#I giffed a huge chunk of this fight scene

[animezinglife]

#cowboy bebop #cowboy bebop: the movie #spike spiegel #vincent volaju #jeet kune do #martial arts #cowboy bebop movie #cowboy bebop the movie #classic anime #retro anime #cowboy bebop (2005) #'90s anime #90s anime #2000s anime #2000s #'90s #90s #fight #I giffed a huge chunk of this fight scene #but this moment deserved its own gif #randomanimezinggifs #ragifs

[godofevrerything]

How Zutara Should’ve Happened (my take anyways, if Zuko still joined the Gaang in Season Three)

Alright, so I’m a Zutara shipper. Anyways, here’s my rant of the day.

So, if Zutara were to be cannon, let’s say that we wouldn’t change the cannon, other than that. Also full disclaimer, I don’t really like Kataang. It’s cute, and sweet, buuuut I think that they would be better off single or with other people. I personally ship Taang so much-

When I first watched it, I really wanted Katara to end up single. I thought that would be a fitting ending for her story. But hey, she didn’t, and that’s fine.

This is not an anti Kataang post, seriously. If you ship it, cool, I don’t, but everyone had different opinions. Just please don’t come to my inbox and yell at me.

Aight, under the cut bc it got long.

So, if we weren’t gonna change the cannon, Zuko still joins in season three and all. Katara and him would still have a rocky relationship at first, and for good reason, I mean wtf Zuko what happened at the CoTL?

Rant for another day

Anyways-

What I would think is that Katara couldn’t help but notice how Zuko is trying to gain their, and her trust. I mean, she’s pissed but still, she notices. It doesn’t make her forgive him or anything, and it shouldn’t, but she does see it.

Now, I’m thinking little moments. Like when he shoved her out of the way of the falling rocks? Yeah, she still snaps at him, but maybe after she’s a little less fiery. Just a bit.

And then after TSR, things start to change. Of course, we get the iconic hug, but!! I want another scene, when they’re coming back from the trip.

One thing that always bothers me when I read Zutara stuff is that writers rarely address Zukos betrayal in TCoTL. Like,,, maybe I haven’t read the right fanfics but c’mon guys.

I really think, no, I know that Katara and Zuko should address that. I really want a scene, when they’re coming back, while Katara is sorting out whether to forgive him or not, I want them to talk about it. And sorry if it’s OOC- But Like so:

Katara: Why did you do it?

Zuko: ...do what?

Katara: Why did you fight with Azula? I thought you changed, I thought you would’ve fought with us.

Zuko: I-

[ a moment of quiet]

Zuko: I thought about it, and I almost did-

Katara: [turns around to face him] Then why didn’t you? Why did you choose that?

Zuko: I wanted my honor. I wanted to go home, and I thought- I though that if I fought with her, I could get my honor back.

[Katara doesn’t answer.]

Zuko: But Im sorry. I am.

Katara, quietly: I thought you changed...

Zuko: I have, now, I mean.

Katara: Why was your honor so important to you anyways? And what do you mean by ‘wanted to go home’?

Zuko: I- I was banished. Until I found the Avatar, I couldn’t go back.

[Katara turns, studying him, then turns back around]

Katara: ...You couldn’t go back, ever?

Zuko: No.

[She doesn’t speak after that, and neither does he.]

Okay, so maybe that was too OOC, but they did need to have a conversation something like that. A conversation where Zuko explained, at least a bit about why he fought with Azula.

And then, after that, the hug and forgiveness. But that was a turning point in their relationship, and I don’t like that so little fic writers address that.

And then!! I want little moments. Just small moments, maybe a bit more teasing, a bit more concern on Kataras part.

Also, let’s face it: Zuko would be simping. Katara wouldn’t be lovey dovey, no, she wouldn’t. Zuko would be the simp, Zuko would be the one stuttering slightly at teasing and stuff.

Just little moments, nothing big bc c’mon, they’re kids. They’re teenagers in the belp middle of a war.

Speaking of which! I really want one more scene between them. After Aangs noncon kiss in the Ember Island Players, I want there to be a scene where Zuko finds Katara and she vents to him.

Also I’ve been losing my damn mind trying to find a gif series for that bc someone on Tumblr made it and I can’t find it- fkdndd

Okay, but along with a huge chunk of the fandom, it really makes me mad that they didn’t show more of Kataras reaction, and that Aang didn’t apologize. Like wtf Aang.

I would’ve been fine with anyone coming to Katara, or telling Aang that was wrong but- Didn’t happen. They just glossed over that part smh.

But! Say Zuko were to come and talk with her about it. And then at the end, he might ask her why she was confused, Maybe something like this:

Zuko: If you don’t mind, why are you so confused?

Katara: I don’t know! But it’s in the middle of war. It isn’t over, and now isn’t the time for... for romance.

Zuko: But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy. I mean, look at Sokka.

Katara: I’m not Sokka.

[They both go quiet for a minute]

Katara: Sorry, Im just... It’s too much to deal with right now, and we have to focus on ending the war.

Zuko: No, I get that. It’s fine.

Katara: I’m just- I’m confused, and now isn’t the time and-

[She pauses, and the two look at each other for a moment. All is quiet.]

Zuko: I.. can go, if you want. If you need some space.

Katara: Yeah, that would probably help.

[Zuko walks away. As he does, Katara is staring at his back, a thoughtful expression on her face]

Yes, yes, I think that would make sense in the romance line. Mirroring when Zuko was staring at Kataras back.

Alright, so everything would be same, up to Katara healing Zuko after the Agni Kai. But there would be subtle differences. She takes his hand and holds it instead of putting her hand on his back. No big “I love you” or whatever. Just holds his hand, and maybe a line like “We- I could’ve lost you!” Maybe.

And then! One last thing, instead of that long Kataang kiss at the end, a scene between Katara and Zuko, talking about their futures.

I’m a really big fan of Water Tribe Ambassador Katara, and it shows.

Katara: So.. Fire Lord Zuko, huh? Finally regained your honor?

Zuko: [groans] Yes, now stop it.

Katara: [laughs] Nope, never gonna stop.

[Theres a minute of quiet]

Zuko: And what about you? Are you going back to the SWT?

Katara: I am. The Northern and Southern tribes... they need to connect again, not become one, but the connection was frayed with the war, and someone has to take a step to rebuild it.

Zuko: What about the Air Temples?

Katara: That’s up to Aang. I’ll help him of course, we all will, but he’s the last air bender. He’ll take care of them, like I’ll take care of the Water tribes.

Zuko: With Sokka too, I’m guessing.

Katara: I don’t know about that, actually. Sokka may want to travel a bit, scope out the world.

Zuko: And you don’t?

Katara: I do, and I will. Sokka and I, regardless of whatever travel, we’ll work together to take care of the tribes.

Zuko: [chuckles] And I’ll be here. I’m going to try to undo the damage the war did. Open up relations again in the Earth Kingdom, sort out the colonies.

Katara: Don’t overwork yourself.

Zuko: You shouldn’t either.

[She laughs, and stops in front of the pond, looking at the turtle ducks]

Katara: Zuko..

Zuko: What?

Katara: [turns to face him] We... went through a lot. And I have something that I need to tell you.

Zuko, sweating slightly: ..yes?

Katara: Relax, it’s nothing bad!

Katara: I..

[Katara takes his hand and smiles. Zukos eyes widen and he looks down at their hands]

Katara: Well?

[Zuko looks back up and smiles at her.]

Zuko: You’re going to visit sometime, right?

Katara: Course I will.

[He smiles again, and intertwines their fingers. It’s quiet once more, then off in the distance, Sokka yells something]

Katara: [laughs] Now c’mon, your Honor. Let’s go.

[She pulls Zuko down the path towards their friends, and all their laughter can be heard. The End comes up, and the credits roll]

So!!

No big ily confession, no long kiss. Why? Because they’re kids. They’re fourteen and sixteen, there shouldnt be an ily, there shouldn’t be an uncomfortably long kiss.

Later, of course. But now? Let’s them just hold hands and tease each other and relax a bit.

Anyways, that’s my Zutara rant of the day, thanks for listening.

#zutara #Zuko #Katara #ATLA #avatar the last airbender #zuko x katara #Zutara rant

[firelxdykatara]

not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

#the vampire diaries #tvd #tvd fandom salt #anti stefan #anti stelena #salt for ts #asked #Anonymous

[agendratum]

hey @tootiredtoosadtooangry i tried to answer your 6 weeks old ask, but as i saved it as a draft to check the formatting and all that, it just fucking disappeared, cause tumblr is a website. it may magically come back later, but idk if it will happen. good thing is that i saved the text of that ask separately, cause i’m a genius and i wasn’t gonna lose this essay *wink wink* to this fucking website

ok, so it's been 6 weeks

it's basically 5-7 business days, right?

so 6 weeks ago i made a gif, and under that gif i said that i might write an essay about some things (wei wuxian), but then some other things happened (word of honor) and i kinda got distracted. but now i have my glass of whatever this alcohol that i'm drinking is, and i think i'm ready to talk a bit about our depressed necromancer who in that gif just came back to life. mostly about:

1. the specific flashback he's having in that moment, the one about seeing lan wangji for the first time

2. the general concept of being back to life 16 years later and getting using to that new world around him

so, first of all, what i find really interesting, is that upon seeing sizhui's clothing pattern, wei wuxian remembers, of course, lan wangji. but the thing is, being just back to life, his last memory from being alive is him falling down the cliff with lan wangji's face fading while the distance grows. that is not what he remembers. his memory goes back to the very first moment they met, the moment before literally anything happened, including all the things that went wrong.

because think about it. even tho i'm going here by the live-action canon, if we go back just a little bit to the novel canon, wei wuxian doesn't actually remember lan wangji fighting by his side in that final battle. when he comes back to life, he believes that he's remembered as the terrible yiling laozu by everybody. and that includes lan wangji. by the end of wei wuxian life he became everything that lan wangji warned him about, and everything he said he wouldn't become. so he believes that if lan wangji would find out that he's back to life, it wouldn't make him happy (oh how wrong he is)

when wei wuxian sees lan sect juniors for the first time, there seems to be a bit of hope - "is *he* also here?" but later we find out, that he doesn't actually want lwj to be here, cause he thinks that their meeting will not look like a friendly reunion (it will look like a very romantic reunion, but that happens later). and i think that when he has that small flashback to their very first meetings, the sadness that overcomes him is caused by the realization of that enormous gap between them when they just met and them after all the terrible things that happened. wei wuxian wants to see his old friend, a person who once at least tried to believe in him, who is also still alive, which can't be said about a lot of people he knew, but there is this huge barrier that he believes cannot be crossed. and he crossed that point of no return himself in his previous life, and he is now undeserving of lan wangji's trust and friendship.

and that's of course isn't true. but there is a difference between what we know, what lan wangji thinks and what wei wuxian believes and remembers.

there is no smooth transition i can think of to get to the second point, so here we are. 16 years. 16 years is a lot. it's a whole fucking life. a human can be almost fully formed in that time period (which is perfectly represented by both fully grown up sizhui and jin ling, who, when wwx died, was a one month old baby) in 16 years a lot can happen to a person. a person can grow to change their whole world view, their believe system, some of their principles, become comfortable with their identity and finally figure out what they want from life. a person can grow from a child to an adult, who's carefully and patiently initiating a plan they've been cultivating for years, while playing a role and hiding their true face from everybody. a person can take their enormous grief, their rage, their pain and direct it all towards achieving their goals, actually fulfilling the impossible, while managing to raise a child and not completely ruin them from the inside, but actually letting the child know that he's loved and safe.

and then wei wuxian who died 16 years ago before any of that happened, comes back to this world full of people he used to once know. but he doesn't anymore. and we can see it in everything, from little details to big very important conversations. the most obvious is him trying to play and flirt with lan wangji the ways he used to when they were teens, and being so confused by lwj's reaction. because lwj grew past that so long ago, while wwx just didn't have a chance to get this out of his system. that part is him getting to know lwj again, from the beginning, because he meets a new man. but at least with lwj, wwx is willing to get to know him and lwj is willing to let him do that.

then there is jiang cheng. there was always a certain level of misunderstanding between yunmeng bros, but at the same time, wei wuxian used to know jiang cheng pretty well. when jiang cheng was upset or something was going wrong home, with his parents, wwx mostly knew what to do or what to say or how to distract him and make light of the situation. he used to be able to look jiang cheng in the eyes and lie, and jiang cheng would believe that. and when wei wuxian comes back, he thinks it's the same jiang cheng. but the thing is, it's not. jiang cheng grew in not the most healthy ways, but he still grew up. there are so many moments, where instead of making the light of the situation, wei wuxian's actions escalate it. it's both jc just being a new person and wwx not knowing anymore how to act around him. the most important scenes showcasing that are lotus pier fight and the conversation in the temple.

there is also nhs, who's fooling everybody around him easily because he always did. even if it was just about school work. but isn't it fucking sad, that he's fooling even he's best friend. wwx isn't really surprised in the end, of course, when we find out that nhs has been behind all these deeds, but still he doesn't really suspect him. like at all, if i recall correctly? and they used to be on the same page of fooling everybody to think that these two boys are just some lazy fools. they're clearly not on the same page anymore.

wwx comes back to the world full of people who look like people he used to know or remind him of people he used to know, but they aren't them. meanwhile he didn't have the time to grow or change or just have some peace. wherever he's been while being dead, he was just out of it. his path of growing and figuring himself out stars with him coming back. but he's years behind. and with someone like lan wangji, we know that he's willing wait and he gives him space and he gives him love and home and warmth. but then, for example, jiang cheng's frustration is visible in the air, because he had years to overthink everything went wrong again and again, and wei wuxian comes back and it seems like he just want to ignore and leave "the past in the past" and it's infuriating for someone who couldn't let go of it all for 16 years. but it's understandable for someone who just came back and now the weight of everything they did multiplied by 16 years is suddenly being thrown at them.

and he has to get to know all these people from the beggining, if they will be willing to get to know each other at all. and the growth, that getting to know himself, it's a journey he has to take on his own. that's why i'm such a big fan of that trip he takes in the end by the way. but still it's a trip he takes alone, and there are still huge chunks of life he missed. and he will never get them back. he missed all those years when sizhui and jin ling were growing up. and it will always be there. they will be sharing their childhood stories with him, and the lack of wwx in their lives will be so obvious. he will continue to learn new things about lwj, about his old friends, about the world, because it's been so long, and it will be noticeable that he was not there.

i would say that all the characters of their generation (that survived) are lonely in their own way. but for wei wuxian it's the loneliness of being dead and just completely not present on the lives of his loved ones.

i don't know where i'm going with it now, so i think i will just stop here and maybe come back to you 6 weeks later with another terribly messy emotional take influenced by me drinking alcohol.

