#also i used after effects for the first time why is the clipping mask like that

[makowcy]

gif from that hit 90s space mining anime that is real and not made by me

au by @kiszoneszczury

#tangotek #space mining au #on a grind of watching the new life series from too many povs i am so so normal #see you in many hours #trafficblr #pros of working on a small canvas is that bg is very quick and nice to draw cons of working on a small canvas is that characters are not #also i used after effects for the first time why is the clipping mask like that #my art #animation

[likealittleheartbeat]

hey! i really enjoy your analysis of aang and zuko's relationship, and i was just wondering if you have any thoughts on this:

when aang considers what he's afraid of the most, he doesn't just see zuko - he sees the blue spirit. why do you think his fear is linked to that mask? zuko was the most amicable towards him when he put that mask on, and was hostile every other time.

Ooooh!! This is such a rich and meaty question!! And it's something I've wondered about but never dove into before.

I guess there are a couple of questions we need to explore. One, do we want to begin to analyze this from Aang's perspective or the series' themes, which, when put together, should offer us the fullest idea of what the intent might be? If we begin with Aang's perspective, then the next question we need to next ask what is Aang's view of Zuko and/or the Blue Spirit at this point in the narrative? My worry about beginning at that intimate level is that we might miss possible connections that a thematic understanding might facilitate and may, like many fandom analyses, leave it at a character level when, in fact, the characters exist to serve larger philosophical purposes, especially in a show like ATLA.

So, we'll return to those questions about Aang after we visit some questions about the broader themes here. We know for a fact that the team did a lot of research into Eastern philosophies that they had to then pack down into 24 minute episodes, preserving a surprising amount of complexity not in the words but in the actions and visuals. The 2 part Crossroads of Destiny episode is probably the most evocative of this practice. The four-way fight scene is celebrated for the way it masterfully shows character development through fight choreography. Then, Aang's crystal chamber he forms to master the Avatar State is a direct reference to a statement about pre-enlightenment in one of the foundational texts about Japanese Zen for American Buddhists, "The Three Pillars of Zen." The rapid explanations of the seven chakras with Guru Pathik might seem like a a skimming of Tantric beliefs based on the brief statements and processing, but it's another prime example the way ATLA suffuses meaning beyond the script.

What more can be said about the Earth (also called the Root or Muladhara) Chakra, then, that the show might reflect without stating it explicitly. Guru Pathik explains that the Earth Chakra "deals with survival." Is there any subject more prescient than that for our protagonist, the single survivor of an otherwise all-encompassing genocide? Other accounts of this chakra that I can find explain that it's at this chakra that one can observe that their base needs are being met--enough food, enough water, etc. There seems to be a subtle witnessing to the effects of PTSD here then. With this chakra untouched, unopened, and out of balance, Aang within his mind has been living in a state of emergency without knowing it, believing himself at a core level beyond his consciousness to still be under immediate threat even in moments of peace like his meditations throughout the opening of his chakras. "Your vision is not real," Guru Pathik points out, not to say that no danger exists for him in the world but to illuminate the immediate reality surrounding his person.

The memories and visions that flash during the sequence hint at how fear conceals deeper realities and thus possibilities. I'll start with the clip of Katara sinking away from the first episode of Book 2, "The Avatar State." The Earth Kingdom General performed this cruelty after many other attempts to force Aang into suffering to gain the Avatar State. Believing he lost another person he loved, the state was triggered despite the actuality that Katara was unharmed. The fear of her loss overwhelmed Aang, and even her safe return could not assuage his traumatic response. The Blue Spirit incident forms a striking parallel to this event, in that case. Aang felt himself helpless and in danger only to discover the opposite: the seemingly malevolent force freed him from danger. Further, that Blue Spirit Mask concealed Zuko who, by the end of the series, will be revealed (to himself and) Aang as an ally and a friend. The shadowy image of Ozai, then, connected with these two fear-inducing semblances, can be seen then as perhaps the ultimate foreshadowing of Aang's ultimate success in pacifying Ozai. Put in the context of this chakra and the other two visions, it frames the Firelord as a facade meant to induce terror and distance, when in reality, life and humanity still lay behind the horrifying megalomania.

Concerning the Blue Spirit element specifically in the series, I want to explore one more factor within the series before getting back to Aang's character relationship in this moment. Blue has a running symbolic theme within the series that seems especially relevant here since it played a huge role in a highly symbolic part of the directly previous episode, "The Earth King." As Zuko rides out his psychogenic fever induced by releasing Aang's bison and abandoning his Blue Spirit mask, he is confronted in his dreams by a blue dragon voiced by Azula and a red dragon voiced by Iroh. I felt really confused by these two would-be shoulder angels for the longest time (literally until I was sorting my thoughts out to write this) because Azula's blue dragon is the one who entreats Zuko to rest, which even in Grey Delisle/Azula's clearly threatening tone--she even ends the temptation by saying "sleep just like mother!"--seemed to be what Zuko needed to do as opposed to the red dragon's exhortations to get out. I could see how sleeping might also refer to accepting his upbringing without thought, but why blue? The layers upon layers of possible meaning overwhelmed me.

I posit that blue in the series, especially when put in relationship to red/orange, as it is in the dream sequence, the dynamic between the water tribe and the fire nation, the fire of zuko and azula (especially the final agni kai), and the energy-bending of Aang over Ozai in the finale, ought to be read as Yin (making red/orange yang). Yin is passive, retractive, and receptive, which makes the invitation to rest by a blue dragon make perfect sense. Yin is also feminine in nature, hence the association with both Azula (whose blue fire and lightning becomes especially interesting to explore under this understanding) and Zuko's mother in the dualistic dragon dream. If you know anything about yin and yang, you know that it's key tenet is ever-changing coordination of yin and yang within one entity and with relationships between entities rather than the privileging of one above another. The two dragons in Zuko's dream, while seemingly in opposition to one another, are actually seeking, like the bumper stickers say, "coexistence" of their dispositions.

Now, back to Aang's vision of fear over the Blue Spirit. The red that overlays everything is specifically a reference to the Earth Chakra, which is symbolized by the color red. But the fact that he has one fear of Katara, the pinnacle of blueness/yin in the series, dying, and another fear of the Blue Spirit, a de-flamed (read: emasculated) Zuko attacking him that are then overlayed by this Earth Chakra red, a color otherwise used to portray yang (masculinity, activeness, expansion, and repulsion) and the fire nation in the series, suggests that his fears are specifically about within holding onto yin nature (symbolized by his grasping for a disappearing Katara) without being entirely overwhelmed by it (in the image of the fear he felt as the Blue Spirit approached his imprisoned body). And all those fears are intensified when living in such a patriarchal, or yang-skewed age and society, which gets depicted through both the final image of Ozai, the ultimate patriarch within this world, and the red coloring.

I promised I would get back to the characters, and after that hopefully illuminating thematic expansion, we can hopefully get at the core of what's going on here for Aang personally and what it might mean for him to be picturing Zuko with the Blue Spirit mask as a fear. I want to put this moment into context with Aang and Zuko's relationship at this specific moment. Aang hasn't seen Zuko since he watched him cry over his uncle in the ghost town after Azula struck him with lightning as a diversion. That was ten episodes prior (and more than 6 months time if you were watching the show in real time as it premiered; May 26th-Dec. 1st). The next time Aang sees Zuko, two episodes later, they are glowering across a crystal prison cell at one another with antipathy as they're embraced (a gesture I can only remember from the fantastic black romance film Love & Basketball, and in a gay context that is clearly referencing that moment in L&B, in the Norwegian teen romance series Skam). Right before this scene, Aang readily agrees to co-rescue Zuko and Katara with Uncle Iroh despite Sokka's protestations. Nothing seems amiss with Aang, no obvious belligerence toward Zuko until he sees him. Zuko has barely seen the airbender this whole season, and the one moment they encountered one another, Zuko was attacking Aang's attacker rather than him. Why is Aang expressing anger toward Zuko in the crystal chamber then? It's a rare expression from Aang even when we look at their more antagonistic interactions from the first season.

Here's where this vision of the blue spirit Aang envisions as he opens his earth chakra might enliven his characterization and his relationship to Zuko. We get two pieces here. His attachment to Katara and the queer implications of his partnership with the Blue Spirit/Zuko. And they are inseparable.

I don't feel that I need to especially dive into the attachment to Katara since it's been a pretty big component of discourse within the fandom, both in general analysis and more specifically relating to the (literally historic) shipping wars between zutara and kataang that emerged after the series came out originally. What I'll say here is that the first vision that Aang has as he addresses his root chakra points to his fear of losing her and what she represents pretty explicitly and, as I suggested earlier, also provides its antidote in the realization that accepting/surrendering the fear of impermanence reveals its simultaneous illusion. Katara wasn't actually harmed and wasn't truly lost when the general subsumed her into the ground. Aang has to let go of her as a permanent fixture that he'll always be able to see and know entirely (not, as many have interpreted it, let go of loving her). He'll also have to let go of saving her and the world of so many others she represents, which is as much a pressure and role Katara and others put on him as Aang yolks himself to.

Part of this acknowledgement of Katara's impermanence as a living being and a romantic possibility is addressing the others in her life who pose both danger and attraction for her. Zuko embodies both of these things simultaneously. The aggressive stare Aang launches at Zuko in "The Crossroads of Destiny" can be understood through this lens. The Eve Sedgwick's concept of the triangulation of male homosocial desire between romantic rivals was one of the foundational ideas of queer theory. It's so well-established as to be a meme among the tumblr crowd. The show even references the history of these literary homosocial tropes in "The Avatar and the Firelord" as Sozin and Roku's tight-knit youthful friendship is slowly rent apart at the event of Roku's heterosexual marriage, which thus begins the imperialism of the Fire nation.

Except that Roku and Sozin aren't romantic rivals. And Zuko's obsession with Aang begins sans Katara. And, as you pointed out, if the romantic threat is Zuko, it ought to be Zuko in the Earth Chakra vision instead of the Blue Spirit? Well, those all exist because ATLA is not a tragedy for homosocial relationships, and it's hard for me to explain how groundbreaking that was.

You see, the show theorizes homosociality differently. If Aang is required to let go of Katara, he has no pivot point, no object (because women shouldn't be objects for male fodder!) to connect with and compete with a rival male, so he has to look directly at the desire of another male for him and, therefore, face the fears that he might have similar desires. I said above that the Blue Spirit is an entirely de-flamed Zuko, which I then paralleled to emasculation. One could even go farther to call it a kind of symbolic castration (Firelord Ozai losing his firebending at the end of the series certainly demands this kind of reading). These aspects ignite fears about lacking masculinity which then cause reactions, which make men avoid accepting any thoughts and behaviors associated with vulnerability and homosexuality invoked within themselves or by others.

