving for voles that meant it was probably time to take another elixir. She shambled out into the hallway, and was about to create light when she realized she could see. There was a soft glow coming from Eda’s old room, and she padded over, pushing open the door to see Hunter poring over the scam healing books, a ball of light floating above him.

“Wow, no wonder the bags under your eyes are so bad. What are you doing up this late?”

“Reading.”

“Hilarious. Couldn’t sleep?”

Hunter rubbed at his eyes. “What if I have another attack when I’m asleep? I’ll choke on slime and die, and I’ll just… never wake up. And you’re asleep, and your mother is asleep—if Belos attacks us, we’re sitting ducks!”

“And you’d do what, exactly? Cough up slime at him? You’re just running yourself ragged.” She nudged him with one foot. “C’mon, let’s go downstairs before we wake up Mother.”

He trudged after her, tripping over his own feet and knocking into her from behind. “Sorry! Sorry, sorry. I’m just… still not used to this body.”

“’s fine.” Lilith put the kettle on, a ball of light hovering over her shoulder. “Find anything interesting in those books?”

“They’re mostly junk. But I did find a couple more glyphs! I’d need you to test them, though, I still can’t do it on my own—I had to use that last glyph you drew for light. It’s really strange finding them, though, because Belos heavily restricted all wild magic. Luz only found the glyphs by studying nature—it’s odd to find them in some scam book. But your sister was considered a criminal, too, and a wild witch, and she probably ran a scam or two like this. Makes me wonder if maybe there’s some kind of… I don’t know, underground scam group of wild witches? I know there are wild witches out there, but the idea of there being a wider group, not just a few loners floating around is—” he shrank back into himself. “Never mind. It’s too late—you don’t want to hear about it, I’m sure—”

Lilith poured the boiling water into a pair of mugs. “No, go on, I’m listening. I asked. An underground group of wild witches? It would be hard to hide that from Belos. How do the scam books fit into it?”

“Code? Or maybe a lot of the wild witches use scamming people as a smokescreen to keep Belos from figuring out that they’re actually part of a wider wild coven?”

“A wild coven. There’s a concept. I know Eda jokes about her ‘bad girls coven’ but…”

“They’d know glyph patterns beyond what you can piece together on your own, like the one we did earlier. If we could find them—”

Lilith set a mug of tea down in front of him and sipped her own. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. A few glyphs in a scam healing book doesn’t mean there’s a whole secret society out there. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t. But we don’t have enough information to go charging out chasing shadows. Careful with that, it’s hot.”

Hunter sipped at the tea. “Okay. Okay, fine. But if there is, they might know spells we don’t—maybe how to lift curses.”

Oh. “Hunter, I… maybe. But please, please, please don’t pin all of your hopes on it.”

“I… don’t know what else to pin my hopes on. Belos spent years trying to remove his curse. The only thing he wouldn’t accept is wild magic, so if there’s a cure, it must be there!”

“Okay. It’s too late now to look into it, though. Let’s… try some of those new glyph combos?”

He nodded and followed her into the living room. It was still… disconcerting. After all, that was a full adult body, and an old one at that. But most of the time, despite the old appearance, Lilith could easily imagine him as a child. It was something about the way his face moved, the way he talked. The way he held himself. It was missing the usual bravado of the Golden Guard she’d known, but still seemed so familiar.

Hunter sketched the glyph patterns on a piece of paper, and Lilith copied it. She pushed it to him. “You go.”

He tapped it, and explosion went off. Hunter yelped and jumped backwards as Lilith snorted. “You did that on purpose!”

“I did not! Probably an experimental glyph that didn’t work out. Edalyn tried a few of those. Glyph combos can be tricky.”

Hunter rubbed soot off of his face. “Told you it was dangerous!”

“Everything on the boiling isles is dangerous.”

“Yeah, but—” Hunter broke off coughing, ooze coating his hand. “Hngh—”

Lilith pushed the papers to the side. “That’s enough excitement for one night, I think. You need to go to sleep.”