#cql #wwx #is it meta for me to mumble? #meta

[meimi-haneoka]

LOL....Chapter 42.

I mean, I might have become quite boring by now because ALL the chapters I use these shocked gifs, but.....I can’t help it, every time the chapters bring some shocking factor!! XD

Let me just start this reaction post with one happy announcement:

Remember my battles against illegal early spoilers on the internet? How it hurt the fandom (because people who wanted to wait for the official release were forced to avoid social media or block stuff) and the franchise as well?

Well, I’m glad to announce that chapter 42 has been the first chapter ever to not have any early spoilers leaked before the official releases, ever since Clear Card started in July 2016. It took almost 4 years and a revolution by the hands of CLAMP to obtain this result (with the early release of chapters FOR FREE on the official website in 6 languages).

Beware, I’m not celebrating just yet because next month we may get spoilers circulating again, but this chapter was really nice to be discovered all together, legally, without hurting anyone? It was a nice feeling and since it seems we might be approaching the finale, I think it’s important that we enjoy these chapters all together in a proper way.

Well, after this introduction, let’s delve into Chapter 42 of Clear Card!!

Kaito is a walking dead man

I loved the color splash page. It always makes me happy to see Akiho and Sakura together, but this time the theme is a lot more serious. This is getting intense and the color page reflects that. This is also the first black background in a while, I always loved illustrations with black background even in the old manga.

Sooo last chapter we were left with Sakura overthrowing Kaito’s time magic and still conscious and moving. And shocked to see Syaoran and Kaito fighting. Of course Kaito needs to put a patch on this, because he knows Sakura is that powerful, but he doesn’t want her to know any of this, so he starts to “attack” her with time magic, I believe? And prince charming cleverly thinks that he might better call forth the strongest Sakura Cards in the deck, just to be sure to protect Sakura adequately. Even Kaito recognizes that was a wise move. Sakura is more confused than ever, behind the spirit shield formed by Light & Dark.

Syaoran is so fucking fed up with this that he demands to know why Kaito is here in Tomoeda. He candidly admits that he wants Sakura to produce the new Cards. Syaoran is like “No shit, Sakura’s already been producing a shitton of cards” “But she hasn’t produced the one I want”. When Syaoran asks which card that would be, Mr. I-am-an-asshole-and-I-know-it replies “If I told you that, I fear you’d get terribly angry”

Guys, the glare Syaoran gives Kaito after this one is like.......death sentence. The amount of rage accumulated in this short kid is frightening. Syaoran might be cool and composed, but y’all remember his temper at the beginning of the old manga, right? That wasn’t “just because”, it’s still part of his personality XDD he was taming his rough sides of his personality for Sakura, but for Sakura he’s well ready to pull them out at any convenience.

Meanwhile, we aren’t sure if Sakura is listening to the heated conversation or not, but I think she isn’t because she keeps shouting “what’s going on?? What happened??” even after Kaito straight up said he’s after her Cards. Seeing her struggling and reaching from behind Light & Dark, who are restraining her, is kinda.....giving me TRC war flashbacks. Yes. You might have seen the tweet that is making me earn lots of “WHY CINZIA”, but I’m like this, I’m an ugly bitch who needs to suffer in company. I’ll make a separate TRC/CCS comparison post after ages, for this. XD

The highlight of the chapter

Kaito reveals that he knows that Syaoran came back to Japan after his mother had a divination of the future that he absolutely needs to stop. And, at that moment, ladies and gentlemen....

IT’S HER. THE STAR OF THE CHAPTER. THE ONE THE FANDOM DREAMED OF SEEING IN THE MANGA.

LI YELAN-SAMA.

This is a huge thing because a character that was exclusively in the anime canon-verse (even though that line has been more and more flimsy lately) appeared in the manga too. Syaoran’s mother, and the Li family in general, were often mentioned both in the old and new manga series, but CLAMP somehow were always careful to never show any graphical portray of it. Now, finally, after so long, we have Yelan appearing in the manga too, and she’s exactly like her anime counterpart. Regal, elegant, beautiful. I was literally trembling with excitement when I saw her!! It was.....gosh it was huge.

But one has to wonder: how the hell does Kaito knows about all this stuff? How much did he investigate on the Li family? It’s kinda easy to imagine when he could do that: for a period, Akiho and Kaito lived in Hong Kong. Right before coming to Japan.

We get, thanks to Kaito, the confirmation that nor he, nor Syaoran, were born with the gift of seeing the future. Kaito can, if he follows all the steps, see some glimpses till a certain degree, but nothing comparable to someone specialized in divination art, let alone a yumemi. Here it is, the cursed term so dear to CLAMP, indicating the ones who can see the future in dreams. Kaito says that Sakura can indeed see the future playing out in her dreams, but it’s a future far from being set in stone. She’s basically a beginner yumemi, with confusing and fragmented visions, I’d say. But when she will grow up, she will be a fully fledged yumemi. Kaito says that it’s for the strong people to decide how the future will go. And here we find again the thematic so dear to CLAMP, the future and the choices made to let it go in a direction, or another one. Kaito starts to call forth the Tina Rie Triax spell. Syaoran is like “the hell I’m letting you get away like this” and is preparing to counter-attack with Raitei Shorai, when The Queen™ decides she had enough and screams “NOOO!”, calling her staff on the spot and activating her power towards Syaoran, switching places with him! She literally forced him out of the picture and took his place!! 

The Queen takes agency

LOOK AT THAT FACE! LOOK AT IT WELL. It’s the same determination she had in this scene:

I knew we would see the results of that determination. When she saw the boy she loves risking his life with someone who was attacking him, she took agency and went to the front row.

You can’t keep Sakura in the sidelines like that.

Kaito is quite suprised by the move. Maybe because he doesn’t understand love or because he didn’t think she would take agency. Either way, Sakura is pointing her staff at him, the same way Syaoran was pointing his sword at him moments ago. You don’t mess with this child, Kaito.

And he must certainly know, because he mutters “That’s too bad” and rewinds time, basically chickening out of the picture. XD

Sakura is back with Tomoyo, Akiho, Sonomi and her father, but she knows something is wrong, and she walks away from them for a while to give birth to a new card!! TRANSFER is the name, and it’s the power she used to switch places with Syaoran. The fact is, she doesn’t remember nor she understands why the hell this card is here. 

While at home Kaito thinks to himself (smile always present but blatantly a mere mask) that he needs to hurry up or he’ll be in a fucking big mess because Sakura resisted his time-stopping magic and the Clear Card survived the time rewinding, Sakura at her own home is a nervous wreck. She calls Syaoran because she has the feeling she saw Light & Dark, they don’t remember, but Syaoran confirms that he feels something is off and has the feeling someone made them forget something. Sakura closes the call promising that she would inform him of anything that would come to her mind, but as she inadvertently knocks her Clear Cards off, they all fall facing backwards, save for one: BREAK.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how Chapter 42 ends. Leaving us wondering why Sakura is making this dismayed face. She’s either taking it as a bad omen, or she’s remembering what she saw when she captured BREAK, and what caused the birth of the card in the first place. Not only a soulless Akiho talking nonsense in a pretty dress, but also her boyfriend under the robe of the Mysterious Cloaked Figure. Seemingly about to hurt an unconscious Akiho. That is still an open wound in Sakura’s heart, and it’s pretty clear here.

Guys, what can I tell you, this chapter has been a mixture of wonderful surprises, painful TRC recalls, frustrating time rewindings that show us how Sakura and Syaoran are slowly realizing and fighting Kaito’s fuckery with time....I know a good chunk of the fandom doesn’t like this give-and-take-away, it always seems like the final battle is here, but we are tricked everytime. And yet, I do believe that once the story will be over, and after some time we’ll go back to read Clear Card, the time rewindings will show clearly how gradually Sakura was able to overcome and overthrow Kaito’s magic: first it was a finger, then it was an unexplicable sadness, now a new card and the impression to have seen things, and a general uneasiness because something feels off. The kids were even capable of realizing that they were made to forget something. I bet this graduality will feel more interesting and exciting when we’re not forced to wait 1 month between chapters.

Let me know what you think, too!

#cardcaptor sakura #card captor sakura #clear card arc #clamp #sakura card captor

[mycupofstars]

hartwin and multiples of 3?

Omg, thank you!

C. Most common argument?  Probably ridiculous domestic stuff.  Moving in together is obviously combining two vastly different lifestyles and they've struck me as a fight passionately make up passionately couple.  Eggsy leaves the milk out on the counter and it's a four hour affair.

F. What is their favorite feature of their partner’s? For Eggsy it's Harry's hands.  For Harry it's the way Eggsy bites his lip, which I noticed Taron doing in approx 6000 gifs. This counts as a feature if I say so.

I. Who worries the most? I want to say Harry overall bc Eggsy has all that youthful cocky overconfidence going for him in buckets.  But Eggsy worries more specifically about Harry after going through as much gaining + losing him as he did.

L. Who initiates kisses? Mostly Harry, especially at first when Eggsy can't entirely believe their relationship has actually happened. But Eggsy excels at sneak attacks.

O. Who wakes up first? Definitely Eggsy and not Harry "Late again, sir" Hart.

R. Who leaves little notes in the other’s one lunch? (Bonus: what does it usually say?) Merlin.  Merlin does this for months to both of them, forging both of their handwriting and signatures, because he's sick of them pining for each other across the table at meetings. (Wasn't it us who decided Merlin intervened with flower language bouquets to set them up also?)

U. Who is more likely to start dancing with the other? Harry is more likely to do it as a romantic gesture. Eggsy is more likely to try to get Harry to like, learn Fortnite dances.

X. Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear during inappropriate times? Harry. Eggsy attempts it once or twice expecting to get a rise out of him, but is absolutely s h o c k e d at how well Harry beats him at the game.  Merlin is not amused with either of them.

AA. Who would sing to their child back to sleep? Eggsy, who helped raise a baby already. I think Harry would have a steep and hilarious and adorable learning curve becoming a parent.

AD. One headcanon about this OTP that mends it.  I mean this entire OTP is heartbreak between the two films.  My mending headcanon-- aside from liberally rewriting huge chunks of TGC-- is that their relationship is there through it all.  The first time they get together is that night they have 24 hours together (THE CUT BREAKFAST SCENE).  

#asks

[loserssclubb]

It Chapter 2 Review

[spoilers] (this is my opinion and im super picky so pls dont be mad)

so ive seen this baby twice now because when i left the cinema the first time i was at a loss for words and completely confused on my opinion because the movie departed quite a lot from the book and there were some things that bothered me. after talking to a few friends i realised how funny this movie is? like obviously the banter is always comedic but even pennywise just saying memey things like "kiss me fat boy" ?? so i paid more attention at the second viewing and the audience were laughing at a lot of the scenes that are conventionally meant to be scary (naked mrs kersh, fly with baby head coming out of fortune cookie) and i think muschietti has kind of developed a dark humour in his horror movies now? i hope it was intentional and i think it was because ('angel in the morning' plays when the leper vomits on eddie) the monsters were much more traditionally "scary monsters" - pennywises final form was scary because of his size mostly, but there wasnt those gross links to his moving saliva and other descriptions of his body to really up the spooky factor in the book. im a huge fan of muschiettis adaptations and ill always be behind them, but i know that book inside out and its hard for me personally to seperate them and realise you cant fit that thicc book into a 3hr movie.

im sure lots of people know about/have mentioned the hilarious scenes that were the highlight for them (i recommend you check out @richietoaster 's review!) so im going to write about some of the smaller pros and cons/easter eggs that i loved -

• i might be desensitised to horror but the most cringey/scariest parts for me were always the grossest- adrian getting that chunk ripped out of his armpit and the audible crunch that comes with it?? i was cowering in my seat.

• THE TITLE CARD IS AWESOME. GIVE ME THAT NEON AESTHETIC THANK YOU!

• this is what i keep telling people, although it was rushed, stans suicide was so well shot and crafted, it didnt depict any actual actions of his self harm and instead reverted to a flashback of bill cutting his palm during the blood oath. it didnt glorify suicide, unlike other tv shows, so i really appreciated that from an objective standpoint. those slow motion close ups of bill and stans facial expressions along with wallfisch's score had me in tears, those boys love eachother, all the losers do. also adult stan saying "i swear big bill" while staring at the ceiling in the bath tub, are you trying to hurt me muschietti???

• im sure theres been some parallel gifs on here somewhere from chapter one of the water drip on bills drawing of beverly v. the blood drip on beverly in the sewers?? well if you know what im talking about, we get another blood drip on adult bev! shes laying down in bed and its the exact same pan to her side profile and i actually screeched. its clever, tiny parallels like this that really made me love the movie.

• eddie kasprak "married his mother", and they got the same actress who played his mother to play his wife lmao!!

• beverly's fight with her husband tom, although fast, was CINEMATIC ART. this might be sad because ive seen chapter 1 so many damn times but - it is choreographed EXACTLY the same as the last fight with her father in chapter one. he grabs her hand, she fights back, appologises, he pushes her over, she kicks him in the BALLS, and when he gets up she hits him over the head with some sort of heavy object. took a second viewing for me to get that but im still impressed.

• while im talking about parallels - beverly cowering in the corner at jade of the orient is the exact same movement and expression as beverly in the garage in chapter 1 cowering from pennywise.

• the whole jade of the orient scene is pure art. i loved hearing the audience in the cinema laugh at the jokes, i felt so proud of the cast. but the jokes were generally well shot/staged as well? like richie saying "me and your mum got married" - cut to bill laughing INTO his drink. eddie screaming "I NEED MY FUCKING ASPIRATOR" while on a close up of beverly crying. still got that same chaotic energy.

• although, i dont really like what they did with mikes character, i think thats mostly to do with gary daubermans writting (beverlys last words really are "i had a beautiful dream" smh) but he came off as a little too intense and frantic than in the book and miniseries. there was minimal dialogue (as in the first film) and development for him which just bothers me as well.