I think Aang, in his way, is confronting these fears but not from the angle of someone raised within a homophobic or misogynistic culture. His openness to Zuko and the potential of connection to him is ripe from the first time they meet--"you're just a teenager" connects them without any intermediary. He comes to understand the rigidness of the environment he's in, though. He feels like he's being forced to choose between a yang/masculine role he plays with Katara, who at this point in the series though growing out of it and certainly not a fault of her own making still sees him as her savior and depends on him to save her and the world through metaphysical mastery and the repulsion of evil, and yin/feminine role he plays with Zuko, who finds Aang in and forces him into positions of elusion, surrender, and passivity, while requiring his compassion and forgiveness. When the Blue Spirit comes swinging his swords (read that with all the innuendos you want lol) at a shackled Aang, it's the ultimate expression of Aang's potential for submissiveness because, not only is he entirely helpless but the one who could harm or save him in that scenario is another who is not participating in the expected power of fire/yang/masculinity.

I think everything in the show says this is attractive to Aang--that he remains with Zuko immediately after their escape from the fort, that he reflects on the Blue Spirit as he opens his chakras, that a reference to the conversation that followed their escape that Zuko makes halts him in his tracks when Zuko asks to join the team. Zuko's Blue Spirit persona means a lot to Aang, a scary amount, and my point is that it's this fear of the meaningfulness of their encounter as two men who are not the masculine paragons they are supposed to be which Aang faces as he opens his chakra. As much as he wants Katara, he wants Zuko. He fears he'll lose Katara and he fears he'll lose his life to Zuko. These are the dichotomies he's tackling as he processes the Earth chakra.

Aang eventually opens the chakra, but that's only to say he acknowledges and surrenders his fears to a destiny and understanding beyond his control, not that he necessarily learns how to address and solve all the conundrums contained therein. We know he chooses his attachment to Katara at the end of the episode to obtain power over the Avatar state but perhaps we could've been clued into this choice by noticing he has not chosen Zuko with that initial glare Aang gives him. Aang hasn't found a way in his chakras or his heart to hold both Katara and Zuko at once, so he chooses Katara and expresses a newfound jealousy and rivalry toward Zuko (not that Zuko's at his best behavior at this point, but it's Aang who initiates the exchange).

By the end of this season, Zuko abandons the Blue Spirit mask and Aang loses his life for prioritizing Katara and a yang-centric mastery of the Avatar state. The next season involves all three of the protagonists finding more internal balance between yin and yang for themselves and accepting mutually reciprocal feelings for one another that allow them to escape the kinds of patriarchal tropes that have dominated Anglo- literature for centuries. The ability of this brief sequence to highlight so many of the series' central revolutionary themes speaks to the depth of the show and the way it invites the audience to think about rich subtext rather than pedantically hammer us with morals will just continue to be the gift that keeps giving from this show.

Thanks so much for asking! Didn't know how much I missed doing a deep dive into this kind of stuff.

#aanglove #zukaang #atla meta #the guru #guru pathik

[cyb-by-lang]

I completely forgot to ask!

With how much Kei suffered when coming to Gotham with all the smells etc. how is Kakashi handling it? Is the mask built in with seals? Honestly I thought he’d be the first to complain or feel overwhelmed.

Also also, I know Kei is stressed about which comic book run she’s in, did she actually have a favorite character? I always wonder about this a bit, eg, going to One Piece world would be terrifying, but also I’d probably be a bit starstruck at meeting the Straw Hats. Any moment like that for Kei? At meeting BATMAN or any of these cool characters?

After wearing a mask for three years, I'd say that the model Kakashi is using now helps cut even the city's terrible scent input by a fair margin. He did know Gotham was a city, after all. That said, he does still notice the problem. It's why Batman was able to get so close without being kicked off the roof.

The main continuity that Kei actually remembers "well" (inasmuch as it qualifies) is the Justice League cartoon from 2000. DCAU, where there were only ever two Robins and both were effectively banned from the universe by DC policies against having more than one show featuring a given character (since it was running concurrently with the 2002 Teen Titans cartoon). This story is very clearly not that, so it doesn't help. Even if it did, that version of Bruce Wayne sorta...gets more >:| the more you think about the implications.

All she's got left is wiki dives, clips of the Under the Red Hood film, and memes. So, so many memes.

Remember that old joke about death in comic books that goes, "No one stays dead in comics except Uncle Ben, Bucky Barnes, and Jason Todd?" Kei knew that was 2/3rds bogus by the time she transmigrated, since there were jokes countering it and also Captain America and the Winter Soldier was coming out that same year. Not that she'd even once read a comic involving any of them.

Kei's also generally not interested in celebrities? Whenever she runs into a continuity she actually knows, she usually just gets extremely worried. In a "oh, shit, the high-end threats in this place are things I can't handle" kind of way. Or in an introvert's classic, "I DO NOT WISH TO BE PERCEIVED" manner. Even meeting Obito--who was eight at the time--was a moment of pure "oh fuck no." Hayate was like that too, but he was a baby and then Kei got attached and here we are.

Some rando who commented on Ocean Stars Falling ages ago called Kei an ignoramus for not knowing who Ace was immediately after entering One Piece. And I just sat there, thinking, "You do not have the slightest idea how much your bias is coloring your idea of what media a given human being in our modern society might be even passingly familiar with." I didn't know who Ace was before the pirate collaboration idea with @ffs-abalisk came up.

And if Kei did know who the hell Ace was at the time she met him, that would've probably inspired her to get it the fuck out of there immediately.

#a ninja's guide to gotham #ocean stars falling #catch your breath fanfic #asks #anonymous #keisuke gekko #portgas d. ace

[gessshoku]

How do you do your shading/lighting? It's really pretty!

First: I lay out my flat colors!

Second: I choose what the shadows will be! I lean towards the red-orange shades, never choose straight black or grays for shadows on anything! (Unless your drawing is just black in white).

Third: The brush I use is called “Hard Brush” Under the Airbrush section on procreate! Even if you don’t have procreate, many programs have brushes that allow the same pen pressure and effect! As shown below, the more pressure I put the darker the color will be. If for some reason your program can’t do that then lowering the opacity of your brush can also have the same effect!

Fourth: I begin to put in the shadows where I think they’ll be, the fun part is I have no idea where the shadows will go. This is just for funzies~ But if you want to be accurate, look at references and mark where your light source(s) will be before adding shadows and/or lighting!

(don’t mind the middle image I used the selection tool which is why it has those line eUgH)

Fifth: I begin to blend everything using the smudge tool! If you do not have a smudge tool then an airbrush could work as well! It will just take a while longer <:3

Sixth: After smudging, it should look like this! Well that is if you want to shade like me, the ending product is whatever you feel happy with! <3

Lighting Time! Okay First: Pick the original skin tone, and choose a lighter color of it as shown here!

Second: Do exactly like with the shadows and add it wherever you want! I added it on the forehead, nose, above the lips and in the chin! Mainly because those areas tend to stick out more from the face so they’re out of the shadows. You may not see a difference at first from all the mixing and smudging but turn the layer on and off and you’ll see there is definitely a difference!

Final step: Merge all the colored layers together and use the airbrush tool to add a bit of spice to the drawing. I normally do this when the character/object is outside or not in a dark room. Since the characters face and hair has a lot of warm colors I’ll add a contrast like blue (cool colors) to make it pop more!

I’ve added my favorite modes to use; Color Dodge, Add, and Screen! I use them for lighting or special effects. I added the normal as well for you guys to see the difference. My personal favorites are Add and Screen, they show more.

Now the final step for everything is the lineart! Add another layer and set it to clipping mask, use the airbrush tool and with whatever mode you want and whatever color you want (I personally love red) just go crazy and airbrush areas you think would make the drawing pop more!~ These last steps are my favorite part Hehe </3

Important Notes:

- When coloring make sure to divide the areas in different layers!! So example: Have skin color on one layer, hair color on a separate layer, clothing color on another layer, etc. It makes it easier for your future self to shade each area without having it all be on one layer and you struggling to only render the face and hair without it smudging the base colors!

- Never be afraid to shade darker or add a more lighter color!! In fact never be afraid when coloring or drawing (digitally that is) you could always just double tap the problem away if you don’t like it! Always experiment and remember it’s all about trusting the process and being patient!

- If you want more contrast on colors, normally, I follow the warm and cool color rule. Like I mentioned before; Red, Orange and Yellow are warm colors while Blue, Purple and Green are cool colors. So if you were to have a painting/drawing with a lot of warm colors add some cool colors as lighting or as background elements! It goes both ways.

- If this is your first time rendering in this style, then please know that it may not come out exactly right the first time. It took me a lot of practice with this style to get it right, I’m still learning and adapting new things! Be patient with yourself and keep practicing! You got this✨

#phew! #3:55 AM #worth it #i wish I had this when I first started learning #it’d make my life easier #if there is still something here you don’t understand #be it the modes or maybe a step you need more clarification on then PLEASE let me know!! #tutorials are so much fun hehe- #Also this is the ‘prototype’ for the human version of Honey Comb #lmao how does he look? #is he dilf enough- #man looking finer than a mother fucker #tutorials #gess box of cookies #honey comb #gess box of arts

[yellowbentley]

MORE TOTK THOUGHTS CAUSE OMFG I LOVE THIS GAME SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT:::

first things first KOHHHHHGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

when he fell into the yiga pit in the first game he fell into the depths!!!

how tf did kohga survive the fall damage

im super interested to go to the gerudo tower now and see if somethings underneath that. ive only explored a tiny bit of the depths god theyre the coolest thing ever

oh my fucking god im fighting kohga with 6 hearts and no weapons how did i get here

when i fought him in botw i had 20+ hearts and full weapon slots full of royal claymores and broadswords and thunderweapons. and a fully upgraded mastersword. oh my fucking god.

help

yiga mask outfit/armor :DDD HATE that they took over king rhoams plateau house though

AND THE COLISIUM???????????

girl.