She helped him stumble his way up the stairs and back to Eda’s room, sitting him back down on the bed. “Now sleep.”

He curled up in an exhausted ball. Lilith extinguished the light with a sigh. How did Eda take care of a kid all of the time? Did Luz stay up all night, too? Lilith went back downstairs and started a letter to Hooty.

Dear Hootsifer,

The Golden Guard is at my house. I need you to let Edalyn know—Belos has switched bodies with him. It’s… odd, having him around. He’s not as much of a brat as I remember. The problem is, Belos was suffering from a curse. And I’m relatively certain that it’s fatal. I don’t know how much time Hunter has left. I wish I could help him, but I don’t even know where to start. I wish you were here—you’ve had Luz in the house for so long, I’m sure you could help with this one.

Love, Lilith

Lilith sighed, and went back up the stairs, briefly poking her head into Eda’s room. Hunter was still curled up in a ball, but… something was wrong. He was all tensed up, and she thought she heard a strangled whimper. Lilith crept into the room, sitting down next to him. “Hunter?” she said in a low voice.

He started awake, grabbing her hand. “No!”

“Hunter, it’s just me, you’re okay—”

“I didn’t mean to, it’s not my f-faul—” He squeezed tighter, then fell back asleep, twitching.

Lilith shook her head, but didn’t pry her hand out of his grasp.

What did Belos do to you?

Ch 3

#toh #the owl house #toh hunter #lilith clawthorne #toh lilith #tw: child abuse #tw: emotional manipulation

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castiel-kline · 3 years

Text

happy birthday @angelfishofthelord !!!

here’s Cas being Old and talking about dinosaurs to hopefully make you smile <3

---

“Hey, there you are!”

Castiel is tucked in a corner of the library when Dean’s voice startles him out of the book he’s reading. He stands up, a million things that could have gone wrong racing through his imagination at top speed.

“Dean. Is everything alright?”

He waves a hand in dismissal. “Yeah, no worries. Me, Sam and Jack are gonna watch Jurassic Park. You wanna join us?”

Castiel wrinkles his nose. He’s seen stills from that movie, and those plus the references Dean has made to it over the years make it sound like an inaccuracy-riddled insult to the beautiful creatures he once watched over.

But Cas has never been one to refuse time with his family, so he follows Dean through the bunker’s halls and takes a seat next to Jack on the sofa.

Sam passes him a bowl of popcorn.

“You made it!” he says, looking uncharacteristically relaxed. It’s… nice.

“Of course,” Castiel says, passing the popcorn to Jack’s eager hands and returning the boy’s smile. He’ll enjoy it more than Cas will. He cares much more about the people than the snacks or the film, anyway.

He takes in Sam’s easy smile again, and the calm in Dean’s posture where he stands preparing the DVD. Even Jack looks toward the blank television screen in excited anticipation, despite having learned by now not to trust Dean’s taste in cinema. Jack much preferred getting to explore films on his own, and Castiel was always thrilled to be included in his late night Netflix adventures.

He clears his throat, unsure why he’s so nervous. He does like dinosaurs, after all. “So… you like this movie, right?”

“Hell yeah we do,” Dean says. “Sam and I watched it in theaters when it first came out. He wouldn’t shut up about velociraptors for months.”

“I was ten,” Sam protests, pink creeping across his cheeks. “Besides, it wasn’t even velociraptors. It was... dilophosaurus.” He’d trailed off into a barely audible mumble in his embarrassment, but it was still loud enough for Dean to hear.

“Oh, that’s right!” he laughs, eyes alight with the delighted gleam of a sibling collecting ammunition to tease with. “He’d sit in the library for hours searching for any mention of the damn thing. I always said he’d be better off with a T. Rex obsession like a normal kid, but no-o.”

Castiel leans over, nodding in Sam’s direction. “Well, I think dilophosaurus is a very good choice of favorite dinosaur.”

Sam looks surprised, and Jack, who’d been watching the conversation like a tennis match, looks to Cas directly.

“You know about dinosaurs?”

Castiel frowns, confused. “Yeah, of course I do.”