• the extra plotline that theyll all die if they dont defeat It now was clever, and it would help skeptical audiences that havent read the book to really understand importance of their task. but the fact that they all wanted to leave also made me sad, it might be a reference to how self absorbed we are in the 21st century or whatever, but the novel shows them all to be fairly certain that theyre staying. theres some fear and minimal conflict, but they made an oath, and the movie removing that kind of diminished the "connection" that the losers supposedly have.

• we got an andy muschietti and a stephen king cameo!!! yay!!

• THE TRANSITIONS - theres nothing worse than watching a fade to white flashback every 5 mins, and muschietti got super creative with these flashbacks. my favourite was adult eddie in the pharmacy having young eddie walk up to his face in low opacity until they fade together. amazing. and some of the others like adult ben falling into the clubhouse and panning up to see young bev climb down the ladder, incredible.

• time to talk about bill skarsgard - although he upped the meme value, he was generally more creepy and childlike this time around, i was super impressed by his drastic improvement. chapter 1 was good but chapter 2 he really just fell into that character. i loved the scene with victoria under the bleachers, such an important exchange to show how much stronger pennywise has become both mentally and physically.

• talking about skarsgard, that goddamn scene in mrs kersh's house. i still have no fucking idea what poem he is muttering while he paints on the white clown makeup, but i am living for it. i love that skarsgard can still be creepy as hell without that bigass forehead and full clown glam. i think the tearing of his face skin also was one of the grosser moments in the film.

• i think the digital de- aging would be ok for most audiences but because i know these kids faces so well, it kind of looked like some polar express shit, especially with ben. but id rather that than their older faces.

• bill and bevs kiss - the parallels with their 1989 kiss had me tearing up. that scene on its own has me in tears because of wallfisch's magical score. they just love eachother so damn much and theyre so damn confused.

• the blood scene - wow. the literature student in me was like "this is femininity v. masculinity" ben drowning in dirt (male stereotypes) and beverly drowning in blood (that ongoing theme of her (first?) period) i also think ben being buried alive is kind of a motif for his past burying him but also how he used to wear layers and layers of clothes to hide his body. and beverly was always hiding her period from her father because she was afraid it would lead him to hurt her even more, so the blood drowning her was very relevant and poetic.

• im sad that we didnt have the three uninvited guests sequence. audra was kind of redundant in the film and the whole conflict between bills love for beverly and his love for audra was just not touched on at all. i love that in the book because its so realistic, that confusion between loving two people for different reasons. one of the most touching moments for me is when he rides silver at the end of the book with audra, it just completely encapsulates the entire message of childhood and bravery and love, so im really disappointed that bill kind of just went home.

• bill LITERALLY says "be careful" to the skateboard kid and he doesnt even fucking reply "you cant be careful on a skateboard". it ruined me.

• the final battle was kool, but eddie saying "i fucked your mum" really made it difficult for me to concentrate on it. its funny banter, but if there was a scene for them to be serious, that was it.

• although!! that quarry scene. my heart is broken. that score too - the song "nothing lasts forever" - just completely provoked every emotion in me. the song had mix of the 'blood oath' themes as well as 'beverly' and 'january embers' from chapter 1, but it also had a new theme, which really shows its over now, and they are all new, developed characters. i heard this new theme before seeing the movie i knew would break my heart and it comes on when ben and bev have their underwater kiss, which is just perfect and gorgeous and adorable.

• and finally - the slow motion shots of the young losers on their bikes at the end. so gorgeous, all of their faces, all theyve been through. all WE'VE been through as a fandom for two years. its just perfect and summery and theres so much love and happiness radiating off of them. its just the ultimate concluding shot for the franchise.

i give it a 4/5 star rating. other than the pace, some writting and changes to book canon, i really enjoyed it and i loved the cast and the cinematography was outstanding.

thank you andy muschietti.

[queeniewritesce]

Recommendations (1/2)

This was written for a @mrs-captain-evans 2,5K followers Writing Challenge. Congratulations on the milestone and here’s for 2,5K more!

I chose “Well, this is awkward…” as my prompt because as I was scrolling through the options the scene that particular scene just jumped at me.

Summary: Twitter is a strange place. But once in a while, you connect with someone.

Word count: 3,564

Warning: mild language, 35 seconds of angst, could be less if you read it fast.

Warning2: there will be a lot of Trump bashing at the beginning of this story. If you’re offended then maybe this isn’t a story you should read.

Author’s Note:  All rules regarding verified accounts and how they behave were taken from Twitter.com.

It all started innocently enough.

Chris had opened Twitter to post a video of Dodger playing with his stuffed lion, knowing his dog was a fan favorite, when Trump decided to give his opinion on a National Geographic article about Global Warming.

GOD, he was a moron. A dumb, squinty-eyed, toupee wearing, orange moron. Chris seethed as he clicked on retweet with comment and called out the man he had the displeasure of calling President.

A few seconds later his notifications started to pop up. He switched tabs to Mentions and Replies where thousands of retweets with GIFs and other memes were pouring in before he filtered the tab so only verified accounts were shown. Mark retweeted his reply, Don wrote a snarky and an awesome comeback, Ellen Page tore the man a new one and an MIT professor he met during a flight home to Boston mentioned him and your account as prime examples of the generation who could make a change. He liked some favorites, retweeted a few others and was about to close the app when a new mention popped up, this time from your account, thanking your mentor and sharing a blurb about being cool because you were now linked to Captain America.

Curiosity got the best of him and Chris clicked on your handle. The header was a picture of Diagon Alley at the Warner Brother’s Harry Potter Tour in London and the picture to the side was of a woman dressed up as a Gryffindor student, wand, scarf and a pointed hat. He noticed you were also a verified account and your small bio read ‘Y/N, 30something.’, ‘You can be anything you aspire to be. I chose to be a nerd’ and ‘Director of Media Studies at MIT’.

That is an interesting combination, he thought while looking through your latest tweets. Chris immediately found your own retweet of the orange moron and he laughed when you called him a dweeb, deeming the man unworthy of being president of your dog’s agility class, much less president of your country. You also quoted him in a series of articles that could be found at the Congress Library website and citing other articles from different countries, asking him to please trade his Rich Richie comics for something an actual president needed to know ‘You know, like Obama’.

You had an incredibly sharp mind for a woman who spent her free time dressing up as a fictional character, he thought before shaking his head when he looked down at his costume. Yeah, better not judge.

Chris spent a good chunk of his downtime between takes that day going through your tweets. Every time his PA called him to block a new scene or to film a close-up, he would carefully lock the phone without closing the app so he wouldn’t have to scroll down again.

Later that day he was back on his trailer resting, they wouldn’t be going home that night till the first Thanos fight scene was over but he was now free of his Captain America clothes and could relax. He took a shower in the small trailer bathroom, put on a loose pair of boxers and picked up his phone again, opening the Twitter app, happy to see it was exactly where he left.

Chris was now looking at your tweets from two years ago. He scrolled down on some retweets, mostly articles about social media and its influence on people, thoughts about the latest Game of Thrones episode, a tweet about watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier again after the results of the presidential election and how it had changed your views of the movie and a trip to London to guest lecture on a seminar in Oxford, with a link to watch your lecture on Youtube.  You’re funny, witty, and after watching your lecture on Book to Movies Adaptions: Bridging the Gap in the Fourth Dimension, he realized he was enthralled not only by your pretty eyes and lush lips but also with your mind.

He saw pictures of your adopted one-eyed blue merle Cardigan Welsh Corgi aptly named Captain Hook which you confessed was rarely used because you liked to call him Hooker, calling his name out loud around Cambridge Square just to get a reaction out of people. He laughed long and hard imagining you walking up and down Tudor Street asking if anyone had seen a one-eyed Hooker prancing around.

He worried his bottom lip for a moment before closing the app and opening up Safari quickly founding what he was looking for on his saved links. A new window opened and Twitter.com was now on his screen but instead of the usual @chrisevans handle, the account belonged to @BostonBrains81.

The Patriots logo stared back at him from the top of the page and a random shot of the crowd in one of the home games stood over a simple bio: Boston. Beer. Patriots.

The account he used to interact with his friends back home, like their baby pictures, sign in to various sites and go even crazier over the Patriots than he normally would on his main.

He looked nervously around his trailer before he searched for your handle, clicking the follow button before he lost his courage.

You are now following @Y/H

Was he really going through with this? His index finger hovered over the reply button on your latest tweet, the one where he was also mentioned.

“Ok Chris, you can do this.”

BostonBrains81 @Y/H you’re a lot cooler than Captain America. Wicked answer to the resident Oompa-Loompa, but I gotta ask, you think he knows how to read?

There, he did it.

_

That had been the first of the many 280 characters conversations you had with each other.

At first, you wondered if he was just a creep that followed you because Professor Travis mentioned you and Chris Evans on the same post; you had gained almost a thousand followers because of that, but they quickly unfollowed you when you didn’t gush about Chris Evans or they realized you didn’t actually know the actor. Not @BostonBrains81 though, he stuck around, commenting on some old articles you shared, liking all the pictures of Hooker you posted and even replied to the one where you shared his name asking if calling out for a Hooker in Cambridge had you stopped for solicitation at any point. You laughed at his joke and decided to follow him back.

The guy, you assumed it was a guy, was incredibly intelligent, always had a smart comeback to your jokes and could make you laugh in less than 100 characters. You shared most of the same views, from politics to music and books, the only point of contention was football. He was probably the biggest Patriots fan you had ever met and you being originally from the west coast was a Seattle Seahawks fan. He told you he had a working buddy who was a huge Seahawks fan as well and they had watched the Superbowl together in Arizona a few years back.

He’d ask you for a new book recommendation every few weeks and confessed his line of work had him waiting around quite a bit. You believed he was a flight attendant because he more than once replied to you from different parts of the country. You wondered if you should let him know the location settings were turned on.

You quickly got into a routine of checking his page to see if he was online that day and a little over two months since you first ‘talked’, you moved on to Direct Messages and conversation become more serious. Thoughts on religion, the #MeToo movement, gay rights, all were candidly discussed and you now actively sought his opinions on some of the subjects you taught your classes.

For a flight attendant, the man had some strong opinions and knew how to keep a conversation going. You chastised yourself for your classism, just because he had a blue-collar job didn’t mean he couldn’t have a sophisticated mind.

Some people are incredibly well educated and never set foot inside a college corridor, you remembered Professor Travis lecturing an advanced Media class you sat as his aide. Take Captain America for an example, I met the young man who portrays the superhero during a recent flight from Atlanta to Boston and I was highly impressed. He could very well be a post-doctorate student here, but he chose to follow his own footsteps to Hollywood and I thank him for it. I quite enjoy the dichotomy he brings to his portrayal of Captain America and Steve Rogers during The Winter Soldier and Civil War. If you haven’t, please watch those movies as we’ll be discussing them in our next class.

Professor Travis had been your theses supervisor and was one of your closest friends, even though he was thirty years your senior. The man had one of the sharpest minds you knew and his classes on Comic Books and the Juxtaposition to Modern Politics was always full, with a waiting list that never got any smaller. You usually sat those classes as his aide and he called on you often to share your views on what the media contributed to the political storm brewing on the horizon and what comic books contributed to that. Captain America had become one of Travis favorite subjects as of late, the whole Hydra and Nazis making a comeback after the last presidential election.

The fact Chris Evans engaged in politics and wasn’t afraid to speak up his mind played a huge part in why you started following him after Professor Travis met the guy. Sure, the man was eye candy to your often-tired eyes but he had a lot to offer than just those huge biceps, that amazing tight ass, and that soft-looking facial hair. You got a kick of his self-deprecating humor and once or twice you had jointed down a few books he mentioned and truly enjoyed them.

It was a really nice coincidence @BostonBrains81 had read them as well.

By the end of summer you were feeling lonely and thinking of asking another professor out. You wanted a male opinion on the idea, preferably one not in the same circle of friends and your best online friend was just the person to ask.

Well, does he make you feel nervous?

No, why would he made me feel nervous? He’s a very nice guy.

See, if you’re not nervous around him that means he doesn’t make you feel anything. If you don’t feel anything for the guy, why waste your time? And a nice guy? God, that’s the worst thing a woman can say about a man. A nice guy is as bad as saying a girl is okay. Is she beautiful? Meh, she’s okay. Does he melt your insides? Meh, he’s a very nice guy.

Seems like you gave this a lot of thought.

I’ve had more girlfriends than… jobs. When I broke up with the last one, I decided to wait for the right woman instead of getting into another destined to fail relationship. There’s no shame in stepping back and deciding you’re worthy of more than just an okay girl.

Or a nice guy.

Exactly.

Being alone is not easy though. We jump from one relationship to the next because we’re already used to the normalcy of having that steady presence in our lives. It doesn’t matter if we know that person isn’t right for us or they might even be prejudicial for us in the long run. The relationship fills a void we don’t like, that feeling there’s something wrong with us because we can’t maintain a partner.

Who let you in my head when I wasn’t looking?

Sorry for getting too deep.

You’re absolutely right though.

Thanks for the talk, no dates with nice guys from now on.

Don’t go for the bad guys either.

Well, that considerably narrows the option pool. Who am I dating then?

How about me?

Good one funny boy.

What’s wrong with me?

Barring the fact that I don’t even know your real name and you could very well be catfishing me, not much.

Catfishing?

You know, trying to make me believe you’re someone you’re not.

.

You there?

Sorry. Yeah, I’m definitely not trying to make you believe I’m anyone but myself. Name’s Chris by the way.

Nice to meet you, Chris, I’m Y/N.

Your conversations with @BostonBrains81, better yet, Chris, were now a daily occurrence and included questions about your daily lives and personal family stuff, Chris had three siblings, the youngest had been adopted and you spent a whole afternoon discussing the effects of adoptions on both the family and the child, you commended his parents for going through the processes and he opened his heart about normalizing the girl when she first came to live with them but now she was his favorite sister and he couldn’t imagine life without Shanna in it. He told you about moving away from home at eighteen to pursue his dream job, you shared how difficult adapting to Boston was at first but how you couldn’t see yourself living anywhere else now. He confided in you his work had him burned out a little and how much he missed home. Since his location had been stationed in Atlanta for the past three weeks, you deduced he worked for Delta Airlines.

Hey, you there? Can we talk?

Sure, I’m just lounging, you good?

I’m still at work, everyone is being a dick today and I’m having a hard time coping, plus I’m tired and a little cranky.