68 koroks :')

this twink should not have a drivers liscense i cannot fucking drive

i accidently went to lurelin village and had an absolute blast clearing out all the enemies and now im starting to rebuild :D i love having good combat in this game that isnt just smashing things with a stick. i love you flurry rushes i love you stealth i love you critical hits i love you arrow head shots i love you elemental attacks i love you switching weapons midfight i love you bullet time i love you yeeting random fruits at enemies i love you smacky effects that look cool

very excited to eventually go fetch all the lurelin villagers who fled ala tarrey town residents

armor peices i have include the fierce deity boots, shock armor chest peice, royal guards tunic, DARK TUNIC :DDD hylian hood + pants + tunic, barbarian chest peice, ceces wig, yiga mask, and desert voe headpeice.

findign the dragon tears is so fun. i know i said this already but wandering the glyphs just genuinely makes me smile

i went to the forgotten temple. feels horribly incorrect. how did they get the guardians out????? this feels like the one place in the game they should still be. not alive or searchable, just acting as rocks for you to remember and ponder over

speaking of the forgotten temple. holy fuck those backrooms. absolutely stunning sad about the goddess statue but my god that map took my breath away. i know nothing wll be back there in botw but still i want to see people clip behind the goddess statue now

i spent like 2 hours running around what was left of hyrule castle on the ground trying to find my champions tunic. no dice

im not strong enough to fight lynels but they look soooooo cool i want those horns SOOOOO bad

im starting to experiment more with combining things now. both with fuse and seperate abilities. i got a wing glider to travel from no where by holding it in the air, dropping it, climbing on and using recall. i had a full inventory of mushroom spears for about 10 minutes. diy elemantal swords. giant stick boomerang. boulderang. two swords glued together boomerang. frozen boomerang which is op as fuck. i watched someone use ascend by stacking 4 shrine spheres on top of each other. why would i make a boring car when i can slap 4 fans and a rocket on a tree i knocked over. diy catapults i take 4 hearts of damage from. zonai trampolines that always set me backwards and make me take a billion hearts of damage. fire shield that should probably be giving link third degree burns. hes too powerful.

theres less people at the stables ive noticed. but not a ton out wandering the world? eyes emoji

SESAMI ON EVENTIDE LMAOOOO i also went there accidently and then ditched him after doing his quest. did he abandon his friends this time.

still no fuckign paraglider :(((((((

im hardly doing any main story yet, no zora no rito no gorons no gerudo, and i dont plan to for a while. i just want to run across the middle worlds and dick around and find koroks and find caves and do side quests exactly like i did botw. ive had a smile on my face every minute ive played the past week. im having so much fun doing nonsense.

everything is gorgeous and i am in love

[drew-mga2022mi5019]

Development | Blue Hat Main Title Animation

I decided to begin work on crafting the initial title animation for the Blue Hat clip. I began by choosing a relatively tall typeface, in this case Oswald, and slightly stretching it to make the animation read more like an eye in the final.

I followed the same steps as in my original text animation, except this time I only animated the mask moving once. I did not want a looping animation, so I felt this would work. SPOILERS; it didn't and I had to add an extra cycle later.

After I created my gradient map and added a tritone effect in my Effects composition, I brought it into post production and added a wave warp and turbulent display effect to make the type slightly more interesting. I also took the text from my main title and brought it into this composition and set it after the animation such that the animation stops and holds the title for the duration of the clip. Following this, I added a Halftone pattern in the same way I demonstrated during my initial test of the animation.

I struggled a bit with the animation, as it began with the eye opening from the beginning of the animation itself, which I didn't want. I wanted to make it so that the eye opens once during the animation from beginning to end, and not intermittently in the middle. To combat this, I keyed the Map such that it began at 0 and opened up the eye during the second cycle of my animation (which is why I mentioned I added it earlier). This resulted in a weird line slicing through the middle of my text, so I combat this by using a Gaussian Blur to blur out the crease and a curves to bring back the sharpness of the text.

Finally, I also added my main text to the beginning of the animation such that the main animation composition could be positioned in the middle. When the eye opened out, I noticed that a part of the text would be pulled inwards. My solution to this was to actually keep my original text longer than the map keys I set earlier. During the first frame where the text appeared in full, completely undistorted, I created a mask to mask out the beginning of the eye, which starts as a small hole. The rest of the animation would play out as normal, with the initial frame of the eye opening being slightly larger than intended. I felt that this worked, especially after adding a Posterize Time effect, so I didn't worry too much about it. This was the final result;

[backmaskedliedermacher]

Empty Spaces

I let Youtube recommend me some videos last night. This is a dangerous thing for me to do, so I tend to avoid it, but it worked out kind of OK this time out. This time out it said "Hey, you should watch a Vsauce video." So I did, and then the sidebar suggested I watch this video by someone called Solar Sands called "Liminal Spaces (Exploring an Altered Reality)".

I've been interested in liminal spaces for a long time. I can't tell you how long, exactly, but I can tell you where I first came across the concept of liminality. It was in Thomas Pynchon's book Gravity's Rainbow.

Gravity's Rainbow is one of those Books About Everything by a Clever Cisgender White Man. I'm not actually smart enough to read it, despite having attempted it several times. (I did read Infinite Jest one summer in the '90s, for whatever that's worth.) As Clever Cisgender White Men go, Pynchon is one of the ones I actually like a lot. Gravity's Rainbow is the Big One, his Trout Mask Replica, the one people go to, but like Trout Mask Replica, it's not actually his best. Pynchon grew and matured as a writer in the decade-plus he spent smoking weed after Gravity's Rainbow. He finished and published his White Whale book, Mason and Dixon, and then came to the realization that Books About Everything were not the be-all and end-all of novels. My impression is that his subsequent books are very much not about everything and are better for it. That said, I haven't read any of them. I could, probably, in that I'm smart enough, but something about Gravity's Rainbow keeps me away from even his other books. Also I don't read many novels.

Anyway. I wound up reading it as though it were a reference book. I'd skip around into various different bits. Usually these turned out to be the dirty bits. Over time the book developed a will of its own, as reference books do, and just started taking me directly to the dirty bits.

Which of course means I read the bit about liminal spaces a lot. His example of a liminal space was what we now know as "zettai ryoiki". It translates literally as "absolute area" - figuratively it seems to mean something like "no man's land". It's the expanse of bare skin between the top of one's socks or stockings and the bottom of one's skirt, shorts, or, as in the case of Gravity's Rainbow, panties. A transitional space, a space between one thing and another.

Solar Sands uses a different example to explain liminality - that of the Backrooms. The Backrooms are a particular sort of creepypasta centered around space rather than the terrifying eldritch creatures which are more typical for creepypasta. While more traditional creepypasta relies on a sort of uncanny valley effect, the Backrooms are pretty explicitly liminal.

But Solar Sands, whose experience with liminality, like many people today, is the Backrooms, explains liminality differently. They mistake one aspect of the Backrooms for another.

The Backrooms, it happens, signify multiple things. One of these things is a sense of liminality, a sense of transition from one state to another, but the Backrooms exist not just between, but behind. They are the wireframe upon which "reality" is built.

Creepypasta is fundamentally a media phenomenon, an example of the ways the media we consume shape our thoughts, our dreams. Vsauce, in the video I watched of his, "Did People Used To Look Older?", discusses this phenomenon when he talks about how people in the 20th century believed they dreamed in black and white. Why? Because the visual media of the times - films, television - were in black and white.

3D video games are the childhood popular media of late millennials and zoomers, and with 3D video games came a new concept - that of "clipping out of bounds". I first experienced this phenomenon in high school, through the game Wolfenstein 3D. The game came with cheat codes which, since I was bad at first person shooters, I used extensively. One of these allowed the player to clip out of bounds, to see the game from angles it was not intended to be seen from. This, not so much invisibility or flight, was the superpower I imagined for myself - the ability to walk through walls, to travel in and out of spaces others could not. To be liminal.

As a trans woman, I've done this now, in a sense. I am not liminal now, but for a time, I was. When I chose to embrace my identity as a trans woman, I became a woman, but I was not initially the woman I am now. I was, for a time, a liminal girl, one who walked in the spaces between gender.

This is liminality for me - existing in the spaces between. The Backrooms are liminal spaces, certainly, but for me, so too is the TARDIS. One version of the TARDIS in particular (for the TARDIS interior, unlike its exterior, has taken many forms) - that found in Christopher H. Bidmead's story "Castrovalva".

The TARDIS as Bidmead conceives it is very much like the Backrooms. The TARDIS is unfathomably large and profoundly empty - there are never more than four people living inside. It is made up of endless blindingly lit corridors. Lastly, like the Backrooms, it exists outside of reality. What is it, then, that makes the Backrooms terrifying in a way that the TARDIS is not?

The difference that I see, the thing that marks out the Backrooms as horrifying, is not its spatial liminality, but its age. Backrooms spaces, what Solar Sands calls out as "liminal spaces", are all visibly old. The flavor text accompanying one of the most influential pictures in Solar Sands' video talks not just of sights and sounds but says that it smells old. It evokes a form of sensory input that's not usually present.

But predominant, always, is visual. "The madness of mono-yellow". And what is yellow? The wallpaper.

I read this story, when I was in school. 1892. "The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. All the videos, the viral content - has the strong similarity of the Backrooms to this story from the 1890s been noticed? The story is one of the narrator entering an uncanny liminal space. She sees herself as being trapped behind the wallpaper, as having noclipped out of the space where she's confined, a woman suffering from "hysterical" illness. The sense of nearly infinite space is missing, replaced by a sense of being confined, closed in, but in all other respects "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a Backrooms story.

That color seems to date to the beginnings of it. It's industrial, that yellowish-brown. The color of something stained by grime and smoke, by piss and shit. Solar Sands points out quite accurately that the only things which we see as "liminal" in this sense are human creations. Works of nature lack the same sense of the uncanny.

The Backrooms are places of emptiness, death, decay. Nature has a season for death and decay - it is this season where I am writing now, it is winter. Death will be followed, shortly, by new life, new blooming. The flowers on Backrooms wallpaper, however, will never bloom again. The Backroom spaces belong not just to a previous time, but to a previous generation. They are for the dying and the dead.

The horror of the Backrooms, in a sense, is in the reason for their solitude and emptiness. Dwellings of the industrial era are mausoleums. Shopping malls are dead like Pompeii, dead like Chernobyl. Great monuments, the ruins of empire - they are different. Chichen Itza. The Pyramids. The Great Wall. The Colosseum. The Parthenon. These things were built to be monuments, wonders. Pompeii, Chernobyl, the Lafayette Square Mall - for these places to lack people, something must have gone terribly wrong.

Something has, of course, gone terribly wrong. We have been abandoned. We are isolated, cut off from each other. The people we meet in these places, the people who belong in them, who live in them, are people who we thought are human, but who are not quite _like us_. They are monsters. Zizek, interpreting Gramsci, tells us that this is their time.

The spatial liminality of the Backrooms is not, I do not think, the source of the unease and fear they evoke in us. It is their temporal liminality. The past inside the present. The bones on which this world are built are rotten, decaying, increasingly exposed. Is this our world? Is this the wallpaper we are trapped inside?