They’re cut off by Dean, who keeps talking as he’s sitting down on Jack’s other side with the remote control.

“Could’ve sworn we watched this one with you before, Cas. When we found it at that movie rental place in Minnesota, after that ghoul hunt?”

“We would’ve,” says Sam, tone caked in playful bitterness. “But you wanted to get Mars Attacks instead, remember?”

Dean looks a bit sheepish. “Hey, sometimes you need a good B movie after a day of ganking monsters. Today, though, we gotta get the kid another check off the list of Spielberg must-sees, right? Cas, too. We’ve waited long enough as is.”

Castiel has just enough time to hope once more that this movie is of a better quality than many of Dean’s other favorites, and then his thoughts are swept away by the opening sequence lighting up the television.

---

Jack enjoyed the movie immensely. He liked the scares and the way it made his heart beat faster. He liked the way Dr. Grant was so protective of the kids. Most of all, of course, he liked the dinosaurs.

He’d found a book about them the other day when he was cleaning in the library with Sam, and when Dean overheard their conversation he immediately suggested this movie.

Jack thought Cas would be just as interested in dinosaurs as he was, but the angel spent the whole movie with a frown on his face and a furrow between his eyes.

As the brothers stand up, Dean to turn on the lights and Sam to collect the empty snack bowls, Jack nudges Cas’ arm with his elbow.

“Are you okay?”

Cas meets Jack’s gaze with gentle eyes.

“I’m fine. I- I thought that the ending was a bit sad.”

Jack frowns. “How was it sad? Almost everyone got off the island.”

“That’s not…” Cas shakes his head, and takes a moment to compose himself before giving Jack a small smile. “You don’t need to worry about me, Jack. It just made me remember when the dinosaurs died.”

Shocked silence falls upon the room like a fog. Jack knows he’s gaping in disbelief, and feels Sam and Dean doing the same.

Cas glances around, taking in everyone’s surprise. “What’s wrong?”

“Dude,” Dean says. “Did you… are you…”

“Were you really there when the dinosaurs died?” Sam manages, sounding strained.

Cas answers slowly, eyes narrowed. “Yes? It was very sad, but it was a long time ago. I’ve had time to mourn.”

“But you were there!” Dean repeats, dumbfounded. Cas continues staring.

“Yes, Dean, I was there.”

“I mean, what- what was it like?” Sam asks, wonder in his eyes.

“Well, um. It was hot. And fiery.”

“It was hot and fiery,” Dean says, broken record. “Wow.”

“I don’t understand. Why are you… why is this such a surprise? I thought the dinosaurs’ extinction was common knowledge.”

“Yeah, but talking to someone who saw it is… it’s amazing,” Sam says. If he wasn’t holding the butter-greased popcorn bowls, Jack is sure he would be gesturing every which way. “Why didn’t you tell us about it before?”

Cas blinks. “I didn’t know that you were interested. I thought if you wanted to know, you’d just ask me.”

“Dude. We didn’t know we could ask! I mean, we knew you were older than the pyramids, but the dinosaurs? That’s, what, fifty million years?”

“Sixty-five,” chime Sam and Jack, in unison.

“Wait a minute, how old do you think I am?”

That gives them pause. Jack exchanges hopeless glances with Sam and Dean, the three of them clambering for any exact number in the recesses of their minds. Jack draws a blank, both because Cas doesn’t really talk about his past and because time is a little twisted for him to begin with.

He knows he’s almost two, and that two years is not a long time, but to Jack it feels like forever.

He knows his mother was thirty-nine when she died, and he knows Sam and Dean are hovering somewhere near forty. Cas has lived millions of years, and though Jack can’t quite wrap his mind around that vast length of time, he knows that makes Cas near eternal. Like Jack’s supposed to grow up to be.

Oddly, it’s a comforting thought.

“How old are you?” He asks it to put an end to the silence, and because he’s realized he really wants to know the answer.