I’m sorry. Coworkers can be a pain in the ass sometimes, no matter what the field. Have you tried the exercises you told me about?

Yes. More than once. They seem to work for a while but then I have to head back in and someone else decides it’s his turn to be a dick. And now the… execs are here and they want to change some of the stuff that’s already done so that means more work and more dick-headed people all around.

When it’s your turn?

Uh?

Well, since everyone is having a bad day, why can’t you lash out? Be a dick too?

It’s never my turn. Chris is always the good guy, Chris is never a diva.

You don’t need to be a diva to demand respect. Demand respect while being respectful, but put your foot down. The old you get more flies with honey. Do you need to be there?

I’m supposedly done for the day.

So go home, take a bath, sleep in clean sheets. I know how hard it is to turn off work, sometimes I stay in my office for hours after I’m my shift, but it’s not healthy. If they truly need you, they know where to find you.

They do yeah.

Go home, Chris. Pass on the shield.

What?

Like Captain America did in the comics. Let someone else do the job.

Oh. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

I make a lot of sense when I’m drinking wine.

So your advice comes from your inebriated mind?

I’m hardly inebriated. It’s one glass of wine while reading a book in the bathtub. This is my me time.

I’m sorry for interrupting your naked me time. Thanks for the visual though, it’ll help me with my own time when I get home.

Go home, Chris. It’s the wine’s order.

You were now on a territory you swore you’d never slipped into; flirting with a stranger online. You tried to talk yourself out of it, tried to curb this insane idea manifesting inside your head and your heart, you were a scholar for goodness sake, you taught your students to never engage romantically online, therefore, you should know better.

You most certainly didn’t.

I’d like to take you out for coffee sometime, you could show me around MIT.

Maybe. When you get back from Atlanta, let me know.

How do you know I’m in Atlanta?

Your location setting is turned on.

Is it? Damn.

Yeah, I should have told you sooner. Working for Delta Airlines must nice though.

Yeah… I guess. Blue collar job though.

Don’t be like that, you should not be ashamed of what you do for a living. If it makes you happy, it’s all that matters.

You’re right, I’m pretty happy doing what I do. So, coffee?

Sure. I usually get my caffeine fix from ‘Bean there, Doughnut That’ over at Arrow St. It’s always full of students.

Smart girl, going for a place where you can find a friendly face if we don’t get along.

That, and you could be a serial killer, I need witnesses to remember your face. It’s not like I *really* know you.

I look forward to changing that. I’ll be home after Columbus Day. Could we meet then?

Yes, sure. I want to finally put a face to the man I’ve talking for the past four months. It’s a date.

A date uh? I like that. I like that very much. I hope you like my face when you see it, I kinda have an ugly mug.

I’m sure your face is fine. Besides, I already like your personality and that’s the part I always have trouble with.

Checking Twitter had become your new guilty pleasure and you’d close the app with a frown if Chris didn’t post anything every few days, exactly what was happening right now.

He had been offline for a whole week and you missed your usual banter, his witty sense of humor and how he took to calling you Professor Hottie. The Patriots lost the second game of the season and you wanted to gloat a little but most of all you just wanted to know if he was okay.

Biting your lip, you clicked on the direct message button.

Been a while since you’ve been online, did you get lost on the way back from Boston Market?

I see that you turned off your location sharing. Was I being too stalkerish?

I guess you’re busy or maybe you just don’t want to talk to me. I’ll leave you be.

Had you come on too strong? Did you sounded desperate and scared him off? You read your past conversations and nothing sounded too eager on your part, maybe he just wasn’t interested anymore.

Well, that was that.

You sighed and refreshed your home page one last time, checking your latest tweets and was surprised to see a new Tweet from Chris Evans, another Chris who had been MIA lately.

ChrisEvans Officially wrapped on Avengers 4. It was an emotional day, to say the least. Playing this role over the last 8 years has been an honor. To everyone in front of the camera, behind the camera, and in the audience, thank you for the memories! Eternally grateful.

Interacting with celebrities were never really your thing but you would miss Captain America, you were sure they would have to kill him if Evans would not play the iconic soldier anymore, so you took a chance and clicked on reply.

Y/H @chrisevans thanks for making Cap cool again, you made him justice and gave the tired soldier a new and improved multifaceted personality. We’re gonna miss him.

Satisfied with your chosen words you smiled as you hit send. You got a few likes notification right away, some of your students and MIT faculty retweeted your post, Professor Travis included.

ChrisEvans @y/h thank you. Having people like you and @TravisMIT giving Cap your stamp of approval certainly makes me think I did a good job.

Wide eyes blinked back to the screen when you read his response. He not only thanked you but for some reason he held your opinion to a higher standard? How was that possible?

Your mentions exploded with people asking you similar questions and you had to switch to verified account only to stop the barrage of notifications for new tweets coming through.

Your phone beeped with a new direct message and a small glimpse of hope that your Chris was back made you forget about Evans.

Hey, sorry for the disappearance act, work has been crazy lately. You’re definitely not stalkerish, that title actually belongs to yours truly but I’ll tell you more over coffee. Don’t ever think I don’t want to talk to you, our conversations are the highlight of my days. I missed you a lot these past ten days.

You cocked your head side to side while reading the message, twice, three times, trying to understand exactly what was going on. You should be happy, it was exactly what you wanted to read after being ghosted for over a week.

There was only one problem. The DM did not come from @BostonBrains81. It came from @ChrisEvans.

You hovered your mouse over the reply button but your brain was short-circuiting. You started and deleted dozens of replies, none of them conveying what you were feeling well enough. Deceived. Betrayed.

New direct messages appeared one after the other.

               Well, this is awkward…

               I can explain.

               Please talk to me.

               Look, I was stupid for not telling you sooner but doesn’t change how I feel about you. Can we talk? Please?

You’re now blocking @ChrisEvans.

You’re now blocking @BostonBrains81

#Chris Evans Fanfic #Chris Evans Fan Fic #Chris Evans Fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #mrs-captain-evans #writting challenge

[neverwatchedonepiece]

613-614: "Showing Off His Techniques! Zoro's Formidable One Sword Style!" and "To Save Her Friends! Mocha Runs at the Risk of Her Life!"

I feel like by the time Luffy finds Caesar, his rage will have reached critical mass.

The best actor awards in episodes 613 and 614 obviously go to Zoro and Chopper. Best supporting actors must also be given credit and the plaudits go to Tashigi and little Mocha.

From a narrative standpoint, I’d say these episodes continue the “tying up loose ends” theme from the last two. But there’s also a decent chunk of character development here, especially from Zoro in 613.

Cuz You’re My Bro, Bro.

The action picked up with Sanji leading his G5 Fans out of the Biscuit Room and away from “Harpy-chan”. Onward they charged to serve the noblest of causes: impressing Nami and Robin by saving the kids!

The G5 Fans had a teeny problem, though. Why didn’t Sanji, their saviour, help out earlier when Monet was chewing through shoulders?

Sanji told them straight. “Don’t be dumb. I don’t kick women.”

A G5 dude said what we all probably thought, “Then what would you do in a life or death situation?”

Again, Sanji told them straight. “I’d choose death.”

At this point I would normally insert the man blinking gif, but at least I have confirmation that Sanji hasn’t changed that much over the timeskip. It is dumb that he would never fight back (and dangerous, if you remember Kalifa). Also, not a good idea to inform the Marines of your major weakness. Still, it’s a huge part of Sanji’s character, will likely never go away, and as long as he doesn’t endanger another Strawhat by refusing to fight a lady, I guess I’ll just accept it.

The G5 Dudes were surprised to hear this from Sanji. These Strawhats were all so different, even though they work in the same pirate group. That pirate hunter guy, Zoro. He looked like he’d chop up anyone without mercy!

That comment made Sanji laugh. “Surprisingly, he has a soft side too. He’ll find a way out. You can count on him. Don’t worry. And don’t worry about Tashigi-chan, either.”

“You can count on him.”

There you have it, folks. Proof that, even though they rag on each other constantly, it’s more like two really close guys bickering and bantering back and forth, rather than actual dislike. I never ever believed they disliked each other. They just love bickering and noising each other up. Plus, all the bickering pushes them to achieve. Zoro’s success drives Sanji to be better and vice versa.

And Sanji does not dismiss Tashigi either, which is nice. Sanji acknowledged Zoro’s strength by saying, “Yeah, he’ll find a way out.” He also did the same for Tashigi. That could be evidence for the argument that Sanji does not view women as inferior. He’s just an old-fashioned, chivalrous type who feels like must protect women.

Which leads us neatly on to Zoro.

The Jury’s out on This One. Or Is It?

Back in the Biscuit Room, Zoro and Tashigi were already butting heads. Zoro insisted he didn’t need Tashigi’s help. 

She countered with, “You think whatever you want”. 

Zoro shot back with, “you want me to take care of you first, since I’m a pirate, Marine soldier girl?”

And Tashigi revealed what she thought was the root of Zoro’s problem with Monet. “You can’t do that. You are not going to cut me or that woman.”

She believes Zoro looks down on her because she’s a woman.

I’m not sure about that, to be honest. I think Zoro’s better than that. And here’s why.

Tashigi recalled her first encounter with Zoro way back in Loguetown. She was defeated by him then and angrily asked why he wouldn’t finish her, Mortal Kombat style. “Is it because I’m a woman? It’s humiliating that you won’t fight seriously in a game played in earnest just because men are physically stronger than women! I’m sure you don’t understand the feeling that I wish I was born a boy. I don’t carry a sword for pleasure.”

Leaving aside the possibility that Tashigi might one day pay Ivan-san a visit, as a female swordsman and Marine captain, she has obviously come up against the roadblock of sexism time and again. If someone looks down on her, it’s because of that.

I do think Zoro was being honest when he said the reason he couldn’t fight her was because she reminded him of his friend who had died. I think he was genuinely spooked back then.

But Tashigi didn’t believe him. “You view women as inferior. You don’t really try to fight us. You won’t kill us. You might not lose but you won’t win against Monet, either.” She basically said that if she let Monet go after her men, there would be carnage. Which was true.

Zoro said, “Are you looking down on me?”

Tashigi’s reply was a blunt, “Yes.”

“Fine. Do what you want.” Zoro sheathed his swords. “My duty is to keep her again from my friends too. All I have to do is block that path.”

What I think happened here is that Zoro thought, “Fine. I’ll let you handle this and I’ll see how you go.” Not in a patronising way. More like a “big brother” or “senpai” role. Kind of like how he is with Chopper and Usopp and Nami, the slightly weaker members of the crew. He’ll let them do their thing, but if he has to step in for their safety, he will do so without hesitation.

Zoro knows he’s the stronger swordsman here, but did not rub that in Tashigi’s face. He sat back and thought, “Good. You’ve improved a lot since Loguetown. You do have some fighting spirit, after all. Fine, you take this and if I need to, I’ll step in, but only if it gets really bad.”

And that’s pretty much how the fight panned out.

Were These Manga Panels? (Because They’re Awesome)

It was good to see that Tashigi’s confidence has grown. She snapped back at Zoro. Her fight with Monet confirms she has learned haki. (Probably a must for higher ranking officers in the New World.) She is tough, determined and strategic as she would not let go even when Monet was munching her shoulder. Nom, nom, nom.

But what the fight with Monet also confirmed is that if a logia user is fast enough, bog-standard haki will not cut it. I’m actually cool with that because it means Luffy won’t be able to just blitz everyone with Conqueror’s Haki (I know it only works on fodder but still, you know how I like a bit of peril in plot.) This also bodes well for the Smoker fight. Vergo is strong in the way of Haki but Smoker is a fast, tricky Logia type. Should be a good fight, when we get to see the end of it.

The speed differential meant Monet gained the upper hand. The way she gnawed on Tashigi’s shoulder was savage.

This is when Zoro thought, “Okay. Enough. Big brother has seen enough of Tashigi being bullied.”

Even unsheathing his swords, Zoro does damage. (The warning cut on Monet’s face should have been her cue to scarper.)

Still, Zoro would never, ever admit that he likes to help out anyone because that would ruin his pirate-hunter image. So he shit-talked Tashigi a bit. “You talk big but you took so much time. Time’s up. I have to go now.”

And to Monet, he said, “When you thought you couldn’t beat me, you should have run. Of course there are things I don’t wanna cut. But let me ask you something. Have you ever seen a fierce animal you were sure would never bite? Because I haven’t.”

The grey filter descended. Everything was in slow motion. Monet could not move.

Then, with his one-sword style: Great Dragon Shock, Zoro literally ripped Monet a new one.

Honestly, the Zoro and Tashigi fight was so damned savage. There was Monet, lying on the ground in two pieces, twitching and flailing and freaking out because she could no longer control her body (nightmare fuel) and Zoro wise-cracking, like, “Are you two happy now?” xD

And do you know what? Zoro didn’t even use haki. If he had, Monet would probably be dead.

But Monet did get up and tried to strike again - and this time, Tashigi was the one to finish her off. (Laws of shounen. Women have to fight women. The trope was so close to being subverted!)

Of course, Tashigi ragged on Zoro for not killing Monet. “You are like that, after all! You can’t fight seriously against women.”

Nah... I don’t think it’s that, exactly. think Sanji’s right about Zoro. He does have a softer side. But it’s not like Sanji’s, in that he wants to protect women. Zoro just likes to help out deserving people who are not as strong as him. Secretly, though, while maintaining his surly demeanor.  And maybe he just doesn’t like killing all that much. If they’re a good opponent, you can fight them again someday, right? Why waste them?

YMMV, of course, and I don’t mind if anyone disagrees. I can see the evidence for the other side too.

And, of course, Tashigi collapsed from her injuries and Zoro had to lift her out of the Biscuit Room. Just as well, really, because the gas was leaking in and Zoro has no sense of direction. I think this is a new record for Zoro: getting lost in a round room with two doors.

How sweet was that little scene with Tashigi geeking out over Shisui, though?

I think from now on, Zoro and Tashigi will be secret buddies. :)

IT’S SAD CHOPPER, NOOOOOOOO... ;_;

I love Chopper. Ever since I learned about his past back on Drum Island, I have had a major soft spot for Chopper. Fun fact: I own a Chopper key topper, a Chopper roll-up pencil case and a giant Chopper mug I drink coffee from every morning without fail. You could say I am a Chopper fan.