I saw a meme a couple days ago on a kink server I'm on that struck me. It is a screenshot of the Lost Woods from A Link to the Past, overlaid with text boxes in the game's font. The text in the boxes read:

"Absolutely nothing should be sold for a profit if its absence could kill you."

"Any modern system where people still die from lack of these resources should be dismantled."

The Lost Woods is one of the many liminal spaces within Zelda games. Zelda abounds with these transitions between spaces. "A Link to the Past" sees Link travelling between two worlds. Its sequel, "A Link Between Worlds", sees Link literally entering into walls and traversing the world through these liminal spaces. "Ocarina of Time" abounds with wrong warps, to the extent that certain clever gamer/programmers figured out a way to beat the game without ever using a door.

Perhaps the most iconic liminal space within Zelda games is the Lost Woods, though. It's a maze. A room within a maze contains nothing inherently interesting. Twisty little passages, all alike. They are ways to get from one place to another. A maze is a threshhold.

How the Lost Woods differs from the liminal spaces of the Backrooms is that they lead somewhere - or, often, to something. The Lost Woods in "A Link to the Past", as in "Breath of the Wild", lead to the Master Sword. If one cannot dismantle the master's house using the master's tools, well, perhaps the Master's Sword might suffice.

The Backrooms are at the core of the world we occupy now - a decaying skeleton, an empty, collapsing ruin. There are other liminal spaces through which we may pass. I, a trans person, have passed through one of them myself. It was strange and terrifying and wonderful and very, very temporary. I've wished for a while that I could live in these spaces, but I can't. The only people who can live in liminal spaces are monsters, and I am not a monster.

[marauderundercover]

Taking Chances Ch. 27: Princess (Royal/medieval AU)

AO3

Prev

The shrill akuma alarm wakes Marinette up the next morning and she sighs, rubbing her head gently before grabbing the bottle of painkillers that Dick had left next to her on the table.

“Don’t leave yet!” A voice calls from the other room. Marinette frowns, but listens, quickly taking a couple painkillers and letting herself wake up. Dick rushes into the room, nearly falling as he slides across the floor in his socks. He rushes over to her and kneels in front of her, staring into her eyes. She frowns.

“What are you doing?” She asks, too tired to try and comprehend what’s wrong with her brother right now.

“Checking your eyes and seeing how bad your concussion is so I know if I need to call Adrien to keep a closer eye on you for this fight.” Dick says, frowning slightly at something he sees. He reaches out and gently pushes a spot on her head and she hisses in pain.

“Hey, ya big jerk, that hurts!” She complains, giving him her best ‘Damian’ glare. He just rolls his eyes.

“This is serious kid, you got seriously injured last night.” Dick reminds her. She purses her lips.

“I know, and I promise I’ll take it easy later, but right now I really need to go.” She pleads. Dick sighs, but nods, standing up.

“Go kick some butterfly butt.” He says with a small grin. Marinette grins back at him, quickly calling her transformations and portaling away to Paris. She blinks in the bright sunlight, trying hard to push away any disorientation she has from the stupid concussion. I can do this, she thinks, glancing around to assess the situation. She frowns at her surroundings. She knew she was technically in Paris, she could see the Eiffel tower and Kaalki never misled her before. Well, not during an attack anyway. But where the giant modern buildings should be, there were small stone buildings with thatch roofs. Glancing around, she also notices a huge, stone castle where her school used to be. That should be fun.

“I am the Dark Knight, and I will not rest until I have Chat Noir and Ladybug’s Miraculous!” A voice shouts out above the rest of the noise. Marinette creeps over and just blinks at the fashion atrocity before her. She was going to slap Hawkmoth twice when she found him. Once, for terrorizing Paris for over a year. And again for the awful wardrobe choices he made. Seriously. And the Dark Knight? Isn’t that name trademarked, or something?

“Hey Bugaboo, what’s the plan?” Chat asks, landing beside her and leaning on his baton. She frowns.

“I don’t actually have one yet. I just got here.” She says, and this time he’s the one confused.

“But you always rush over.” He says, careful not to include anything about Kaalki. You never know who might be listening.

“I’ll explain later. Any idea where the object might be?” She asks, scanning the akuma. It’s power didn’t seem too awful. It had changed most of the structure in Paris, and now it was changing people’s clothes too when they got hit by the orange light. Some citizens were in what Marinette could only assume was the height of fashion during the Renaissance, whereas some citizens were draped in obvious “peasant” outfits. But there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the difference. Just a difference.

“The satchel looks promising.” Chat says, and Marinette grins, a plan slowly taking hold in her mind. She’d just need two paper clips, a stick of gum and whatever her lucky charm was.

---

“Pound it.” Chat says holding out a fist. Marinette grins, returning the fist bump. “Did you have time to talk? You know, about why you were late?” Chat asks, and Marinette sighs but nods. They both recharge in an alley before swinging to sit on the top of the Eiffel tower.

“I fought an akuma alone, while you were out of town.” She says first, shrugging lightly. “I didn’t think about it, honest. I’d done it a million times before with Monsieur Pigeon. But the Bat got mad.” Marinette says, not wanting to risk calling him her dad while she’s masked in Paris. It just felt like it was asking for trouble.

“Cause you fought alone?” Chat asks, frowning.

“Well, that and I sort of jammed the Zeta tubes so that outsiders can’t come to Paris during an active akuma attack.” She mumbles under her breath, wincing at the noise Chat’s neck makes when he jerks around to stare at her dumbfoundedly.

“That’s insane. How’d you do it?” He asks and she simply grins.

“Spent enough time with Pegasus and Red Robin and Oracle. Add in a tiny bit of luck and boom. I win.” She smirks

“So you were late cause you’re grounded.” Chat says simply, a proud smile on his face as he thinks he cracked the code. Solved the mystery.

“Not quite,” Marinette says with a slight frown.

“Then what?” Chat asks. Marinette lets out a long sigh, glaring at Adrien to let him know she’s not happy about this situation, she does not want to talk to him about this. He’ll just get all worried.

“Well last night I was still benched from patrol because of the whole akuma attack thing but Tikki thought I should be ungrounded so I went out anyway and then the dude that stabbed me a couple months ago found me and the rest of the Batclan didn’t know that I was out so they couldn’t help me and I was all alone and then he knocked me out and I don’t really remember much except I woke up at Nightwing’s apartment and met Starfire and yeah that’s it.” She rambles, shooting him a smile and waving nonchalantly.

“I’m going to wrap you in bubble wrap. No, I’m going to make the Batclan do it.” Chat finally says, pulling out his baton.

“No, don’t! Batman doesn’t know. Neither does Hood or Red Robin. Only Nightwing and Robin know.” She says, swatting the baton out of his hand. The last thing she needed was for him to accidentally call her dad on her. She’d be in so much trouble.

“Geeze Bug.” Chat mutters under his breath, tugging her into a hug. She sighs and hugs him back, taking just a moment to relish being with her friend.

“I’m pretty sure Batman is narrowing down his Hawkmoth suspect list.” She mumbles, and Chat pulls back from her, staring into her face.

“Are you serious?” He asks, the relief on his face clear. Marinette nods, and Chat lets out a long sigh. One that Marinette could feel in her bones, because she was tired too. She also wanted to end this fight. Hopefully her dad would have a suspect soon.

---

Bruce Wayne was the world’s greatest detective. He had solved cases infinitely larger than this one, so he didn’t understand why he couldn’t find a damn lead on Hawkmoth. Actually, he understood perfectly. It was magic. God he hates magic. It’s unpredictable, and most of the time it’s more trouble than it’s worth. He sighs and sends a quick text to Dick, double checking that Marinette had made it back to his apartment okay. He knew his daughter was...upset with him for benching her and demanding she take someone with her to Paris. But they were all precautions, just to guarantee that nothing worse happened to her. She wasn’t invincible, no matter how much she seemed to think she was. He frowns at the text he receives back, quickly hitting call and waiting a few moments for Dick to pick up.

“Hel-”

“What do you mean she’s not at your place?” Bruce asks, not giving his eldest son a chance to talk.

“Well hi to you too, B.” Dick teases, and Bruce just knows he’s grinning. He lets out a sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Is she really not there? The akuma attack ended nearly twenty minutes ago and she’s not here either.” Bruce says, trying to think of where else she would go. Jason was even at the Manor, and hadn’t heard from her either.

“No, B, she’s not-” Dick pauses, then lets out a long sigh. “It’s B. He was wondering where you were.” He hears Dick say, and Bruce is surprised to hear his son’s tone. It was less carefree and more...like a father. He was a father, with Mar’i, but it was still odd to hear him use the tone on someone besides his granddaughter.

“I had to talk to Adrien.” He can barely hear her say and Bruce lets out a frustrated huff. Of course she was with the Agreste boy again. Honestly, he seemed nice enough until Selina pointed out the crushes that the two had on each other. Now, Bruce wanted nothing more than to lock him away. Far away.

“Can you please ask her if she’s coming home tonight?” Bruce finally says, listening to the silence on the other end. He wonders if they’d put the phone on mute or if Marinette was signing furiously the way he’d seen her do over a video call with Cass earlier in the week.

“We’re all coming. See you at dinner.” Dick says, hanging up almost fast enough for Bruce to not hear the protest from Marinette. Almost. Bruce walks to find Alfred, trying not to let the fact that his daughter doesn’t want to see him again get to him.

---

Marinette glares at her oldest brother as they walk into the manor. He just grins, acting as if he hadn’t practically forced her home. It’s not that she didn’t want to come home, but she knew she had a couple bruises and a lump on her head. She also knew that Damian was apparently barely holding himself back from hunting down Slade. She really didn’t need Tikki giving him any ideas.

“Welcome home, Miss Marinette. Would you like me to look at your injuries?” Alfred asks immediately walking towards her as he walks into the room. Marinette glances around, hoping her dad isn’t around before sighing.

“No thank you Alfred, I’m fine.” She reassures him, or she tries to. His face doesn’t look like he believes her.

“Yes, I’m certain a concussion is nothing to worry about. Especially since you’ve had so many.” He drawls, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Hey, whoa. You said this was your first concussion.” Dick says after urging Mar’i to fly off and find Jason or Damian or Tim. Marinette huffs.

“It is.” She says, crossing her arms.

“The concussions you sustain in the suit still count. Head injuries are not an exact science. Nor are they an exact magic cure, either. They often heal at an accelerated speed, but can still have long-lasting effects.” Alfred says and Marinette blinks. That was almost- Almost- information about the Miraculous. And only someone who knew about the Miraculous would know about the whole head injury thing. She blinks at him for a moment, running possibilities through her head. She sighs, realizing that if Alfred had been a holder, it was definitely for a Miraculous she didn’t have. She could just...feel it.