Cas hesitates, brow creasing in thought. “It’s hard to say. The first thing I really remember is the tiktaalik, so I suppose that makes me…”

“Holy shit,” Sam breathes. He must know what the tiktaalik is, Jack thinks. He’ll have to ask about it later.

“Three and a half billion. Approximately,” Castiel finishes.

Jack can almost hear Dean’s jaw hit the floor.

“That old, huh?” Dean asks. His voice is strained, and he sounds faint.

“I might be closer to four billion, actually,” Cas muses.

“Okay, whoa,” Sam interjects, before Dean’s brain melts entirely. “That’s… that’s really impressive, Cas.”

“I- really?”

“Yeah, man,” Dean manages. But Cas still doesn’t look convinced, so Jack speaks up.

“You’re prehistoric!” he says. “I think that’s really special.”

Cas takes a long moment to respond, inexplicably looking younger as he processes their praise. It’s like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders- like for the first time in eons he feels like the years behind him, drenched in blood and pain and regret as they are, can be a gift rather than a curse.

Sam and Dean clap Castiel on the shoulder and take their leave from the room, the elder brother murmuring something about “antique angels” as they go.

Jack steps closer to Cas, clearing his throat.

“I, um. I found a book about dinosaurs the other day. Dean said that this movie would be educational, but… I was wondering if you could tell me about them? I don’t think I learned very much.”

“I would be happy to.” Cas smiles, reaching out to squeeze Jack’s shoulder. “This film wasn’t very accurate, anyway.”

“Really? How?”

“Well, for one thing, most of those dinosaurs didn’t even live during the same millennium. And they weren’t nearly so lizard-like. They had feathers.”

Jack responds in kind, whispering conspiratorially: “Like birds?”

“Sort of. Come on, I’ll draw some for you.”

Jack follows his father out of the room, smiling from ear to ear. Though the full scope of Castiel’s age remains far beyond his comprehension, Jack thinks it’s incredible. With all those years behind him, it’s no wonder that Cas is such a good parent.

Time is a teacher, and Cas has had a long life in which to learn. He has so much wisdom to share- and it’s not all about the dinosaurs, not because of the things he’s seen or the battles he’s won.

No, Castiel shines brighter than the most beautiful of stars. It’s a brilliance that comes from the inside out, forged through fire and pain and a heart stronger than diamond no matter how many times it’s broken.

Castiel shines with four billion years of love.

#hope you like it!#castiel #team free will 2.0 #my fic #spn fanfic #kitkat writes

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caguaydreams · 4 years

Text

A thorough analysis on why Vah Medoh’s dungeon theme makes me want to cry

Yep, that’s an accurate title. Hi there! do you have a moment to hear about Breath of The Wild soundtrack? posting for yet a third time in hopes that tumblr won't hide it. I'm so tired

What started as a quick and harmless post, pretending to simply point out a couple of things, rolled downhill, out of my grasp and turned into a massive snowball of a short essay. How and why did this happen? Well, I assume a lot of people know about this song, and know what I’m talking about when I say that it makes me tear up and sob uncontrollably with every change in key as the seconds tick by and I spiral down into a dwell of misery from where I struggle to find the exit and to later recover.

……No?…..At the VERY LEAST it makes you a little uncomfortable. And I state this with much certainty, because after reading hundreds of comments everywhere online where this song is present, I picked up on a vast majority of people who expressed to feel the same way I did when it came down to our current music subject. See, statistics don’t lie… normally. So, naturally, my intrigue got the best of me. I wanted to find out exactly why this soundtrack was mercilessly stirring up everyone’s emotions, so I caved in and we ended up with this.

Buckle in, fellas.

Out of all Divine Beasts’ dungeon themes, Vah Medoh’s is the one that I can’t sit through. Not without growing antsy and wanting to turn it off as soon as possible. I find it genuinely difficult to listen to, and it’s not only because Revali is my favorite character and the song is just, plainly put, depressing, mind you.

We’ll start from 0 terminals activated.