I like his honesty, his cleverness and his kindness. Cleverness is not a rare commodity in scientists at Caesar’s level. But kindness and honesty? Those are first edition shiny Charizard rare qualities.

And I’m gonna frame this bit of discussion of Chopper by comparing him with Caesar. Because Caesar has said the following phrase several times this arc, to the point it stood out to me: “I will treat you at any cost.”

Every time I heard him say that, I was like, “Nice significant omission, Caesar. You’ll treat them with your crazy drugs at any cost. You’ll treat them with that poisoned candy at any cost. You will continue your “treatments” at any cost.” Another sugar-coated lie with a basis in truth. The sort Caesar specialises in.

I was not aware of the actual cost until now.

The morality bar has officially given up and gone home. It’s crying on the sofa now because it can’t deal with Caesar anymore. (@infriga That human garbage comment... Oda is not wrong there. xD)

Mocha Regrets Doing The Chili Pepper Challenge

The action in 614 picked up with Robin and Chopper teaming up to restrain and sedate children. Not in a Nurse Ratchet way. They were helping.

The kids still running free were being held back by Nami and Mocha. Well, Nami tried to hold them back without hurting them (which is nigh impossible with her weather skill set) and Mocha ran with the candy.

Inevitably, the giant kids were the real obstacle. One took a might swing and Nami and suddenly, Mocha was on her own. She ran to a crossroads, and then, like Gandalf at Moria, she was like, “I have no memory of this place.”

But the other kids did. Some looped round and cut her off.

Must admit, at this point I thinking, “Jeez, just let them have the damned candy and you can sedate them later. They’ve been dosed for years. One more won’t kill them.”

Because Mocha knew it was, in fact, the opposite, she decided to take one for the team and NECK THE ENTIRE LOT OF CANDY IN ONE GO.

Even I gasped at that one. That was a major, major overdose. Even Chopper had never seen anyone put away that quantity of drugs before. He was screaming at her to spit them out. He had told her what kind of drug it was! But Mocha hamstered them in her cheeks for a while and I thought, cool, she’ll hold them there until the kids are all sedated. Job done!

Nope. This is Oda we’re talking about.

He was about to engage Sad Chopper and Certain Death and I was not ready for them.

Chopper and Caesar Compared

Remember when Chopper and Mocha were holding the door against the other kids? There was a bit of that conversation OP fans were not party to (Oda’s fave cutaway technique in action again).

Mocha asked Chopper if Caesar really was a bad person. He was always so lovely to them and gave them candy every day. 

“Yes,” Chopper said. “That’s his trick. You kids are his test subjects. You were never sick from the beginning and your giant body is proof. I’ve heard turning people into giants has been a project underway for hundreds of years. No one has ever succeeded. This experiment is a doomed failure too. Caesar knows this. I suppose he’s just collecting data for his next attempt.”

Then poor, little Mocha asked a difficult question. “What’s going to happen to us?”

Chopper dropped the heavy truth bomb.

“You’re all gonna die. None of you will make it home. That candy is a deadly poison. It will destroy your body before you know it. The more you eat, you’ll crave more and the harder it’ll be for you to get away from Caesar. I sedated you already but from the side-effects from the candy... you’ll probably die before you can even become an adult.”

Ouch. 

Huge, huge ouch. 

Especially since Mocha had a short flashback where the kids all got together and promised to go out to sea when they were in their twenties and have an adventure. Once they got better and went home. ;_;

I mean, hefty truth bombs of that magnitude are not normally the way you’d deal with breaking such crushing news to kids. But that’s not Chopper’s way. He is kind and honest, almost to a fault. Plus, they were in a really highly-charged, difficult, life-or-death situation. The truth was probably the quickest way to impress on Mocha the seriousness of what was happening.

Chopper also hinted they might not die, “but only if you kids escape now. You’re not gonna die. We will save you all!” That glimmer of hope led to Mocha making a noble sacrifice for her friends. If she could show them what the candy did, they wouldn’t want to eat it. Then they’d want to go home, just like her.

But here’s the thing... Chopper told Mocha the truth. Even though it shook her to the core and distressed her deeply, it was the right thing to do and helped Mocha take difficult steps to improve her situation. Being carted away by Sanji and his G5 fans to a treatment room, Chopper said: “I will save you at any cost, Mocha!” 

Chopper will do anything to save Mocha, which means getting her better, off the drugs and home to her parents.

This is in stark contrast to Caesar, who always said, “I will treat you at any cost.”

The treatment was the experimental drug and the cost was Mocha’s life.

Caesar wanted data to further his own ambitions. 

Chopper’s motivations are entirely selfless.

Chopper for President.

Oh, and btw, Luffy punched his way out of the garbage pit. The haki use on the fodders and the “Do I have to repeat myself?” moment was badass.

Caesar, you’d better get a jar because you’ll need somewhere to put all your loose teeth.

Caesar has made Luffy so angry he tries punching through the fourth wall to find him.

#one piece #neverwatchedonepiece #nwop #never watched one piece #monkey d. luffy #roronoa zoro #sanji #tony tony chopper #usopp #nami #nico robin #brook #mocha #monet #caesar clown #foxfire kinemon #momonosuke

[making-my-escape]

The Outlander «Deep Heart’s Core» reaction

Please, someone talk to me, I'm properly frustrated. I find this particular episode bitterly disappointing. For me it's the weakest one of the whole show (plot-wise). I do understand when show-runners have no other choice but to change the original material (if it's too complicated to put on screen unedited or too expensive to film). But with «Deep heart's core» (respective book chapters) it was entirely possible to keep considerable part of vital dialogs without exceeding episode's time limit, so everything would be fine. Nevertheless Starz chose to «reinvent the wheel». And look what's happened. 

We didn't get to see: a) How The Fraser's learnt their way to be a family. We jumped almost right into the domestic bliss instead. While the story could have become more believable if we had seen that it took actual time and effort to establish the relationship, even when everyone was willing.   

b) How Jamie ached to be a Father, but yet Brianna wasn't ready to meet his expectations. She genuinely tried to please Jamie, being fond of him, but at the same time she didn't want to betray Frank. At the start Jamie & Brianna didn't even communicate directly. Claire helped them. It would have been so sweet to see their small steps toward each other. 

c) How it was not Bree, who brought up Frank Randall a lot, but Jamie himself. Isn't it a more interesting angle? Fraser can't stop comparing himself to Randal, can't let him go. He sees that Frank had a huge impact on his women and this feeling bothers Jamie. It makes us see that JAMMF is just a man, and not an irreproachable being (as he's at least partly portrayed in the show). 

So «behind the scenes» of this episode contains huge chunk of small but important stuff that didn't make it to the screen. And I dare to say, for a lot of people the special magic of The Outlander is right in these tiny details described above. Why all of a sudden Starz decided to leave them out? They managed to get through 3 seasons without unnecessary alterations well enough. I can't remember any other episode violated so much (well, In fact I can, but as I said, if it's impossible to shoot, I'm totally ok with shortcuts and changes). 

What I really don't like about «Deep heart's core» it's how the first part of the episode is all about things going very wrong very fast (too wrong and too fast, if it comes to that) while the second part is awfully stuck in pointless «plastic» out-of-character conversations and behavior. 

They've even changed the way Jamie «found out» about Brianna's pregnancy. That is another miss. From Jamie's perspective his wife and daughter had betrayed him, keeping the rape a secret. He's boiling with rage, but also helpless, heartbroken, and devastated. Still he keeps all these unpleasant feelings in. No matter what. 'Cause he knows what it's like to be raped, and he needs to be there for his daughter. It took all his strength but he was as gentle with Brianna as it was possible. Read this, you'll enjoy the scene. And don’t forget to delete «Unwed-pregnant-daughter-can’t-be-what-you-hoped-for» bullshit from your memory. Such lame stuff belongs with cheap soap operas, which The Outlander is not. 

Also there's Claire, who's in deep distress. Torn between her love for Jamie and her motherly bond with Brianna. There's no peace between her and her husband. And that's the whole different level of the story, though let's not get into that. @holdhertightandsayhername wrote it better here

What I'm trying to say is that for me reading these pages was like playing Minesweeper (do you remember the game?). Every next move is harder to make, because it's more likely to cause an explosion. So by the time characters got into the huge «revelation fight» I felt like a tightly coiled spring myself. But watching this episode was nowhere near that. All we saw was Jamie's injured hand in a «wee accident», and literary just one phrase «Your mother told me what happened». Followed by tonnes of incoherent shouting.  

And why make such an idiot of Ian? Whether we remember it or not, Jamie was a man of 18th century. That added up to the existing tension. He naturally saw things not like Bree or Claire. Even made several intrusive efforts to arrange Brianna's future for her (including Ian's proposal), which gradually infuriated his daughter more and more. All good intentions notwithstanding. 

But that part was also left off-screen. As well as other dialogs that showed Jamie's perspective (his deep concern for Brianna's reputation — because public opinion was a huge thing in 1700s — his wish for another child of his blood, etc.). So when Brianna hit (!) her Da screaming «You are self-righteous bastard», it did seem to me a little bit too far-fetched. But not as over-the-top far-fetched as when a second later Jamie lost his shit, sounding almost panicked «I'll-make-it-up-to-you-please-just-don't-be-mad». Man, really, what could be more out of character?   

Finally, the last third of the episode in general, the heck was that? Fellow bookreaders, am I the only one who doesn't get it? And what all these long scenes with Roger walking nearly-dead with Indians were for? They could have cut it in half and still be able to make their point. The lad horribly suffered «for nothing» and was determined to escape. I want to hear more from Roger, but only when he really has something «to tell». Besides, dear Indians, why to buy a man only to exhaust him to death on the road? Doesn't make much sense. 

3 more episodes are totally enough to conclude the season. But it depends on how to tell the story. So haters gonna hate, lovers gonna love, readers gonna read, and I just gonna hope the narrative gets better. The Outlander is a truly amazing story. It deserves to be directed accordingly. 

P.S. Please, forgive my messed-up grammar and overdramatic way of describing things. English is not my native language, I've never written such a long text before.

Also all these pretty GIFs aren’t mine. I took them here. Please follow @outlander-online for more amazing content. 

#Outlander #The Outlander #Outlander Starz #Outlander Season 4 #Outlander 4x10 #Deep Heart's Core #Jamie Fraser #James Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser #James Fraser #Claire Fraser #Claire Randall #Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp #Brianna Fraser #Brianna Randall #Bree #Roger Wakefield #Roger McKenzie #Fraser's Ridge #Young Ian #Sam Heughan #Caitriona Balfe #Sophie Skelton #Richard Rankin #Sassenach

[helihi]

The Good, The Bad, and The Dirty: RWBY Vol 6 E 12

I wish I could’ve enjoyed this, but the fact that this episode could’ve been perfectly merged with last weeks episode for a rightful 23-25 minute episodes makes me angry.

Overall rating: 3/10

A.N.: First we got all buildup, now we got all pay off. Why do they keep doing this?

The Good:

Quick spoilers for the review ahead: most of the contents of this section are about the Bee vs. Adam fight. In fact, the 3/10 rating is earned because of this since I was just bored during the fist half and during the cliffhanger.

A quick shoutout to Ruby for figuring out an alternative way to neutralize Cordovin without yelling it or making it as obvious as Oscar’s plan was. TBH the writers did a poor job trying to execute the first plan by being just as obvious to make it not work.

This week the fight between Blake, Yang and Adam continues, but unlike last week, both girls get to fight by each others side. What’s really interesting about the scenes showcased on this episode is the way both adapt to their current circumstances and still manage to get that sweet Bumbleby combo we’ve experienced in previous volumes.

They are both quick on their feet, always in sync. Blake’s evasive technique and light hits help to destabilize Adam while Yang carries the punch (literally). She distracts him and positions him right where Yang needs him to be. Not only that, but she makes sure Adam cannot absorb any of Yang’s heavy hits, completely conscious of how that can backfire.

Of course, the ribbon combo attack the pair is known for makes a comeback. This time, Yang grabs what’s left of Gambol Shroud to protect Blake and is the one throwing her partner around.

The flying cat Faunus is not strong enough to break Adam’s stance and she’s thrown away, and her aura breaks. Like everyone guessed, Blake’s aura is purple, the same shade Yang’s bandana is ;)

Now is Yang’s turn to hold her ground against Adam while she keeps an eye on Blake, who could easily fall to there death. hOW THE FUCK CAN SHE CLIMB WITH HEELS.

“The moment of truth, Yang. Do you think you’re faster than you were at Beacon?”

Yang trembles.

“Me neither.”

Here’s the second thing I wanted to point out about this fight: Adam still tries to use manipulation to get the upper hand. He knows a part of Blake still fears him, and he knows Yang’s trauma is associated with him.

Again and again he has tried to exploit this, but once more: he fails.

Yang goes for an evasive tactic rather than an offensive one, more proof of her character development.

Adam continues taunting, because he has no other tools or tactics he can use. He desperately tries to clutch to power, even though last episode showed him that Yang and Blake are at their strongest when together.

This is why he wanted to sever that link in volume 3. Even if he didn’t know how good of a team they were, he knew the best way to break Blake was through Yang.

“What does she even see in you!” remarks how out of his element Adam is. He lost the fight before he actually lost it.

Yang’s Semblance makes a return, but TBH the animation was pretty underwhelming considering we’ve waited for its comeback for about 3 years. I think Adam’s Moonslice animation has been maintained. Everything from the color palette shift, to the way the red on his outfit lights up. His presence is there.

Yang’s Semblance doesn’t bust in victorious and glorious. It’s more like a tame flame. I appreciate the fire effects, and the way Yang’s moments are highlighted with 2D yellow effects, but where’e the frame distortion? The glowing red eyes? The final punch was nice, but overall, I’m disappointed.

Finally, the moment we all have been waiting for comes: Adam Taurus’s death. Have some popcorn peeps. There was no other way to end the whole arc, Adam was irredeemable.

If you wanted me to be honest, I thought Adam was going to fall to his death in some fight scenario where he was so consumed by anger and his obsession that he looses it; or Yang was going to be the one ending it.

Having them both kill him, with both halves of Gambol Shroud no less, is so fucking powerful and fitting. Of course, quite traumatic for Blake, who would be the one most affected by it.

I think they nailed the reaction. Aside from the obvs Bumbleby excitement, Blake breaking down, the remainder of the promise and Yang comforting her so delicately is the perfect way to end this arc.

Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as cathartic and beautiful since we’re cut short by the need to establish another cliff hanger.

The Bad:

I see people left and right on RT’s forms, Tumblr and YouTube praising the CRWBY for getting better at pacing or even “nailing” it.

Boi, oh boi, could you not be more wrong.

This episode could and should’ve been part of last episode. There’s no reason why any writer would cut the momentum episode 11 carried for a cheap cliff hanger and have the resolution to the fights be concluded 7 days later.

Do you know what real shows do? They make a two parter. A half an hour special.

I could bring up AtlA, but I’m going to bring up SU.

Do you know what’s going to happen next Monday on CN?

A 45 minute special Steven Universe season finale.

You know why?

Because the best way to finalize the diamond arc is by paying off all the buildup with a huge chunk of content! The decision to have the final 4 episodes group together to deliver some satisfactory pay off will be a blast.

Yes, we don’t know how season is going to end, but I can fucking tell you this special is the best way to end this arc.

SU’s atrocious schedule has made a lot of people drop the show, and I don;’t blame them. CN doesn’t know what its doing, and it’s purposefully killing shows with this (Se also: Adventure Time).

However, if there’s something the Crewniverse know how to do is delivering a story that can fit an episode.

A beginning/set up, a middle and a resolution/ending.

RWBY doesn’t do that. Episodes are: all build up, all buildup + some middle, some middle+tiny resolution.

The only way one can truly enjoy RWBY is by binge watching it, but unfortunately, RT doesn’t release the episodes Netflix style.

Do they change and adapt their writing because of this?

No, they don’t.

The problem wasn’t that the RWBY girls were separated, it’s that the writing team doesn’t know how to properly pace a story for an audience.

Also, is anyone bothered by the fact that no matter how many times Cordovin hit the Atlesian ship, that thing could still work?

Way to kill the momentum.

The Dirty:

I see a lot of people reflagging GIFs of Ruby and Qrow showing how much the girl has grown and how conflicted he might be, and TBH I see what you do.

I know Qrow looks at Ruby and probably thinks of Summer.

Summer is dead; Ruby is not, and Qrow wants to keep it that way. But Ruby is on her way to becoming an adult, she’s the leader on her team, a figure to her friends and the protagonist of the show. She has to show she’s prepared to take a stance.

Awesome scenes guys! You forgot something tho:

Rubys conflict.

Just like the glazed over Oscars big “this is what I stand for” moment of his arc, we never see Ruby at her weakest.

People complained of this during volume 4, but have you not notice she has not broken down or showed a real crisis? This 5 minutes with the apathy is not enough, and though I love her questioning Ozpin, I feel this needed more fuel.

Sometimes it feels like the writers know what a protagonist is supposed to sound like and act like, but don’t quite get how they got there.

Oh yeah, Grimm show up btw. We all knew this so meh.

Overall rating: 3/10

A.N.: Someone should really teach Miles and Kerry the ways episodes are structured. It’s season 6 and still haven’t grasped how to write an episodic series.

#RWBY #RWBY6 #Me #The good the bad and the dirty

[poirott]

hey there any idea where to watch all of the murder on the orient express deleted scenes? :)

Hey there, anon! Thank you for your ask. There are 11 deleted scenes on the Murder on the Orient Express (2017) dvd. Some have been uploaded online via media outlets and some by fans. I’m including links to the uploads, and my own screencaps of the rest of the scenes:

- Hotel Check-in - Poirot arrives at the Tokatlian hotel in Istanbul. He’s telegrammed specific orders about his room reservation (10 bath towels, 10 bottles of mineral water, etc). The scene introduces his OCD. I did a gif set of it.

- Poirot Bedtime Rituals - We see Poirot’s slimming exercises routine and moustache grooming. He’s wearing a corset. Here’s a gif set. The only look we have at Poirot’s famous moustache kit. Ken Branagh talks about the kit here.

- Pierre Michel (the conductor) interview - The only suspect interrogation scene they cut. It’s a shame because Marwan Kenzari’s performance is touching, and the location they went with for the interview is visually interesting.

- Departure - A great shot of the Orient Express leaving the station. We see all the characters inside the traincars as they speed past the camera. Poirot is at the very end in the last car, looking pleased. This isn’t a CGI scene, it was shot in camera.

- The following tweet from a fan has a video of three deleted scenes:

1) The Mr Ratchett/Poirot sequence from the Arasta Bazaar/Alternate Opening scene, an alternate - and much longer - intro scene of several characters before they get to board the train. The widowed Mrs Hubbard is chatting up a bunch of local children, Pilar Estravados the missionary is talking to a jewelry seller, Miss Debenham is taking pictures on her camera and spots the Count and Countess Andrenyi.

In the movie we only see Ratchett and the Count and Countess Andrenyi at the cafe, but no Poirot, who got cut out. In the full deleted scene he’s got a bigger role, he sees the Count fighting the paps and is about to intervene (rising from his chair), when the Countess arrives and the fighting stops. Poirot sits down again. He’s eating a lot of food, and getting excited over famous desert, and like the clip in the tweet shows, Mr Ratchett is also ordering him a bottle of champaigne, but Poirot asks for a cup of hot chocolate instead, and toasts Mr Ratchett in thanks. Chefs making the chocolate for Poirot and closeups of Godiva chocolate do not appear in either the deleted scene or the theatrical cut. I giffed the Godiva sequence here. 

2) Dreamscape - The full “Poirot vision”-like scene in b&w in which we get inside Poirot’s mind. It’s a sort of re-cap of the different clues Poirot’s gathered so far. He’s looking at all the suspects one by one, and there’s a cool group shot of them facing him. More on this scene below.

3) bits of the Poirot Bedtime Rituals scene I’ve already mentioned.

That’s all the scenes I’ve managed to find online, there might be more out there, the studio took down several clips. The ones left from the dvd are:

- Alternate Opening - B&w scene of Colonel Armstrong alone in a gloomy, darkened living room. He’s watching a projector clip of himself, his wife and daughter at play when they were all happy and carefree. Little Daisy is playing with her teddybear and dolly.

- Newsreel (Extended) - B&w reel of news footage and newspaper clippings about the Armstrong kidnapping case, “the story that shocked the world”. It serves as background info for the audience. Shots of the crime scene, the funeral, mother screaming on the floor, Daisy’s teddybear guarding a fresh grave.

- Breakfast - The extra footage that was cut from the Wailing Wall scene. After Poirot exposes the Chief Inspector, the Inspector wants to attack him from behind but Poirot intercepts with his cane without looking back. He doesn’t see the breakfast boy with the eggs who’s followed him to the Wall, and he swings his cane, hitting theeggs by accident. The tops of the eggs the boy is holding out to him, are cut off. Next shot is of Poirot finally eating breakfast, he’s seated by the Wall, with the boy and a waiter standing beside him.

- Train Montage - A short clip of Orient Express staff/waiters setting the tables, bringing in crates of food, arranging champaigne bottles, etc. Just a few extra shots that didn’t make it into the film.

- Luggage - Bouc and Michel the conductor going through some of the passengers’ luggage. Mostly closeups of the contents of their suitcases, with quick shots of Estravados the missionary, Schmidt the maid, Marquez the salesman and Hardmanthe professor, and one extra line from Estravados.

There are about 30 mins of other deleted footage that never landed on the dvd, including two major action scenes - Poirot chasing MacQueen the assistant out in the blizzard, shooting at MacQueen in warning, then saving him from drowning when the man falls into a river, and Poirot defending himself from Dr Arbuthnot, almost falling off the train and using his wits to get back inside.

Changes from the original script to the theatrical cut: The original denouement scene happened in the dining car like in the book (and the 1974 movie), not outside, though I’m not sure if they ever filmed the first version. There are some huge differences between the original script and the film. A lot of the clue-explaining, some of the exposition, character-establishing and other character moments, extra lines from interrogation scenes, chunks of dialog, etc, were cut. Settings and certain lines of dialogue were changed. More canon quotes were added into the movie, such as Poirot’s famous “My name is Hercule Poirot and I’m probably the greatest detective in the world” line from The Mystery of the Blue Train. Miss Debeham and Dr Arbuthnot kissed twice in the original script! No kisses in the movie. Pilar Estravados was Greta Ohlsson, like in the book (Estravados’ name comes from Hercule Poirot’s Christmas).  Poirot remembers his canon “love interest“ Vera Rossakoff. She only gets a mention but is kind of instrumental to him solving the case. Vera was changed into “Katherine” in the movie, a new character, someone from Poirot’s past. Was it because Vera might appear in future movies?

Most of the characters get a bit more screentime in the original script. Poirot has a HUGE, HUGE “getting-inside-the-detective’s-head” scene where he sees all the suspects frozen like ice, or like in a photograph, and he can walk through the photograph and observe each suspect, each frozen facial expression, and analyze what everyone told him in interviews. He’s looking at all the clues again in his mind, brushing away those that aren’t relevant. For the audience, this would have been a bigger and more helpful re-cap of the mystery compared to “Dreamscape” above. It would have been an amazing showstopper scene.

I wish they could have kept some of these scenes as one of the biggest criticisms about the movie was that the audience couldn’t really follow the clues and play “detective”, Poirot did all the explaining himself - and quickly - and didn’t give them enough of a chance to solve the mystery on their own. The screenwriter originally had POIROT ANALYZE ALL THE CLUES in great detail. All the clues from the book are present. Poirot’s all about the clues and observation. He brainstorms which suspect could be guilty, which pairs of suspects could have killed Ratchett together. He considers them all in his mind, all the variations and possibilities, and the audience can see his thoughts. He’s moving from one suspect to the next, in a “refresh my memory” sort of scene for the viewers.

He’s not “omnipotent” nor “guessing” like some critics have complained. He tells you how he came by the conclusions. He does it in the movie but originally he talked a lot, lot more, and the scenes were trimmed for time constraints. Some of the details regarding the clues were the first to go. I love the movie dearly and always will but there’s an even greater potential in the original script, I think. Hopefully we see more deleted footage on future dvd sets. :)

Thanks again for your ask! If anyone would like me to gif any of the deleted scenes, please let me know! :)

#Anonymous #replies #murder on the orient express #agatha christie #hercule poirot #poirot

[whateverisbeautiful]

Reveling in Richonne

#118: The Golden Rule (8x12)

 So each time I’ve done these posts there’s been some character that has spurred me to go on a gif journey expressing how tried they made me feel. 😂

The first time doing these revelings it was Jadis in the season 7 finale. And then during the Retrospect posts it was Jessie. And for this round...y’all we gotta add Enid to the Queens of Trying It, cuz she was all the way out of line. 💯

So we see Michonne standing outside of the Hilltop building as those three ladies wait on the bench. And then she decides to go inside because it’s clear she has something she needs to address.

She walks in and tells Maggie “We should make the deal and let them go before the Saviors get here.” 

First of all; yes fierce walk! And it’s sweet to see Michonne wanting these women to be spared of dealing with the pending craziness that’s about to pop off when they face the Saviors.  

Also this is why Michonne is fit to be a leader, because she’s decisive and diligent. But Maggie feels they can’t let them go with what they have, and then Enid barges in.

And this is where our gif journey begins. 🙃 

Cuz just the physical act of Enid barging into this conversation had me like...

Like I already have an issue with the fact that Enid steps into this conversation between two women who have known each other for SIX seasons now. And then she wants to interject to tell Michonne, “Maggie’s right.”

Just two words into the scene and I already was like...

The way Michonne turns around, you can tell she might be thinking the same things as me which is “Did this little girl really just waltz in here and think she can talk to me like this?”

Michonne has the courtesy to face her (cuz lord knows I would not) and Enid goes on to say, “We take their stuff. Otherwise someone else will. Someone else will kill them. It’s a miracle they’re still alive anyways.” That’s sounding real Savior-ish if I do say so myself lol. 👀  

Y’all I low key wanted Michonne to just be like...

So Michonne silently stares at her and I’m telling you Danai is so excellent at not playing anything one-note, even in a facial expression. Because as much as Michonne might feel tried, you also see her feeling compassion on Enid. Like it’s evident that Michonne feels for her that the world has hardened her this way at such a young age.

And then Enid tries it again by stepping closer to Michonne to continue to talk to her like she doesn’t realize she’s talking to the literal queen of this apocalypse.

She says “The Saviors are on their way. We’re gonna fight and some of us will die.” And the salty side of me was like listen boo, Michonne and Rick.... see they’re the ones who live (at least before season 9) so they don’t have to be as concerned with that death stuff like the rest of you lol.

Enid asks why they should care about anyone else and I was like...

The bold disrespect to talk to Michonne that way when this is a woman who one; is grown two; is fully aware of the situation and most importantly three; who just lost Carl who she had a deeper relationship with than Enid could possibly know. 

And it’s a miracle Michonne’s even able to be around other people right now, let alone Carl’s broody unofficial “girlfriend”. 🙄 

But y’all it don’t stop there. 😑

Getting more heated, Enid says “We take their stuff and we use it. We stop pretending that things just work out. They don’t.” 

And hearing her try and talk at Michonne about a concept Michonne knows full well had me really asking...

Michonne responds saying, “Carl rescued Siddiq and now we have a doctor and we have a friend.” 

Y’all this is heartwarming because Michonne already is choosing to see the value in what Carl’s “something after” goal was. 

She always did understand Carl in a special way so it makes sense that she’s the one to vocalize this understanding of where Carl was coming from with helping Siddiq and even to find the positive in it with the fact that Siddiq is a doctor and friend. 

And it’s sweet that she refers to Siddiq as a friend when it could be very easy to resent Siddiq for being associated with the moment that killed Carl. And also because it’s choosing to not just see the fact that he’s a doctor as the only plus side to things, cuz that would only be allowing his value to come from what he can offer them. 

So in saying he’s a friend it’s meaningful cuz it shows she’s open to accepting Siddiq as a person and not just a commodity. 

It’s like how Carl told Rick in 8x09 that he helped Siddiq not cuz he was a doctor but because he wasn’t going to make it alone. 

She then wisely takes the gun away from Enid as an act of letting this girl know that the way she wants to fight away her problems is not the way. (And I think she also takes the gun cuz Enid has no business being this hostile right now.) 

And then Michonne says very matter of factly; “Carl was brave.”  Y’all, the fact that they have to speak about Carl in past tense still hurts. 😢

You can tell in her delivery of this line that it’s painful for her to have to address Carl as no longer being with them, but she’s willing to go to that emotional place and defend Carl despite the pain. 