“I promise I’m fine, and if I start feeling any of those other concussion symptoms, I’ll come to you.” Marinette promises.

“And how did you get a concussion?” Her dad asks, practically materializing out of nowhere.

“Akuma attack. Miraculous cure can’t do a complete heal with concussions, it’s too, uh, dangerous. Not exact.” Marinette lies, trying hard not to do any of her tells. She doesn’t tense up, she doesn’t grin, she doesn’t look at someone else and giggle, nothing. She lies with a straight face, which honestly almost scares her more than getting yelled at by her dad. He just hums before nodding at her.

“Will you be staying here tonight? Most of us have patrol, but afterwards Tim suggested that we all watch a movie together.” Her dad says and Marinette tries hard to suppress her grin. There’s no way.

“Wow Tim, you really wanna have a full-family movie night?” She calls out, grinning at the surprised look on her brother’s face. Because of course her dad was the one to set it up, but of course he didn’t want anyone to know. “I think that’s super cool Tim. As long as we can watch some Disney princess movies.” She adds, laughing as Mar’i comes flying around the corner with wide eyes.

“Did someone say princess?” She squeals, flying straight into Marinette’s arms. Marinette grins at her niece and nods.

“Oh yes. Timmy has decided we’re gonna watch Disney princess movies as a family all night long!” She says, laughing as her niece cheers. She glances at her Dad and tries hard to hold back the snort that wants to come out at his exasperated look. Looks like it’s gonna be a Disney night for the Wayne household.

Next

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[kanmom51]

JM JK timeline - my observations how they grew over the years

JM JK timeline.- my observations how they grew over the years

 Disclaimer: these are my own opinions and conclusions.  Feel free to disagree, but hate or aggression will be unacceptable.

This is coming out so much longer than I anticipated, so please accept my apology in advance, I will have to post this in several parts (not sure yet how many).

Part 1

I have been wanting to tackle this for a while now.  

I have read many post on this matter.  Many believe their relationship started during the 2017 trip to Tokyo - that they ‘decided to become boyfriends’ during that trip.  I may be the unpopular vote here, but I tend to disagree on the matter.

While the 2017 trip did cement the relationship and strengthen it (I mean they finally got to have a few days of total privacy, being themselves alone with each other, with no outside interference), in my opinion, it most definitely was not the start of the romantic relationship between them. It was not a catalyst that brought them to the decision to have a full blown relationship.  

I find it  hard to make analogies to dating stages when it comes to JK and JM, because I believe we actually can’t in this case.  It’s so different.  These are two young men that spent their formative years together.  For JK Jimin was there throughout his defining teenage years, both of them becoming young adults living under the same roof, being together almost 24/7, going through all the hardships in the early years together.  Sharing all the highs and lows together.  You can’t compare that to someone that meets and starts dating, gets to know each other and so forth.  There is no comparison what so ever.  

Another misconception, in my opinion, is that JK didn’t like JM at the start, some even going so far as to say he hated him.  I don’t want to come out rude, but bollox.  JK was very young when he joined BTS, just at the start of his defining puberty years.  He was the youngest in the group and he struggled with finding his place, struggled with defining who he was, what he actually wanted to do, what he wanted for himself.  He found an older brother in Jin.  He found someone to look up to in RM.  He found someone to fool around with in Tae.  He looked up to Hobi and Suga, and they also tried to help him and guide him through his struggles. Fans saw these connections.  The fans also saw Jimin being super friendly, maybe over friendly, with JK, constantly saying how cute he is and how much he likes JK.  They saw what they perceived as a tug of war with Jimin, when Jimin is pushing onto JK and JK looks like he is pushing him back, like he wasn’t interested what so ever.  But this was mainly due to tendentiously edited clips.

Before writing these lines I made sure to go over chronological footage.  Starting with pre debut.  Seeing all this raw, unedited footage, and reading members interviews they gave just reinforced my disagreement with the ‘JK hated Jimin’ concept. It can’t be further than the truth. 

Jimin to JK was sort of a fresh breath of air from home.  Both of them from the same hometown.  JK having an older brother and JM missing his younger brother.  They both loved dancing.  They both worked their butts off.  It was an instant connection.  From the get go Jimin was a rock for JK, someone JK could talk to, rely on, practice with, someone that had a great influence on JK.  

JK was a shy introvert teenager, he didn’t know how to show vulnerability, he didn’t know how to show affection, and also I think Jimin’s level of openness and true affection towards him may have overwhelmed him.  In a later interview JK tells how he used to feel he had to wear a mask, not being able to be himself.  Not knowing how to behave in social environments, what was expected of him as ‘a man’ (when writing this the ‘men shouldn’t check their selfies’ conversation with Jimin comes to mind) .  So, he may have pushed back on occasions. Jimin’s affection and openness overwhelmed him.  But Jimin was the one to comfort him when he missed his parents, and cried at night.  Jimin was the one he spoke to when he was questioning his career decisions .  

It was hard for him to say or show Jimin that he liked him, that he needed his attention and friendship, but he did.  The most telling was when JM on Rookie King Ep. 4 (starting 23.07min) got up and sounded his frustration with the way JK was treating him.  I think he was actually caught off guard when JK, being honest, replied to Jimin tirade that he behaves the way he does because he likes him too much. That was certainly an eye opener. 

The episode was aired in May 2014!!! I keep saying over and over again: Listen to what they are saying!!!

Establishing the fact that JK and JM were close from the get go, I will move on to another conclusion I made that is a base for my timeline, another reason why I feel some of the timelines out there are incorrect.   

JK and JM’s love story is not one of “love at first sight” or physical attraction that leads to dating, getting to know one another and finally love.  It is my belief that JM and JK loved each other before they started exploring their physical attraction.  The closest analogy I can make is a romantic relationship that buds out of a great friendship.  When someone is your best friend, when you love them for who they are, when you know them in and out for all they are, including their faults, before you realise that you are physically attracted to them, that’s when love is so strong that there is almost nothing that can break it.  I believe that is the nature of JK and JM’s love, and that is why my timeline doesn’t fit other timelines out there.  There wasn’t a flirting period, a dating period, a relationship period etc.  Their relationship doesn’t fit those moulds. Yes there was flirting.  Yes there was hesitance moving forward once they realised they actually liked each other on a different level.  But it wasn’t within those ‘relationship moulds’ that are referred to in different posts.

Also, we need to remember that they weren’t going through all of this in a vacuum.  Both boys were in a boy band of 7 members.  All seven members very close to each other and love each other in their own ways.  Anything JM and JK did, any step they made towards each other could have a rippling effect on their friends, on their band, on their careers.  Add to that the fact that it was a ‘forbidden’ relationship, that not only is it a gay relationship frowned upon in SK society (frowned upon is putting it very lightly.  Being in a gay relationship could be so risky for them both.  Risky not only to their careers but also for their physical safety), but also, as idols, romantic relationships were a big no no. And what about their families? How would they take it? Will they accept them? They were young men that had to deal with all these issues, all while finding their way to each other.

 So, where do I stand when it comes to defining this love story’s timeline?

It’s hard to tell.  

That was a truly shitty answer, I know. LOL

We will never really know the accurate timeline, not unless JM and JK decide to share it with us one day.

But I’m not going to chicken out, not now.

I am going to tell you what I believe is more or less the timeline of progression in the relationship.

Saying that, I’m not going to get into too many details because that’s just wrong.  It feels too voyeur to me.

And here we go:

From re-watching old content,  I see a shift in JK towards the end of 2014 (maybe even mid 2014 during American Hustle Life).  He becomes ‘nicer’, in a way, towards Jimin, doesn’t stop teasing him though (sometimes as a guise to seek Jimin’s attention though, rather than laugh at him). He also becomes clingier.  Almost every shot taken he is by JM’s side, behind him or in his close vicinity.  He is seeking out JM’s attention.

20 Nov 2014 there is another ‘Looks ranking’ (during the Pops in Seoul War of hormone interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JO1GxTKXI starting from 2.39min).  I find this one interesting.  Once again, JK ranks Jimin last, while ranking himself 6th. Jimin is evidently hurt by the ranking. You can see it on his face.  It felt like he was truly disappointed and hurt by what JK did.  I tried to find remorse on JK’s part, but couldn’t.  He finds it funny, or so it seems.  Did he rank JM last because he was the easiest to appease later? Did he do it to hide his growing attraction? We will never know.  I don’t think that he wants to hurt Jimin, I don’t even think he is aware just how badly he did hurt him. What is evident to me, in any case, is that at this point he still lacks the empathy and sensitivity towards Jimin and his feelings.  This is something that will develop later on in JK’s behaviour towards him.

This leads into the beginning of 2015.  Remember JM’s Bangtan bomb from January 2015, seeking out JK for an interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2JphzsaTIE )? How Jimin is adamant he is seeking out JK, who is avoiding him, and Tae’s teasing repetitively: “avoids?”.  Tae repeats this laughingly 4 times.  After a couple of times Jimin says it’s a joke, but after the fourth he actually turns sharply towards Tae, as if to wack him, saying again it’s a joke, making Tae giggle and say “sorry, sorry”.  From their interaction it’s totally clear that JK far from avoids Jimin.  The teasing way Tae repeats it 4 times shows us quite the contrary.  Not only doesn’t JK avoid JM, he seeks him out.  And what we can see from the clips around that time just strengthen that conclusion.  JK is constantly around Jimin.  He is the one that is seeking out JM’s closeness.  

Something else I noticed from this clip is how JK doesn’t flinch at the end when Jimin asks for a kiss and goes in for the kill.  I think Jimin was expecting JK to push back immediately, but that doesn’t happen.  After a couple of seconds JK does flinch, but not at the beginning.  It could be because he was surprised by JM’s move, but JM did say he wanted a kiss, and it wasn’t the first time he pulled a stunt like that.  JK also laughs at the end, after pushing back, unlike previous reactions, when he just seemed annoyed.  JK’s reaction just seemed different to me. This is only a nuance, and I might be wrong.

Next jump is towards mid 2015.  During this period between the start and mid of 2015 JK’s attraction to JM really shows. He just can’t keep his eyes or hands off him. He is most obviously attracted to him. Has he come to terms with it? I think he is still in turmoil at this point.  Not clear with himself what this is he is feeling, is it ok to feel this, and are his feelings going to be reciprocated.  Thinking about the situation he is in, how isolated he probably thought he was, is heartbreaking. It’s not that he had any one he could confide in within the group (not about that). He had to work it all out by himself. The person that he usually confided in, the one that he allowed to see him in his weaknesses was the person he had these feelings for.