It opens up similar to the other three dungeon themes; the pace is slow but eerie, gives off the impression that it sounds broken somehow. Something is off here, and it’s easy to figure out what that is from the get go: you’re basically entering a majestic, ancient, mechanical mausoleum, where everything went terribly wrong a century ago. Someone is gone, someone you knew, someone who was probably close to you, but it’s impossible to be sure. You don’t remember a thing, and this entire ordeal is confusing at best, and terrifying at worst. It’s your duty to make things right again.

It’s the same for all four Divine Beasts upon entering, save for the obvious little differences that separates them from each other and make them unique. Ruta’s is played on a major key, adhering to a sense of hopefulness. Naboris’s begins with a startling smashing of the piano keys, much like thunder of a sudden lighting strike. And Rudania’s theme starts threatening, dangerous, like scalding lava.

But now, back to Vah Medoh. The tone here is… alienating. The dissonant chords are all over the place, and feel disconnected, cold. It’s almost as if someone doesn’t want us to be here, or just like the elusive key, our presence is unexpected. Fitting, for a Divine Beast that’s high above the land, impossible for most to reach, yet we somehow made it. Apart from the piano, we have the occasional hint to rito culture, in the shape of a short, synthetic version of the rolled chords at the very beginning of Rito Village. A quiet reminder of where we come from. There is also, of course, the morse code distress signal, but we’ll talk more about that later.

As soon as this formal introduction is over, we finally get to the more, say, intimate stuff. Oh, and wouldn’t you know, it’s just tragic.

One terminal activated.

There’s no better short way I can describe this passage, other than anxiety-inducing. Especially when the strings come into play, and there’s two reasons I can think of why I feel this is an important thing to point out:

1- Characters and Symbolism.

I tend to associate stringed instruments, all of those which compose the violin family, with rito culture. And Revali, most specifically. In Creating a Champion we can see the early concept art and designs for all or most major characters in the game, and Revali’s highlighted rough design might be the one that changed the most throughout proper development of the character, out of all champions. He looks quite different from our usual depiction of him, it’s fascinating. What truly catches my eye, however, is the design of his bow.

You thought bird puns were bad? Oh boy, how do you feel about Revali having a bow that looks like a violin/cello/viola??? And do you need a bow to play it also??? Like, is it even an instrument or it’s nothing more than a mere fashion statement?-

Anyway. I believe this was originally going to be a not-so-subtle wink to rito culture, being heavily musically inclined as we can see and conclude for ourselves. Perhaps Revali was going to be a musician as well, now how cool it that!

Needless to say, the idea was eventually scrapped. But one detail I am CERTAIN carried over to the character we know and love today(okay not all of us love him but seriously if you dislike him why are you still here lol): strings. The association between bows(weapon) and stringed instruments, aside from being a quite clever and creative one, goes beyond the concept art and remains strong as part of Revali’s character, settling for having a presence via score. After all, Revali is a master of archery, so in that way it makes sense to keep strings as symbolism to reinforce the idea and drive it home.

But can you guess what other thing Revali excels at? That’s right: flying. He’s the only rito we know of who successfully managed to take advantage of wind currents and bend them to his will. And do you know what musical instruments are often used to evoke the feeling of flight and gale? If you thought of bowed strings, you’re correct! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much support on this topic online, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I am most certain that this is fact, although not something worth discussing on the Internet, by the looks of it.

Anyhow, violins/cellos/etc are ever-present whenever we’re close to Rito Village or dealing with a rito related mission. Attack on Vah Medoh, for example, features a sequence of strings that is meant to evoke the strong winds we’re fighting against in that particular moment(*). Another great example is The Final Trial, the song that plays at the shrine of resurrection nearing the end of the Champions’ Ballad. Preceding the activation of each terminal, you’ll notice that a new instrumental element joins the crowd: the first one corresponds to the tambourines, related to the zora and Mipha; the second one are strings, referencing the rito and Revali, etc. I tell you, the moment I heard this during the trial I almost started crying like a baby. And, although strings have a lot to do with Rito culture in general, they tie most strongly to Revali, since he was the champion of his people, and his legacy carried over throughout the years. His accomplishments became material of folk tale, a legend, a source of pride and inspiration for the village. And let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, Revali is the crucial and foremost connection Link has to this place. Other than appeasing Vah Medoh, Link’s responsibility here is to free his past fellow champion’s spirit from Ganon’s malice. The soundtrack is referencing Revali first, and by extension his devotion to his home.