And I love that she’s choosing to see the bravery in Carl’s commitment to humanity rather than having a more jaded take on his actions.  

And then the pinnacle of the triflingness is when Enid steps to Michonne and says, “And now he’s dead,”

Which...

Before I go off 😁 lemme just say;…I get it. She’s hurting and she’s sad because she lost her close friend. But I still have to tell her...

Cuz the disrespect is just too much. Like Enid needs to realize that she is talking to the woman who knew Carl when he was this little boy who just lost his mom. She is talking to the woman who held Carl in her arms after he was attacked by that Claimer. 

She is talking to the woman who gave Carl a huge chunk of his happiest memories. And most importantly she is talking to the woman who became Carl’s mom and best friend. 

So she needs to come correct with it. Cuz to throw that in Michonne’s face like Carl’s life was wasted is unacceptable, especially so soon after Michonne just buried him.

When watching this the first time, I was very curious what Michonne’s response would be. Cuz my personal response was very much like...

And I know Michonne is extremely good at having a “be the bigger person” response to when people try her. Like she’s the embodiment of...

And I love that about her. But the second I heard Enid say that line, I was literally hoping that Michonne would refuse to play nice with this one right here cuz Enid needed to know...

And I love that, while she kept that signature Michonne composure her response was perfection because she also was more than willing to let this little girl know she isn’t playing games.

Cuz she looks at Enid with a calm intensity and simply says “Step back.”

Y’all. This was legit me...

When I tell you I was soooooo here for it. For real, it was everything. 🙌🏾

“Step back” is a way of life now lol. 😋 Enid was putting disrespect on Carl and Michonne, and I love that Michonne let her know she will have none of that. 

Michonne’s basically telling Enid...

With a dash of...

I was like; that’s right Enid, this is a little different than some of the adults you’re used to giving sass to, cuz now you’re dealing with the queen. 👸🏾

And you can see the moment Enid realized she’s dealing with a queen too...

And when Michonne calmly but firmly tells her to step back, Enid already knows what time it is and she knows not to try it any further cuz...

That’s the kind of influential presence Michonne has, when she says something like that you already know you gotta listen. 

Like she really does have this perfect balance of peaceful but powerful, and her words command attention. #queen 

And sure enough Enid steps all the way back and out of the room. To which I was like... 

Similar to Ron, and Heath, and that chick at Hilltop, Enid joined the list of people who have learned the golden rule that when it comes to trying Rick or Carl in front of Michonne...

But what breaks my heart is Michonne’s expression as Enid walks away. Cuz you can tell that as composed as she’s been it’s hard for her to not want to just break down since losing Carl is still so fresh. 

And she’s been being strong for other people but, during this subtle moment, it becomes visible how much pain Michonne’s in over this loss.

And then Maggie dabbles in trying it when she reiterates “Things don’t just work out” And I was really like...

Cuz do 👏🏽you 👏🏽think 👏🏽that 👏🏽Michonne 👏🏽doesn’t 👏🏽know 👏 that? Maggie doesn’t have to tell Michonne things don’t work out cuz Michonne knows this just as much as any.

Michonne then says, in a tone that suggests she can think of a long list of times that’s been the case for herself (like losing two sons), “No. No they don’t.”

This episode had me starting to genuinely ask; do these characters know Michonne? Cuz if they did they would know that she’s had a lot of experiences with things not working out. 

Sis has lost a lot. But it’s because she has this winner’s attitude of finding the way they can thrive and rise above it that she’s been able to push through.

It’s times like these where I really wish characters interacted more. Cuz while I know Maggie and Michonne have a friendship, some of these relationships have been put so far on the back burner that it causes us to not even really know what the dynamics between these long standing characters even are and how much they know.

And it’s interesting cuz Maggie’s experienced an overwhelming amount of brutal losses too which if why I hoped the scenes with them in this episode would be focused on them really connecting through that. 

So then with emotion Michonne says, “But I think he knew that.  He didn’t give up on who Rick wanted him to be.”

It just hit me how significant this line is cuz, I feel like it’s a callback to the season 4 finale when Carl was able to open up to Michonne after that traumatic night with the Claimers. 

He told her how he’s not who his dad thinks he is and at that time he was really feeling like just another monster. But with the help of Michonne and Rick and Judith he was able to get better and not give up on who he knew deep down his dad wanted him to be. 

There’s something comforting about thinking that personal heart to heart Carl and Michonne had four season ago could be the moment that’s resonating with Michonne now and motivating her to not give up. 

And then I love that she also says “And we can’t on who he wanted us to be. We can’t.” 

It’s deep for a lot of reasons, but the most important being that this illustrates how she really took Carl’s final words to heart and how she’s determined to fight to not only create the world he wanted but also be the person he specifically wanted them to be, which is people who aren’t blinded by the fight and instead focused on caring and a real future.

And then Maggie seems to take those words to heart and I feel like for the first time we see Maggie have some deeper acknowledgement that they lost Carl, someone she’s known since he was a little kid. 

As Michonne walks out, we see Judith and the baby and I feel like again it’s this reminder of why fighting for peace is actually worth it. Because at the end of the day they’re not only trying to create a world just for themselves but for these kids who are most important cuz they will be the future now.

Maggie walks out and lets those ladies know she’s agreed to the deal. Georgie gives them food and explains her whole key to the future and honestly I just have to reiterate, all these characters have to put some respek on Michonne’s name. That’s the moral of the story because her instinct will not lead you astray lol. 👌 🏽

And this was me looking at this show when they pretty much make it seem as though it was Maggie who led them to this advancement and not Michonne...

So then Michonne again is the bigger person by being willing to still speak to Enid in the scene where they’re on watch at the wall. 

Enid shares about killing Natania and how she killed her and is alive but Carl saved someone is dead and I was like; girl a lot of that just has to do with faulty lopsided storytelling cuz Enid realistically shouldn’t have survived that Oceanside storyline and Carl absolutely should’ve survived that Siddiq storyline. 😑

Also, the fact that, as this scene starts, it seems like Enid wants to do round two of talking back to Michonne like she still ain’t learn her lesson...It had me wanting to tell Enid my own version of “step back” which is...

Enid asks if they’re supposed to just stop fighting, which makes me think that maybe that’s supposed to imply that in Carl’s letter to her he also expressed how he wants them all to stop fighting.

(Side note: I always felt like it was a missed opportunity to never get a scene or moment where Rick and Michonne got to acknowledge Carl’s relationship with Enid in the past few seasons. I feel like that would’ve been a cute moment between Rick, Michonne, and Carl)

Michonne says “I don’t think Carl wanted us to stop fighting for our future.  But I think he was telling us that to get to our future it’s going to take more than just fighting.” 

Again, Michonne’s out here perfectly summing up Carl’s message for others. The best of the best friends y’all. 💯

And, as she says this line, she gives Enid’s gun back to her in a way of symbolizing that the fight doesn’t have to be completely unnecessary.

So then, Enid is still not letting it sink in cuz she says  “The saviors are coming right now” and I was like girl... 

Cuz Michonne knows that. Fr, who does Enid think she’s talking to lol.  Michonne calmly responds saying, “And we’re gonna fight them. But there’s gotta be something after” and I appreciate her recalling Carl’s words and how she’s let that really resonate with her. 

Even tho Enid tried me like no other, I’m glad that Michonne is able to be a peaceful and wise presence in her life cuz Enid could use that in this time of grieving. Michonne’s presence is good for people’s health lol. #facts

And these Michonne-centric moments relate to Richonne because seeing where Michonne’s at gives insight to the way she’s working to go through this grieving process, and that’s what will play the biggest part in Rick being able to work through the grieving process later. 

With the devastating loss of Carl, it could be really easy for time to just stand still for Michonne or for her to just shut everyone out  but instead she’s staying present and honoring her best friend by focusing on and working towards the “something after” he wants for them.

It’s such a testament to the resilience and admirable character she has. And I appreciate that there’s a lot of things that are golden about Michonne; including the golden rule. 👌💯😋

gif sources: carlschandler michonnegrimes danaisokoye-archive coolpartytimefan grimescarl

#richonne #richonne fandom #richonne family #michonne #michonne grimes #rick grimes #twd #s8 #8.12

[elizabethrobertajones]

Why do you think that when seemingly funny thing happen, they happen to Dean? Like the fear thing in Yellow Fever or the age thing in 5.07 and 10.12 (both old and young!) or the memory thing in Regarding Dean. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of others (and also the not so funny like the vampire thing in 6.05 and of course Demon!Dean in S10). But I can't really picture Sam on those situation tho, Dean is perfect xD

And this is why Plucky’s is my favourite episode, because the thing happened to Sam and it was also perfect but in a completely different way :P 

If you’ve seen the gifset ever of that con where they were talking somewhat seriously about this, before someone said Sam was the straight man to Dean and then Jared imploded… I mean, I need someone to turn that up for me so I can stick it in the “thanks Jared” section of my massive bi dean meta etc resource… But also they WERE making a serious point before they derailed it :P 

The show has a lot of quietly set in stone dynamics. I mean, well, they’re stuff that can get subverted or a particular arc or season will try to explore things from a different angle, but even when they try to do that they still work within certain rules. 

I should probably just make a gif of it for myself, but my favourite visual for this is in 11x04… actually it’s 2am and I have the Sleep Madness so I’ll just do that… 

It’s such a wonderful image of the 2 of them, with Sam wearing red and Dean wearing blue, and top and tail like that. They’re 2 parts of a whole but they’re utterly different people and they’re often mirror images to each other in ways where when something applies to one, the direct opposite is shown in the other. 

(Sidebar: it’s why I’m so delighted that Sam was like blah blah Cas is family and then Dean was like you may be able to forget Cas but I can’t!!!!1 in 13x03… But on the other hand there are things where the nuances get lost and people make weird wrong assumptions like us having to endlessly prove Dean is the smart one because of the lingering first impression that doesn’t let anyone create any nuance after “sam went to college and dean didn’t”)

Anyway, setting up a straight man and comedy sidekick duo drops that all on Dean because from the first episode Sam’s all serious and has epic angst, while Dean tries to lighten the mood and clearly has the snarky sort of attitude that lends itself towards being the comedic one. Even when they make Dean angsty, Sam is serious and Dean big brother picks on him a bit sometimes (in a nice way) and teases him a lot - this is all broad strokes season 1 characterisation I’m talking about, really. But yeah, even if they go super deep or make Dean super angsty, he’s established as the character who can deal with it. And sometimes dealing with it is shouldering a cracky episode’s concept because they know his reactions are going to be easier to sell the thing.

The other thing is emotional POV and Dean’s largely established as the character who has that. Sam spends a lot of time unavailable as the emotional POV and Dean has shouldered entire SEASONS of it (season 6 especially where he was the ONLY viable emotional POV character for large chunks of it). Emotional POV is not really who the episode is ABOUT but what character is reacting to it and filtering how we should feel about a thing for us. In 6x03 when Cas wants to read the kid’s soul to get info, Dean steps in like wtf we don’t torture kids, but Sam and Cas outweigh him because utilitarian means to an end for the greater good blah blah. It makes it clear if we’d missed it that Dean is the only person whose judgement can be trusted until further notice. So until then, we always have to check in with Dean to get the read on a thing. 

Anyway because Dean is the emotional POV we cry and suffer along with him, but we also laugh along with him.

In 7x14 even when Sam gets a funny episode about him, the clowns aren’t really revealing anything about him - we knew about the clown fear since 2x02, it’s explored before the fight but largely for Dean’s benefit, and Sam getting the crap kicked out of him by clowns makes him a hilarious object for us - the fight scene is ridiculously funny but it IS just Sam having the snot beaten out of him while they come up with creative ways clowns would WRECK you in a fight. Dean gets an emotional showdown with the guy controlling the fears, and is the one who learns a lesson from it, while Sam had never really been set up for anything other than being the centre of attention of all the nonsense because it was really really funny that he was scared of clowns. It’s like the “the ball washer” “the what?” exchange explains Sam’s entire role in the episode. 

(Which was Dean doing big brother teasing but like the entire narrative decided to torture him :P)

And meanwhile when Dean gets the hilarious episodes which turn out to be really really painful, we get deep explorations of his psyche. 4x06 explores his hell trauma and reveals a lot about what he went through, and his fears about what Sam will become (LOVE THAT DABB EXPOSITION :D)… Idk about the old man Dean episode but he had some DEEP scenes with Bobby in it I seem to recall… I think @thejabberwock was probably giffing it recently and putting it on my dash for me to scroll past without really looking the moment I recognised what episode it was :P) but it was an episode that let them sort of relate to each other a bit better I think. Or Dean to feel for Bobby some more. Idk, I think there is a super important conversation between them? This is what happens when you put an episode on your “eeeeh skip it unless you’re being weirdly thorough” list :P

But yeah young!Dean was a massively important Dean episode exploring deep down in his character, but just delivered through silly moments about cake and Taylor Swift and complaining about puberty. Or the CAR THING with Sam where it’s a huge description of their relationship that Dean hops in the car seat even though he might not be old enough to even legally DRIVE her, and then Sam gets in the front seat and Dean just squishes him, hauling the seat forward for his tiny legs to reach the pedals. Like, Sam didn’t argue and it didn’t occur to Dean and they only swapped AFTER this bad dynamic caused a stupid mess and crushed Sam? Hello entire codependency metaphor :P 

(And I don’t think I need to explain 12x11 since it was so recent and so so awful about Dean D: Oh gosh, you could have just given us the Larry riding montage and no episode and that would have been enough :P)

Anyway as the emotional POV this stuff happens to Dean because changes to his self is the plot idea to help with stuff that’s to come or to explain things that already happened in the main plot, or really OTT situations they want for their own sake, that push the boundaries of his character but seem more to do with the main plot unfolding, make sense to explore through Dean, because his emotional landscape is often plot relevant, and the exploration even if it’s wrapped up in a silly concept, usually makes a lot more sense to apply to him because we already have a vast playground of his characterisation to mess around in. 10x12 and 12x11 especially were calling on everything about Dean. I think the writer even went on Twitter I guess when he was writing it and polled everyone on the most Dean-like things they could think of, and clearly got the answers “music, pie, car and girls” because those were the main metaphors of subverting Dean’s character that he offered.