  Some examples:  BTS Bomb after KBS music bank 1st place 9 May 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV3vIYdTNIU from 4.36min) – moody JK when he’s eyeing Jimin interacting with Hobi and Jin, also the way JK averts his eyes when Jimin looks his way. He’s not happy. Mood changes when Jimin pays him attention pulling him by his shirt.  

BTS Yeoeuido Fansign 4th July -  2015.  https://twitter.com/i/status/775127718409150464   Very well known clip.  JK outright getting pissed off when RM puts his arm around Jimin and pulls him closer. Jimin calls out to JK several times, and JK ignores him, until Jimin asks the fans if they want to see JK send them a heart.  JK, with straight face, not a hint of a smile on his face, does the heart.  RM’s reaction also quite peculiar, removing his hand from Jimin after seeing JK’s reaction.  I recommend to watch the whole clip.  JK’s facial expression changes immediately after turning and watching Hobi, but then becomes solemn again when turning back looking at RM and JM, staring at JM as he gets up.

I bring up this example again, because I feel like this is a transition stage, when JK is finding it hard to come to terms with what he is feeling, but it is effecting his surroundings, that are becoming aware there might be something going on with him.  I don’t think that at this point JM is fully understands what is going on with JK, why he is acting all hot and cold.  I mean, like the other members, he might suspect that something is  going on, but feelings have not been made clear yet.

Somewhere between then and 29 Aug 2015 I think something changes.  I know the theory is that JK was shocked by Jimin fainting during their Osaka fan meeting on the 20th August 2015 and decided to make his move, referencing to the 20th Aug fanmeeting, JK stopping by Jimin’s side singing the lyrics of the song to him.  Jimin does seem pleased by it, but still I can’t say if that is actually the case.

Saying that, I do see a shift during the HK concert on 29th Aug 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPta9bGWmG8 .  During the performance of ‘Pretty woman’ (from 0.34min) there is a pretty intense, even sultry, staring moment that just feels is different.  The way they are looking at each other is just telling.  Following we can see Jimin checking out JK a couple of times, so much so that Tae notices it at some point.  That is the moment that I saw that something has changed.

To be continued...

#jikook timeline #jikook are real #jikook love #jk #jungkook #jimin #jm #jikook #jikook are together #JK and JM choose to share a car #jk and jm young love #why i believe in jk and jm's love

[tlbodine]

The Horror Genius of Five Nights At Freddy’s

I’ve been playing FNAF: Help Wanted VR on my Oculus Quest lately (a birthday present to myself -- I know I’m late to that party!) and it’s reignited in me my old love of this series. I know Scott Cawthon’s politics aren’t great, but I don’t think there’s any malice in his heart beyond usual Christian conservative nonsense -- and I think he stepped down as graciously and magnanimously as possible when confronted about it. Time will judge Scott Cawthon’s politics, and that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I want to talk about what makes these games so damn special, from a horror, design, and marketing perspective. I think there’s really SO MUCH to be learned from studying these games and the wider influence they’ve had as intellectual property. 

What Is FNAF? 

In case you’ve somehow been living under a rock for the last seven years, Five Nights At Freddy’s (hereafter, FNAF) is a horror franchise spanning 17 games (10 main games + some spinoffs and troll games, we’ll get to that), 27 books, a movie deal, and a couple live-action attractions. 

But before it exploded into that kind of tremendous IP, it started out as a single indie pont-and-click game created entirely by one dude, Scott Cawthon. Cawthon had developed other games in the past without much fame or success, including some Christian children’s entertainment. He was working as a cashier at Dollar General and making games in his spare time -- and most of those games got panned. 

So he tried making something different. 

After being criticized that the characters in one of his children’s games looked like soulless, creepy animatronics, Cawthon had his lightbulb moment and created a horror game centered on....creepy animatronics! 

The rest, as they say, is history. 

The Genius of FNAF’s Horror Elements

In the first FNAF game, you play as a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a sort of ersatz Chuck-E-Cheese establishment. The animatronics are on free-roaming mode at night, but you don’t want to let them find you in your security room so you have to watch them move through the building on security camera monitors. If they get too close, you can slam your security room doors closed. But be careful, because this restaurant operates on a shoestring budget, and the power will go off if you keep the doors closed too long or flicker the lights too often. And once the lights go out, you’re helpless against the animatronics in the dark. 

Guiding you through your gameplay is a fellow employee, Phone Guy, who calls you each night with some helpful advice. Phone Guy is voiced by Cawthon himself, and listening to his tapes gives you some hints of the game’s underlying story as well as telling you how to play. A few newspaper clippings and other bits of scrap material help to fill in more details of the story. 

Over the next set of games, the story would be further developed, with each new game introducing new mechanics and variations on the theme -- in one, you don a mask to slip past the notice of animatronics; in another, you have to play sound cues to lure an animatronic away from you. By the fourth game, the setup was changed completely, now featuring a child with a flashlight hiding from the monsters outside his door -- nightmarish versions of the beloved child-friendly mascots. The mechanics change just enough between variations to keep things fresh while maintaining a consistent brand. 

There are so many things these games do well from a storytelling and horror perspective: 

Jump Scares: It’s easy to shrug these games off for relying heavily on jump scares, and they absolutely do have a lot of them. But they’re used strategically. In most games, the jump scares are a punishment (a controlled shock, if you will) -- if you play the game perfectly, you’ll never be jump-scared. This is an important design choice that a lot of other horror games don’t follow. 

Atmospheric Dread: These games absolutely deliver horror and tension through every element of design -- some more than others, admittedly. But a combination of sound cues, the overall texture and aesthetic of the world, the “things move when you’re not looking at them” mechanic, all of it works together to create a feeling of unease and paranoia. 

Paranoia: As in most survival horror games, you’re at a disadvantage. You can’t move or defend yourself, really -- all you can do is watch. And so watch you do. Except it’s a false sense of security, because flicking lights and checking cameras uses up precious resources, putting you at greater risk. So you have to balance your compulsive need to check, double-check, and make sure...with methodical resource conservation. The best way to survive these games is to remain calm and focused. It’s a brilliant design choice. 

Visceral Horror: The monster design of the animatronics is absolutely delightful, and there’s a whole range of them to choose from. The sheer size and weight of the creatures, the way they move and position themselves, their grunginess, the deadness of their eyes, the quantity and prominence of their teeth. They are simultaneously adorable and horrifying. 

Implicit Horror: One of the greatest strengths to FNAF as a franchise is that it never wears its story on its sleeve. Instead of outright telling you what’s going on, the story is delivered in bits and pieces that you have to put together yourself -- creating a puzzle for an engaged player to think about and theorize over and consider long after the game is done. But more than that, the nature of the horror itself is such that it becomes increasingly upsetting the more you think on it. The implications of what’s going on in the game world -- that there are decaying bodies tucked away inside mascots that continue to perform for children, that a man dressed in a costume is luring kids away into a private room to kill them, and so forth -- are the epitome of fridge horror. 

The FNAF lore does admittedly start to become fairly ridiculous and convoluted as the franchise wears on. But even ret-conned material manages to be pretty interesting in its own right (and there is nothing in the world keeping you from playing the first four games, or even the first six, and pretending none of the rest exist). 

Another thing I really appreciate about the FNAF franchise is that it’s quite funny, in a way that complements and underscores the horror rather than detracting from it. It’s something a lot of other properties utterly fail to do. 

The Genius of Scott Cawthon’s Marketing 

OK, so FNAF utilizes a multi-prong attack for creating horror and implements it well -- big deal. Why did it explode into a massive IP sensation when other indie horror games that are just as well-made barely made a blip on the radar? 

Well! That’s where the real genius comes in. This game was built and marketed in a way to maximize its franchisability. 

First, the story utilizes instantly identifiable, simple but effective character designs, and then generates more and more instantly identifiable unique characters with each iteration. Having a wealth of characters and clever, unique designs basically paves the way for merchandise and fan-works. (That they’re anthropomorphic animal designs also probably helped -- because that taps into the furry fandom as well without completely alienating non-furries). 

Speaking of fan-work, Scott Cawthon has always been very supportive of fandom, only taking action when people would try to profit off knock-off games and that sort of thing -- basically bad-faith copies. But as far as I know he’s always been super chill with fan-created content, even going so far as to engage directly with the fandom. Which brings me to....

These games were practically designed for streaming, and he took care to deliver them into the hands of influential streamers. Because the games are heavy on jump-scares and scale in difficulty (even including extra-challenging modes after the core game is beaten) they are extremely fun to watch people play. They’re short enough to be easily finished over the duration of a long stream, and they’re episodic -- lending themselves perfectly to a YouTube Lets Play format. One Night = One Video, and now the streamer has weeks of content from your game (but viewers can jump in at any time without really missing much). 

The games are kid-friendly but also genuinely frightening. Because the most disturbing parts of the game’s lore are hinted at rather than made explicit, younger players can easily engage with the game on a more basic surface level, and others can go as deep into the lore as they feel comfortable. There is no blood and gore and violence or even any explicitly stated death in the main game; all of the murder and death is portrayed obliquely by way of 8-bit mini games and tangential references. Making this game terrifying but accessible to youngsters, and then marketing it directly to younger viewers through popular streamers (and later, merchandising deals) is genius -- because it creates a very broad potential audience, and kids tend to spend 100% of their money (birthdays, allowances, etc.) and are most likely to tell their friends about this super scary game, etc. etc.

By creating a puzzle box of lore, and then interacting directly with the fandom -- dropping hints, trolling, essentially creating an ARG of his own lore through his website, in-game easter eggs, and tie-in materials -- Cawthon created a mystery for fandom to solve. And fans LOVE endlessly speculating over convoluted theories. 

Cawthon released these games FAST. He dropped FNAF 2 within months of the first game’s release, and kept up a pace of 1-2 games a year ever since. This steady output ensured the games never dropped out of public consciousness -- and introducing new puzzle pieces for the lore-hungry fans to pore over helped keep the discussion going. 

I think MatPat and The Game Theorists owe a tremendous amount of their own huge success to this game. I think Markiplier does, too, and other big streamers and YouTubers. It’s been fascinating watching the symbiotic relationship between these games and the people who make content about these games. Obviously that’s true for a lot of fandom -- but FNAF feels so special because it really did start so small. It’s a true rags-to-riches sleeper hit and luck absolutely played a role in its growth, but skill is a big part too. 

Take-Aways For Creatives 

I want to be very clear here: I do not think that every piece of media needs to be “IP,” franchisable, an extended universe, or a multimedia sensation. I think there is plenty to be said for creating art of all types, and sometimes that means a standalone story with a small audience. 