With all that in mind, let’s move on to our next point:

2- Nowhere to Go.

You shoot the canons, land on top of the Divine Beast, do what you gotta do, activate the first terminal and the soundtrack goes off unannounced. Like some sort of surprise anxiety bomb. The rhythm turns fast, the melody erratic, incredibly desperate in its execution. There’s this sheer despair, fear, this feeling of suffocation almost, which are so well achieved in this particular piece.

And that is, partially, because a quite familiar resource is used here as well; one that we’ve heard before in songs such as Rito Village or Revali’s theme. You could even think of it as a motif: two notes are played in an semitone interval, repeatedly and in quick succession. For the sake of later convenience, we’ll call this the Flight Motif, now let me explain why. In Breath of The Wild, this semitone loop is often followed up by some form of resolution. In Rito Village, formerly known as Dragon Roost Island(**), that resolution consists of a graceful descent of the melody, from a high that was built up previously during the motif. On the other hand, if you listen to Revali’s theme, you’ll notice that the interval repeats itself for a couple of times as thought charging up, to then rise fast and determined into a triumphal reprise of Revali’s distinctive assigned melody. This juxtaposition supposes the difference that lays between common rito flight and Revali’s trademark ability; both musical sequences are speaking of flight, albeit in two different languages depending on the way to achieve it. While the rito traditionally use their wings to glide and let themselves get swayed by the air currents Buzz Lightyear style, Revali takes full advantage of his flying capabilities to somehow create an updraft of his own, rising meters above the ground whenever he likes or needs to.

So, now that I layed out my base of thought when focusing on the strings, this’ll be much easier to explain. We’ve settled what the instruments themselves are a symbolic representation of Revali, in this scenario specifically. He was the only one inside Vah Medoh, and the score is, in a way, a retelling of what we can vaguely assume went down here during the Great Calamity, as much as it is what sets the tone and ambience for Link’s mission. But what are we hearing exactly? What we talked about, the Flight Motif, is being repeated nonstop. And that’s the thing, remember how I mentioned that this sequence usually finds resolution at the end? Well. Inside Vah Medoh,… it never does. The melody picks up in numerous occasions, but it’s not nearly as graceful, or calculated, as we’ve grown used to by now. It gets tangled and lost, and then inevitably falls to the ground in disarray. The pattern repeats itself, reaching higher after a handful of failed attempts, but no matter how much it tries, the cycle never ends. What used to tell us about flying and freedom in the skies, has morphed into an almost sinister musical incarnation of a tornado, and there is no way out of this trap. What do you think it must feel like to mindlessly flap your wings against wind currents so strong and violent, that it is impossible to get anywhere nearby, let alone take off every time you lose your balance. Or every time you’re shot down. On top of that, trying to aim and fight back in whatever short breaks and opportunities you get, at an enemy that’s much more powerful and relentless, who’s using your own element as a weapon to destroy you… it’s a risk Revali surely had to take in order to put up a fight. Even knowing full well that the odds were not in his favour, that he was most likely going to lose this battle, that he was going to die. Let that sink in. I’ll skip the activation of the second terminal, since there’s barely any change registered in the theme in general. So-

Three terminals activated.