I don’t think this is to reflect negatively on Sam - he gets some fascinating character stuff but connected to the main plot and not delving him in the same way Dean is delved (I think the imbalance and not understanding how they’re written can make people sad on Sam’s behalf he doesn’t get enough development in the same way Dean gets it, which is often by default when we care about character stuff over plot. I also think the writing falls into ruts of this which HAVE favoured Dean and his emotional arcs over Sam’s plot stuff). But Sam can get some incredible character stuff out of the plot things - I think Sam in Berens episodes is a great example because I’m still reeling from 13x03 and the stuff he said to Jack, because that’s all using the main plot to explore Sam - even if a lot of it was saying obvious stuff we knew about Sam, he doesn’t really say it too often and forcing him to say it out loud in episode THREE means the season is going to have to build on that or fail Sam (and he’s so wrapped up in what happens to Jack I can’t see his character stuff connected to that disappearing :P) 

But yeah, him being the “straight man” means that Dean is bouncing off him to be the funny one, and that really reflects on every level of the show, especially when you take humour and replace it with the emotional connection we have to the show in general and humour is just a great way to game that to get the reaction in a positive way, and Sam’s not the serious one so much as he’s dealing with the big stuff, usually, and that can wander off to all sorts of places like his habit of completely hammering down any other feelings to deal with the things that have to be done. Or to do the opposite of scaling up Dean, he can scale down to be the more serious one in a silly episode. Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect him - all the episodes where he had to deal with something happening to Dean that put him in charge it really messes him up. Or makes him really good at poker that one time :P 

…

Ah, my neighbours have stopped having a 4 way screaming match outside in the street, I’m going to stop typing and go to bed, so no tl;dr here… it’s turning 2am :D

#Asks #WOAH after I hit post a police car showed up #dean analysis #filed under #7x14 #for my own amusement #and #12x11 #for practical reasons

[crime-notforgotten]

In 1950 Los Angeles elected William H. Parker as the Chief of police. He brought with him a militaristic mentality, changing the L.A.P.D into a professional, strict and strong police force that was called one of the best police forces in the world by the 1960s. Not everyone felt this way, particularly the non white citizens of L.A. Due to its harsh military like stance on minor and non existent instances, the thin blue line was soon facing criticism of police brutality from the Black and Latino community.

On Wednesday, August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21 year old black man, was pulled over for reckless driving. The white officer arrested Frye after he gave him a field sobriety test. While that was happening, Ronald Frye, Marquette’s brother and passenger, had gone to retrieve their mother from the family home which was nearby. She gave Marquette shit for drunk driving, as she should have, but amidst the yelling someone pushed her and Marquette was hit. His mother didn’t like that so she jumped the cop who had done it, this resulted in a fight that only ended after guns were brought out and backup was called. Crowds were watching the scene and as Marquette was manhandled into the back of a cop car the crowd got angry. They began yelling at the police, throwing things at them. Marquette’s mother and brother were also arrested. The anger surged through the neighborhood, crowds growing and showing the police they did not like the way the situation was handled. More cops showed up, more people showed up, pretty soon a huge chunk of L.A would be in the midst of a massive and disastrous riot now known as the Watts Riots. The police chief called in the national guard, comparing the riots to the insurgency of the Viet Cong. He wanted a paramilitary response to the riot which was destroying the Watts area. 2,300 national guardsmen were called in. By Saturday there were 16,000 law enforcement personnel on the scene, which only enraged the rioters more. They threw bricks and concrete at the cops, destroyed their vehicles. Rioters fought with police and blocked fire dept. vehicles from getting to emergencies. The white owned stores were looted and burned down. Over a 6 day period between 31,000 and 35,000 people rioted on the streets of Los Angeles. It was only ended after Chief Parker instituted a curfew and a mass arrest policy. Anyone out in certain areas after 8 p.m. were locked up. After all was said, done and burnt there were over 3,000 arrests, over 1,000 injuries and 34 lives lost. It left L.A with $40 million in property damages and a major rift in the racial communities of L.A. White people were scared, fearful that the next arrest could lead to another riot. African American and Latino people saw the riots as a positive, an uprising against an oppressive system. In 1966 Bayrard Rustin, a civil rights activist, wrote of the riots: “The whole point of the outbreak in Watts was that it marked the first major rebellion of Negroes against their own masochism and was carried on with the express purpose of asserting that they would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life.”

The Frye brothers and their mother, Rena Price, were eventually released, and, after all the mayhem of the riots, Rena never recieved her car back from the L.A.P.D impound, the car Marquette was driving that night that broke the camel’s back. The fees on storage were more than the car was worth.

Pictured above: The Frye brothers and Rena Price their mother, Chief Parker, a news clipping about the police reaction, some pictures from the riot, a few gifs I made from archival footage of the riot and lastly some more newspaper headlines about the chaos.

#true crime #riot #race relations #history #police brutality #racism #1960s #1965 #1900s #watts riots #los angeles #true story #og

[mycasandstarrs]

SPN 5x18: “Point of No Return”

Quite the interesting song choice. “The Man Upstairs” by Kay Starr.

Bummed out Zachariah at a bar.

“That’s all they care about upstairs, ain’t it? Results, results, results. They don’t know. They’re not down on the ground, in the mud, nose to nose with all you pig-filthy humans, am I right?”

“Absolute—filthy what?”

lmao, poor guy catching what Zachariah said.

Another gif I’d seen often without knowing what the context was.

RIP Stuart and the bartender. Killed by Zachariah’s “boss”...whoever that is.

Dean-o.

Preparing to leave.

I”m trying to pause the screen to read this letter Dean is writing. I can make out the words “you’ll look after her” which is probably referring to Baby (tho I did initially think it was about Lisa, as he had told her last episode that “they” won’t get what they want from him without agreeing to something first...aka protection for her and Ben.) Also before that statement, it looks like Dean made a Back to the Future reference (which, of course he would) “Where we’re going, we don’t need  no roads”

He also mentions someone (or something?) being an “honorary Winchester in my book” and I hope he means Cas.

[After episode edit: Supernatural Wiki is awesome and provides a transcript to a good chunk of the letter. It confirms most of my guesses except the “honorary Winchester” is Bobby; I ain’t even mad about that.]

It was about to be sent to Bobby.

“It’s not too hard to figure out the stops on the Farewell Tour.” Well thank god Sam knows Dean so well.

“How could you do that?”

“How could I? All you’ve ever done is walk away.”

“And I was wrong. Every single time I did.” 

“You know I have to stop you.”

“Yeah, well, you can try. Just remember: You’re not all hopped up on demon blood this time.”

Dean delivering some low blows here...and he’s just getting started.

Cas! 

Who is phenomenally pissed and staring daggers at Dean.

“But if Lucifer burns this mother down, and I coulda done something about it, guess what? That’s on me.” Huh, that’s still part of the reason Dean says yes to Michael in S13.

“You’re not my father. And you ain’t in my shoes.”

DEAN WINCHESTER, YOU TAKE THAT BACK IMMEDIATELY.

It would’ve been kinda hilarious if Bobby had shot Dean for that alone.

“That’s the round I mean to put through my skull. Every morning, I look at it. I think, ‘Maybe today’s the day I flip the lights out.’ But I don’t do it. I never do it. You know why? Because I promised you I wouldn’t give up!”

:(

RIP 2 angels. Killed by Cas.

Will the real Adam Milligan please rise?

Cas wards Adam.

My god, Adam sounds so much like Dean.

Whoomp, there it is. Adm was brought back to replace Dean as Michael's vessel.

Cas shading Dean, lol.

“Why would they do this?”

“Maybe they’re desperate. Maybe they wrongly assumed Dean would be brave enough to withstand them.”

“Alright, you know what? Blow me, Cas.”   

Adam even acts like Dean, whereas Ghoul!Adam was more like Sam...

“Please, just trust me. Give me some time.”

“Give me one good reason.”

“Because we’re blood.”

Yeah, that ain’t gonna cut it.

“No, John Winchester was some guy who took me to a baseball game once a year. I don't have a dad. So we may be blood, but we are not family. My mom is my family. And if I do my job, I get to see her again. So no offense, but she's the one I give a rat's ass about, not you.”

Dude, it’s not their fault they never found out about you.

Jeez, what a dick.

Not that easy to escape, pal.

“The one thing worse than seeing dad once a year was seeing him all year.”

“Do you know how full of crap you are?”

“What?”

“Really. You see, it was me and it was my mom. That's it. She worked the graveyard shift at the hospital. I cooked my own dinners. I put myself to bed. So you can say whatever you want about our dad, but the truth is, I would have taken anything.”

SERIOUSLY WHAT A MEDIUM BAG OF DICKS

 Does Adam ever stop with the smartass remarks?

DEAN WHAT THE FUCK.

“I mean, think about how many people we've gotten killed, Sam. Mom, Dad, Jess, Jo, Ellen. Should I keep going?” None of those deaths were your own fault, you’re reaching for straws here pal.

“I just…I—I don’t believe.” 

“In what?”

“In you.”

I hate Dean’s campaign of driving people away so they’ll let him go, I h a t e t h i s.

“You’re angry, you’re self-righteous. Lucifer's gonna wear you to the prom, man. It's just a matter of time.” 

“Don’t say that to me. Not you...of all people.”

Omg, an almost direct parallel from “When the Levee Breaks”.

You made Sam cry, you asshole.

I love Bobby checking in on his sons :’)

How did Dean know Cas was gonna come down to check in on him? That crash was well timed.

And Cas actually showed concern for him!!

Dean, you fucking asshole.

“Cuff him to your chair.” lmao

Adam, meet Zachariah.

The other time where I can’t even argue against Zachariah...except for the “erotically” bit.

“Trust me, kid, when the heat gets hot, they're not gonna give a flying crap about you. Hell, they'd rather save each other's sweet bacon than save the planet.” Oh wait, there’s another time he’s just...kinda right. Tho I’d kinda argue that they’ve come a long way from that.

OOOHHH HERE IT COMES. ONE OF MY FAVORITE SCENES IN THE SERIES...and the reason I started shipping Destiel full time.

El Sol!

OOOOHHH IT’S DEAN BEATDOWN TIME!!!

It is so satisfying to see Cas beat the shit out of Dean after everything he’s said and done in this episode.

Also, how are NONE of the passing civilians noticing this fight???

I just...get a huge kick out of that scene. 

And now, I attempt to explain why this scene (of all scenes) was the reason I started shipping Destiel:

To me, there were two stages of Destiel; 1. Dean’s in love with Cas and 2. Cas is in love with Dean. For whatever reason, this was the moment I realized Cas had very deep feelings for Dean. 

The level of betrayal he was feeling from Dean seemed much more personal than just ‘I went to bat for the guy and he struck out, wah wah”. 

Also, the fact that he emphasized that he did/gave EVERYTHING for solely Dean definitely came off more than platonic to me. 

(Not to mention how close their faces were to each other; almost every time I watch this scene, I half expect them to start making out with each other.)

All I know is that from there on out, I looked forward to their interactions--well, even more than I already did-- and that I was looking at them in a different light.

“Bobby, what do you mean ‘Adam is gone’?”

“Should I say it in Spanish?”

lmaoo. Knowing Bobby, he probably could.

“What the hell happened to him?”

“Me.”

ayyyy

Unceremoniously dumped on the couch, lmao.

And I also kinda love that they asked about what happened to Dean only once, then proceeded to talk more about Adam. It may be because he’s the bigger fish to fry, but it kinda reads to me that Bobby and Sam are in silent agreement that Dean had that beating coming, so they won’t even ask more about it.

The Green Room.

Oh, Persephone move there bro.

“So you lied...about everything.”

“We didn’t lie. We just avoided certain truths to manipulate you.”

Adam, you poor fool.

i wonder who carried Dean down to the panic room.

“Word to the wise: don’t piss off the nerd angels.”

“Either it’s a trap to get me there to make me say yes, or it’s not a trap and I’m gonna say yes anyway. And I will. I’ll do it. Fair warning.” No, you won’t.

“When push shoves, you’ll make the right call.” Sam’s right.

“I—I don’t get it. Sam, why are you doing this?“

“Because… you’re still my big brother.”

I am like, Sam’s #1 fan when it comes to this episode. I am rooting like hell for him.

Van Nuys, California.

I love Dean’s reaction as Cas takes off his tie; he even looks over to Sam like “you seeing this?”

“Whoa, wait. You’re gonna take on five angels?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that suicide?”

“Maybe it is. But then I won’t have to watch you fail.”

RIP Dean, torn a new one by Cas.

Dean looked at Cas like he thought the box-cutter was for him.

RIP angel. Killed by Cas.

One down, four to go.

What a badass move.

“You came for me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re family.”

Awww.

Crap.

Zachariah’s just twisting the knife.

“Damn it, Zachariah. Stop it, please. I’ll do it.”

“I’m sorry. What was that?”

“Okay, yes. The answer is yes.”

:(

You can literally pinpoint the moment Dean changes his mind.

“I said…before Michael gets one piece of this sweet ass…he has to turn you into a piece of charcoal.” There’s the Dean I love.

“Michael’s not gonna kill me.” Zachariah’s last words.

RIP Zachariah. Killed by Dean. Still such a satisfying death!

Whoa, just realized Dean watched Zachariah die...and he still has eyeballs.

Dean lets go of Adam to help Sam. That one little decision with such huge consequences...

“Dean! Help! Deean!” 

Poor Adam. I really do feel sorry that he got caught up in all this. I’m kinda hoping they’ll address him a bit in S14.

“You think Adam’s okay?”

“Doubt it. Cas either. But we’ll get ‘em.” aww.

“So, what changed your mind?”

“Honestly? The damnedest thing. I mean, the world’s ending. The walls are coming down on us, and I look over to you and all I can think about is, ‘This stupid son of a bitch brought me here.’ I just didn’t want to let you down.” 

ACCEPT THE APOLOGY SAM.

“Just...let me say this. I don't know if it's being a big brother or what, but to me, you've always been this snot-nosed kid that I've had to keep on the straight and narrow. I think we both know that that's not you anymore. I mean, hell, if you're grown-up enough to find faith in me…the least I can do is return the favor. So screw destiny, right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way.”

That meant the universe to Sam.

HELL FUCKING YES DEAN. You are forgiven for the bull you pulled this episode.

#supernatural #spn summer rewatch #spn liveblog #spn 5x18 #point of no return #aka the episode i started shipping destiel full time