But if you do want a chance at real break-out, run-away success and forging a media empire of your own, I think there are some take-aways to be learned from the success of FNAF: 

Persistence. Scott Cawthon studied animation and game-design in the 1990s and released his first game in 2002. He released a bunch of stuff afterward. None of it stuck. It took 12 years to hit on the winning formula, and then another several years of incredibly hard work to push out more titles and stoke the fires before it really became a sensation. Wherever you’re at on your creative journey, don’t give up. You never know when your next thing will be The Thing that breaks you out. 

If you want to sell a lot of something, you have to make it widely appealing to a bunch of people. This means keeping your concept simple to understand (”security guard wards off creepy killer animatronics at a pizza parlor”) and appealing to as wide a segment of the market as you can (ie, a horror story that appeals to both kids and adults). The more hyper-specific your audience, the harder it’s gonna be to find them and the fewer copies of your thing you’ll be selling. 

Know your shit and put your best work out there. I think there’s an impulse to feel like “well, nobody reads this anyway, so why does it matter if it’s no good” (I certainly have fallen into that on multiple occasions) but that’s the wrong way to think about it. You never know when and where your break will come. Put your best work out there and keep on polishing your craft with better and better stuff because eventually one of those things you chuck out there is going to be The Thing. 

Figure out where your target audience hangs out, and who influences them, and then get your thing in the hands of those influencers. Streaming and YouTube were the secret to FNAF’s success. Maybe yours will be BookTube, or Instagram, or a secret cabal of free librarians. I don’t know. But you should try your best to figure out who would like the thing that you’re making, and then figure out how to reach those people, and put all of your energy into that instead of shotgun-blasting your marketing all willy nilly. 

You don’t have to put the whole story on the page. Audiences love puzzles. Fans love mysteries. You can actually leave a lot more unanswered than you think. There’s some value in keeping secrets and leaving things for others to fill in. Remember -- your art is only partly yours. The sandbox belongs to others to play in, too, and you have to let them do that. 

If in doubt, appealing to furries never hurts. 

Do I take all of this advice myself? Not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a lot to think about. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat The Curse of Dreadbear. 

#horror analysis #writing advice #fnaf

[geekgemsspooksandtoons]

The Mask 1994

*I finally wrote the whole thing. I finally watched the movie that involved something I’ve been talking about A LOT. I think this took about an hour since I finished the movie. Forgot to mention Charlie.*

I wanna make this clear, even before I watched movie or ever writing this. I am legitimately a stupid and lazy person. Because my mom told me about this, and last week, my dad rented A Quiet Place Part 2. When I was trying to go to sleep but was looking up movies...I literally forgot my tv can do that too...and that I can rent or buy a movie...I rented the movie this morning, and deleted it afterwards...after all that talk...I could’ve done that...wow. I should do that more considering some movies I wanna see or like. Not too much though. My tv has DirecTV. Just a heads up.

But a few or couple of minutes ago, I finally watched The Mask film from 1994. This post is gonna be filled with spoilers and it’s gonna get long. Gonna be kind of a review. My overall thoughts on it. This was my first reaction to the whole movie.

I’d just wanna talk about this too. I like comic books, I like comic book movies. Mainly my favorites are ones like all of Zack Snyder’s DCEU movies, Spider-Man 1 & 2, The Suicide Squad 2021, Wonder Woman 2017, The Dark Knight(Despite whatever issues I have with it), and Joker 2019. Yeah, those are mainly DC films and two Marvel related ones. I don’t even mind Spider-Man 3 as well. I also forgot Dredd 2012 is another one of my favorites. Along with Batman 1989.

I was hoping The Mask could make that list of favorites. Because I read the comics first. I don’t think I ever watch the movie fully as a kid MAYBE. I’m a fan of the comics, I know this movie was gonna be a lighter take on the series. 

In a nutshell...I liked it. It’s possible it will be on that list of favorite CBM’s...but I want to talk about it. I’ll also admit I think what got me interested in seeing this film and this series was me liking Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura...now, let’s get to the point.

Yeah, I liked it. I thought the movie was genuinely entertaining. Despite seeing some clips before. But also Ryan Hollinger’s video about it. Revealing the ending, the twist, and other stuff. But I didn’t wanna watch more more that I haven’t seen yet.

I will be honest, it still made me laugh. Even some scenes I already have seen. I will admit, the Cuban Pete scene is actually one of my favorites. XD But what also surprised me is that at times, despite being a funny film. It can genuinely be touching in a way. And I am mainly talking about the developing relationship between Stanley and Tina.

I just wanna talk about the characters right now. I’ll just admit unless I haven’t already. I’m a Jim Carrey fan. Mainly because of his more goofier roles. Particularly his roles from the Ace Ventura movies, Liar Liar, and especially Sonic The Hedgehog. I also will admit this, Jim Carry nails playing Big Head or who they call...The Mask in this movie...I’ll nitpick about that later.

But yeah, Jim’s entertaining as Big Head in this film. He does make me laugh. But I think another role he does well despite there are some sillier moments, which is fine. I feel like in a way, Stanley Ipkiss in this version, is maybe one of his more normal roles. But I know I’m wrong considering whatever other roles he’s in. He portrays a likable good guy who’s sadly mainly pushed around. Which is quite the difference from the comics, except being pushed around. But that’s another topic. Yet for this story, even if maybe Stanley’s name could be changed. But him being a genuinely kind guy works for this story.

Even before I saw the movie, learning more about this version about the character. I can relate to Stanley in some ways honestly. Which is something that I like. He basically shines as a protagonist. 

He portrays both sides well. Despite at times...honestly, this Stanley is wacky. I shouldn’t be judging. Jim does a good stuff with what he played, and he’s the highlight of this movie. He also delivers possibly my favorite Jim Carrey line of all time now. Sorry if I get this wrong. I was looking for a clip of it to help me.

“Daddy’s gonna go kick some ass”. A literal line from Jim Carrey in this movie and I love it. He even brings a pistol with him.

I also wanna admit Peter Greene as Dorian is pretty good as a villain. The dude can be threatening and he works with what he is given. And he’s effective as an antagonist. I just wanna admit that I swear, one of these guys. One of them could’ve Walter in a way and I just think that could’ve been possible. But I’m not sure. Just one of Dorian’s henchmen looked like a huge guy. It just got me thinking about Walter from the comics.

Will admit, I think Kellaway is fine. And I just found out Christopher Reeve was one of the actors considered for the role...damn. But again, Kellaway was fine. He’s more like a supporting character and again, this is like an origin story. I do feel bothered Lionel Ray wasn’t added but replaced with this Doyle character. I will admit that Doyle is silly, which is the point of his character. I guess the writers and director didn’t want two sensible cops or something. I like Kellaway alright, but I’ll always dig Lionel too.

I really wanted to get this point. I thought Cameron Diaz was good as Tina Carlyle and Amy Yasbeck as Peggy Brandt. I will admit, I do strangely like the subversion with Peggy in a way with it’s twist. I get the idea if that it was going for that theme of, “We all wear mask” and Peggy turning Stanley into the mob said a lot about her character. While Tina was genuinely the one that truly supported Stanley.

I think was surprised me more was the fact despite Peggy turned in Stanley for selfish purposes such as paying for her condo. Yet what surprised me more was she was actually concerned for Stanley being killed, and didn’t want him hurt...which explains even more why she stuck around in the cartoon. And honestly, it makes me glad the director took out that deleted scene of her getting killed. So she wasn’t that heartless.

Also...it made me think that...my ideas and changes towards her character...maybe hold some weight.

I’ll just put this out there too. Milo is great, one of my favorite fictional dogs maybe. Good dog.

Trying to think what else, the score was fine. But the licensed music was good or something. Overall, I think my negatives could be just...nitpicks. Such as the Big Head part I wanted to talk about. Listen, I understand this is a different version. I just feel it’s weird to call him, “The Mask” instead of Big Head. I know other characters mask in their name or something. But...some reasons, the name Big Head is there. I guess it’s because of the title or something.

Honestly, I think my negatives are more that it feels short. And maybe Stanley becoming Big Head a bit too early. I sound kind of stupid, I know. But this was the 90′s and whatever else. This was a different take on the comics. But I did genuinely like it. Maybe I’m just a bit attached to those comics. Despite knowing the changes they did.

But I will admit, considering the development for this film. And learning that it was meant to be a horror film. But the director Charles Russell found the violence in the source material to be off putting. So he made it less grim, and more fun. I’ve also read somewhere that trying to make comedy with that violence was difficult.

Back to the point, to be honest. I feel like for that time and age. A more light Mask film was maybe the best choice to go. And we wouldn’t have Jim Carrey in it. I do also wanna say, I feel like The Mask series, you can do a lot of it. You can have something dark with it, or maybe more lighter.

There are still some of those darker elements. Mainly considering the moments with the gangsters and all that. But I will admit, learning that Charles mostly directed horror films. I think it’s impressive he made a more family friendly film and it worked. 

I liked it, despite my love for the comics. I thought when writing this, maybe some folks reading this may think I sound like fans who read the comics who first experienced this movie. But the film isn’t bad, it’s just a different take and a pretty nice one at that.

And to be honest, as much as I would of loved to see an actual sequel. And not that bad film known as Son Of The Mask. I understand why Jim Carrey dropped out, and I would’ve loved to see Peggy back because the director planned to bring her back reformed. But I feel like this film works as a one off in a way. And there’s also the cartoon, which works fine as a sequel despite some differences. Yet...I’ll admit, I would’ve loved The Mask 2 if we got Jim Carrey as Stanley again fighting against maybe someone like Walter.

The Mask 1994 is a good film. Despite changes from the source material, but the changes for this vision work. It’s cool this film has a cult following, and the fact I have used elements and story beats from it for The Mask Rebirth stuff I’ve been talking about. Even before watched this whole movie.

It’s a genuine fun flick. But I’m hoping down the line, if Warner Bros stops being fucking stupid with how they run things. Maybe we’ll get a reboot or how about an animated film that seems more true to the source material. 

I know The Mask/Big Head doesn’t have a big legacy such as the likes of Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. But I do think this series could be reimagined and expanded upon. Using elements not only from the original comics, but even the movie and cartoon. 

And...despite it was because of Ace Ventura...I would like to thank @kaijuguy19 for being such a supportive dude, and talking about this franchise with me. Including wanting to talk about this movie long ago when I haven’t seen it. But I want to say...no...he’s one of the big reasons why I’m a fan. Because he’s one of the only guys I know who’s a fan. It started with Ace Ventura, but it was because of talking with Kaijuguy that I guess things started to escalate. So thanks man for talking about this stuff with me.