I know this post is supposed to be a breakdown of the song purely, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for a little theorising, and the following scrutiny is also quite relevant for our discussion. Bear with me for a bit. I’ve read almost everywhere about people’s most common interpretations on the Divine Beasts SOS signals, and how everyone thinks that Revali’s coming in last (a few seconds later than the other champions) has to do with him holding on for longer. Or, also, overconfident as he was, it means that the idea of calling out for additional support didn’t cross his mind until it was too late, and that’s why the beeping sounds more frantic and panicked than the others’ when it does appear. After giving it some thought myself, I’m betting on the latter option holding more ground, and that’s not all. I want to touch upon a detail of the piece that I never acknowledged was there until very recently(after seeing myself obliged to listen to this song fully and a handful of times, suffering every minute of it for the sole purpose of this analysis. It’s okay I didn’t need my heart anyway). Soon after activating the third terminal, the SOS signal disappears, or grows distant and faint enough that we can’t make it out from the background anymore. In its place, we’re confronted by this… shrill, piercing and painfully slow tune. It sounds synthetic, artificial, devoid of life. And it’s funny, because you know what it reminds me of? I’ll tell you:

A heartbeat flatline sound.

And I want to highlight that this doesn’t happen in any of the other Divine Beasts themes. All their SOS signals carry on, but Medoh’s is no more. This abrupt stop, followed by this bone-chilling tune…. makes me believe that Revali was the first of the champions to fall. A few days ago I came across SuperZeldaGirl’s video on a similar topic, theorising that this could very much be the case. There is not much evidence to support this claim other than some visual cues that could be suggesting to it, but after I found this in the soundtrack, and if we’re to rely on it for anything, I believe Revali was either the first champion to be ambushed by Ganon, or well…. the first to be killed. It is plausible, because short after Calamity Ganon unleashes his power, Revali parts from the group and flies directly to Vah Medoh, and he very well could’ve been the first pilot to arrive.

On this note…. we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves, when Age of Calamity provides long-awaited answers to many of our questions.

Four terminals activated.

An interesting melody is being played on what, for me, would qualify as a glockenspiel or a celesta, which are keyboard based instruments that produce a sound similar to that of a music box(***). If you want to pay more attention to it, I suggest listening to Vetrom’s Instrumental Mix Cover of the theme, where they practically zoom in on this part of the song (keep in mind that it uses the All Terminals’ time signature so it’s being played faster). For some reason, this particular addition makes me feel profound empathy. The sound of this instrument could be described as cute or childlike, magical, even. It is more often than not used to represent innocence, but I highly doubt that’s specifically the intention here. Much like the leading strings’ melody, the melodic contour of this one is trapped in a loop of going up and down constantly, but the difference is that this time around it sounds more under control. And much more uniform too. It doesn’t lose focus or takes risky, fruitless leaps, but rather chooses to stay on a path of waves that consistently rises and falls without taking detours. Like a determined battle strategy, giving it your all. You fall, but get back up again, and try again, and again. It reminds me of Revali’s approach to training, being persistent to the point of overworking himself. He had discipline nailed down to a tee, which I also think served him well in combat. It’s not just about being hard on yourself, either, but being confident and having complete faith in your abilities; believing that you’ll make it. For this to appear now, that the SOS signal is almost completely gone, is significant because it means that by this point, being so close to success on Link’s behalf, the music is sparing genuine encouragement for once, in spite of the tragic outcome of the past and the danger of the current situation. But, in all honesty, this is probably just me reading too much into it. Perhaps the composer just thought this addition sounded pretty bitching and there’s not much else to it, which is completely fine. Although, intentional or not, sometimes coincidences do happen, and at the end of the day, interpretations like this are a form of appreciation for an artist’s work and for what they can unknowingly accomplish.

All terminals activated.

This is the moment when the song finally lightens up. Notice how the strings abandon the wave pattern for a more even contour. The beat quickens, the melody stabilizes. At first I thought, coming from our flight analogy, that this meant a cease in movement entirely, and it was partly one of the reasons why the song in general makes me anxious. But thinking about it now, …there is something different going on here. The strings are playing on a steady rhythm. It resembles a march, it’s like a pounding heart. It’s a lively, hopeful statement. And what’s interesting is that, up until this point, there was so much fear and helplessness present in the score, even going as far as to reach a dead end when we activate the third terminal. But that’s it, isn’t it? the music just keeps going further.

It’s saying: this isn’t over yet. Even after complete and utter defeat, there’s still hope and an underlying wish to overcome this predicament, and we started to hear this as soon as a fourth terminal is activated. The melody we previously talked about? it’s here as well, and its beat is much more daring and confident.

And I just want to say… this is so powerful. Because this sentiment is deeply tied to the game’s story and Revali’s character arc. You see, he is introduced as someone who resents Link for being the manifestation of his failure, in a way, because Revali has trained arduously his whole life to be where he is, to be recognised. And yet… this hylian gets chosen by a magic sword and some tale of divine destiny and, apparently, that’s all it takes for him to be deemed the hero that will save the land. In Revali’s eyes, Link has done nothing to prove his worth before him, so it is easy to see why he despises the silent knight so much; he is yet another individual that was born into their destiny. Meanwhile, Revali has had to build his reputation from the ground up, earning him a place among the greatest warriors of Hyrule, and even then he finds himself surrounded by people who grew up praised for being born gifted. We can see how Revali is the odd one out, and can map out the reason for him acting so antagonistic towards Link.

But once we’re on Medoh, things start to change. When Link enters the Divine Beast, Revali greets him with disdain, as per usual. Of course, Link has no recollection of whatever happened a hundred years ago, other than a small glimpse of the rito champion talking down to him, a memory that came and went in a flash. So as Link, we more than expect Revali to act cold and mocking, which he does. He provides us with as little help as needed in order to free Medoh, reluctantly, shielding his wounded pride over having to wait for Link, of all people, to come to their rescue. But you can hear him starting to open up bit by bit(I wish I could translate his dialogue directly from Japanese but I’ll make do with a couple of dubs and other numerous sources from translators online). With each little step Link takes towards success, activating the terminals, the perception Revali has of him shifts from one of resentment to one of genuine admiration and respect. By the end of it all, he is willing to not only cheer on Link during the boss battle, but to trust him with his life’s worth achievement. And once left alone, he admits defeat and lets go of his bitterness, realising that he was wrong to underestimate Link, and later wishes he could’ve had a chance to measured up to him. To take all of this into consideration and work with it in the soundtrack I think it’s genuinely splendid. And for once, I am grateful that it ends in somewhat of a positive note that puts my soul to rest. I still have a hard time listening to the first two thirds of the entire thing, but now I can look forward to a hopeful and earnestly heartening conclusion for all the pain that this composition puts me in. I must admit that it’s beautifully and brilliantly crafted, and that I am enamoured of it regardless.

That is why I wrote roughly 4k words about it! I hate myself!

If you’re as crazy as me about the soundtrack of this game, I recommend you read the published cd interview with the composers themselves! if you haven’t already. I just found it yesterday(unbelievable but it’s true) and… after writing all of this and checking it out, I felt validated. It sure is a one of a kind feeling.

Alright folks, we’ve made it to the end. Congratulations for sticking around and thanks being interested in my nonsensical rambling!

I also hope that you, like me, will now be unable to listen to bowed strings without being reminded of Revali. Good luck!

————– Annotations/Sidenotes/Whatever

(*)The Flight Motif(in point number 2) is also present in this track. We can hear it in the background right after the Rito leitmotif, as per usual. It starts with a clarinet, I think, before the strings take the lead. (**) Note that the Flight Motif only comes into play in the Breath of The Wild rendition of the song. (***)I strongly associate this instrument with Mipha, given that it is used in her theme, in every “response” to the initial melody. It can be heard in Attack On Vah Ruta, as well, it enters the scene when the notes Mi(E) and Fa(F) are played. The initial tune, Si and Do(B and C) are played on a clarinet or oboe, wind instruments just like the flute that leads Sidon’s respective theme. The celesta can also be heard inside Vah Ruta, activating the first terminal…. when the song really takes a turn just like Medoh’s. Mipha has nothing to do with the song of this analysis, however. We must understand that instruments, although they are attached to characters/various story elements in some cases, can always be used outside of that context, for that is the nature of an orchestral soundtrack. If you have this many tools at your disposal, you will make good use of them.

#Revali #Vah Medoh #botw #loz #aoc

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