Also, Charlie was silly and he was fine as a character. I forgot about that dude despite wanting to talk about him. Gonna tag him too in case. Charlie schumaker

#GeekGem Rambles #the mask #the mask 1994 #jim carrey #stanley ipkiss #dorian tyrell #mitch kellaway #tina carlyle #peggy brandt #cameron diaz #amy yasbeck #peter greene #big head #charles russell #charlie schumaker

[clatterbane]

Today's opthalmology timeline, in a nutshell:

* Finally worked in for a fill-in appointment at a few days' notice, after I had to cancel the last one thanks to what I am still not sure wasn't COVID.

* Have to leave an hour earlier than I was prepared for, on roughly 10 minutes' notice! 😬

* In a freaking wheelchair to help speed everything up, while barely awake and also autistic, and working under Swedish punctuality expectations. With even cab drivers inevitably showing up at least 5 minutes early. 😬

* Does this mean that the Household Swede will adjust the time he asks the cab company to send a ride accordingly? HAHAHAHA.

* (After my last phone update, Samsung's calendar UI is TOTALLY FUCKED. This very much includes the event time display. And Google's is bad enough for me already. 😬)

* We do, indeed, manage to get out and to the cab roughly on time. With all the required shoes, pants, wallets/bags, ID, jackets, and eyeballs about our persons.

* Thanks to the current Plague situation, Mr. C cannot wait in there. Ends up in an atrium area, rather than needing to leave the university hospital buildings entirely.

* They remember NOT to use the dilating drops that I react pretty badly to.

* Hurry up and wait in the hallway!

* Some other guy waiting offers to move a chair out of the way for me. I honestly cannot imagine why. It's not even really in my way, and my arms do mostly work fine.

* Ah, likely the wheels more than some weird sexist assumptions. That's... something, I guess?

* Once again, I am relieved to have half my face behind a mask.

* Finally choke out a vaguely appropriate response in broken-ass Stressed Autistic Person Swedish Mode.

(May sound oddly specific, but this is NOT my first tango.)

* I do not, in fact, sink through the floor.

* The laser table's electric height adjustment mechanism is borked enough today that she has to make two phone calls and summon someone else in to help get it usable.

* Yes please, do not attempt to perform somewhat lengthy and tricky procedures on my retinas while working awkwardly at a roughly 30° tilt--as everyone involved is increasingly distracted by the cricks in their necks. 😬

* After some tinkering under there, Second Phone Call White Coat Lady gets the table top/laser zapping contraption level again, and vaguely capable of moving up and down.

* I decide not to push anyone's luck, and give these proceedings the go ahead once it's at a level that the laser wizard seems satisfied with.

* Which naturally involves hunching my shoulders and neck down and forward a bit. For what turns out to be "only" like 25 minutes (?) straight.

* With the first laser treatment seeming to destabilize things, and Haunted Eyeball springing (another) fresh leak just the other day--and maybe the biggest so far? The swirls of blood in there are enough to obstruct the doctor from seeing that retina well enough to do much zap-zap on it today. 😬

* Yes please, do not attempt to continue playing the world's dullest video game inside my eyeball if you cannot clearly see what you're shooting that laser blaster at.

* This entire situation is not worrying in the least. Nope.

* But, that's okay! She has time to work on the other, so far symptom-free (*fingers crossed*) eye instead, while I'm there!

* More drops to take effect, more waiting out in the hall.

* No further awkward conversations arise. Maybe the dorky clip-on shades also serve as some deterrent. 😎

* More awkward hunched leaning toward the machine. For a probably 45 minute session this time around.

* Finally over for today! 😎

* She cannot find an open appointment anytime soon. But, they will try to work me in ASAP to try again on (hopefully less actively by then) Haunted Eyeball.

* Now, where in the hells did he get to? 🤔

* That last determined stabbing at predictive text options is essentially a monkeys and typewriters level success.

* This communication actually draws his attention enough to come and investigate, at any rate.

* I can finally just about make out ANY of this exchange by the time we get home.

So far, in the more immediate aftermath? This does not seem to be the worst Pupil Dilation Hell migraine. Tomorrow may well be a different story, but I can worry about that then.

Did I mention that I am due in Lund for ANOTHER sedated gastroscopy session in the morning? (I.e., roughly Circadian 3 a.m. for me.) 😬

Because of course I am. Maybe that will be less eventful. *fingers crossed* At least I should be knocked the fuck out for most of it.

Then, once we get home? I may sleep until further notice. When I am not doing my damndest to gobble my way through All The Now Vaguely Swallowable Food that Malmö has to offer.

At least, AFAICT from the shitty shitty current calendar view? Nothing else currently scheduled for at least the next couple of weeks. (When I am anticipating more Fun With Gastroenterology.) We also need to schedule another blood draw for endocrinology, but that can be done at primary care.

That may change at any time, of course. At least they do seem to be trying to play catch-up on several pressing issues the NHS had just been choosing to neglect, such as bleeding retinas and the whole "inability to swallow solids" thing. Not to mention the diabetes, beyond mostly keeping the lifesaving prescriptions coming.

As little as I may enjoy the process sometimes. Also, thus far? Nobody has openly treated me like something stuck to their shoe. That certainly helps make the rest easier to manage.

#pretty onf #gif #personal #long post #medical stuff #opthalmology #eyeball lasers #diabetic retinopathy #stick a fork in me #i am so done

[calpalirwin]

Nights in the OR

A/N: This is called “I watch too much Grey’s Anatomy” so if you’re a fellow Grey’s fan in addition to a fellow Ashton ho, hi!

Word Count: 1.9k

And away, and away we go!

__

Nights on the peds floor we’re, in a word, uneventful. Low hums and beeps from machines doing their jobs while kids and parents alike snoozed between nurses prodding them awake to do their routine checks. You went through the charts of your patients, delegating a duo of an intern and older resident to each case with strict orders to page you only if something was seriously wrong, and a bright “Keep the tiny humans alive,” before making your way to the emergency room.

The trauma team usually ran the emergency room, a sea of green scrubs moving effectively and efficiently, assessing situations before paging the right departments, or diving headfirst into the work themselves. You caught sight of one of the doctors, a tall man in a shade of green scrubs darker than the rest in the room, and rolled your eyes. Attending trauma surgeon Ashton Irwin was about as arrogant as he was skilled, with an annoying habit of assessing quickly, albeit correctly, and working even faster on patients before shipping them off to the correct departments to deal with the fallout. You weren’t sure if that man had ever spent more than an hour, two tops, with a patient from start to finish. True to his arrogance and almost zero tolerance for sloppy mistakes, he was talking in hushed tones to a second year, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, jaw set, as the resident nodded frantically before running off.

Dr. Irwin took a moment to compose himself, giving the slightest shake of his head and relaxing his jaw, before turning to wherever he was needed next. His hazel eyes scanned the room, and even from where you were you could tell that they were more on the green side tonight as they met yours. He offered forth the smallest of nods and smiles in your direction, dimples indenting both sides of the smile.

You returned the gesture, before twirling your index finger about the room. Extra attending on hand.

He waved his hand. No need. Got it covered, thanks.

You smiled your best, I don’t give a damn smile, striding across the room to take a seat behind a computer, crossing your hands behind your head. And with little else to do on your part, you settled in for a long night of researching the pros and cons of artificial bones versus prosthetics in cases for patients with osteosarcoma, a joint effort you were working on with the orthopedic surgeon.

Around 2 in the morning, you took a break from your research to grab a cup of coffee and a small bite to eat. On your way back, you spotted the orthopedic surgeon with a patient. “Oh! Dr. Hood,” you said as you approached. “Come find me when you’re done. I have some ideas.”

The man swiveled on his chair to glance up at you, eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “You’re not in OR 2 with Ash?”

“Nnnnoooo…” you said slowly, taking a sip from your coffee. “Why?” you followed up in a clipped tone. What had Dr. Arrogant done now?

Dr. Hood smiled politely at his patient, and got the attention of his resident. “Ma’am, we’re going to take you up for X-rays now, and then we’ll see about setting your arm for you, okay?”

The woman nodded, clearly shaken up. Then, “What about my husband and son?”

“I’ll get word, and update you as soon as I can,” he promised, before the resident escorted the patient up to X-rays. Finally he turned his attention to you. “Car accident just came in. Parents are a little banged up. Mike and Luke are working up the dad. You know how Luke gets about stitches.”

The both of you shared a chuckle. Luke Hemmings, the plastic surgeon, had very high standards for even the most basic of stitches, and if he was on hand and free, it was an easy bet he’d do the work himself. “So, what’s Mike doing with him then, if it’s just stitches?” you asked, referring to the general surgeon.

He shrugged. “General work up and clearance, I suppose. But the mom and the son’s side took the impact the hardest. Specifically the son. Ash didn’t page you?”

You scoffed. “Why on Earth would Ash page me, Cal? It’s trauma,” you raised your hands and voice in a mocking manner.

“Uh, probably cuz the kid is like seven.”

You growled low in your throat, hands going to tie up your hair. “OR 2, you said? How long ago?”

“Not too long. They gotta still be prepping. So if you hurry…”

“Thanks, Cal,” you patted the man on the shoulder before taking off at a run towards the OR rooms, briefly mourning your discarded coffee and potato chips in the process.

When you shouldered your way into the room, Ashton was in the process of scrubbing in, while nurses finished prep. “What the hell are you doing?” you demanded, arms crossing instinctively over your chest as you made your presence known.

Ashton shut off the water with his elbow, turning slightly to face you. “My job,” was the reply in a tone that questioned your intelligence.

“Bullshit,” you spat. “That,” you pointed out the window towards the child on the table, “is a peds case, and you know it.”

“It will be once it stops being a trauma case, yes.”

“Why didn’t you page me?”

“Because I don’t need you. It’s a trauma case. I’m a trauma surgeon. Now, you want to stop asking inane questions, and let me do my job, or you wanna stand here and fight with me all night?”

“It’s a peds trauma case, and in case you forgot, I’m the peds attending who happens to be trauma certified. And I’ll be damned if you do some hacksaw job on my patient that I have to fix later when I can scrub in and do the correct job now. So, are you going to ask me to scrub in, or do you wanna stand here questioning my credentials all night when you know I’m right? Do not make me go above your head to the Chief, Ash, because you know I will.”

His jaw ticked underneath his mask, his eyes hard as he thought over your threat. “Well?” he snapped after a beat of silence. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to scrub in?”

~~~

It was a grueling surgery, working in tandem with Ashton. For all the shit the two of you gave each other outside of the OR, inside you were one of the best teams, each of you knowing each other’s moves before you made them, and knowing what the other was thinking in the subtlest of changes. Even with both of your focuses solely on the patient in front of you, you were both vigilant in sending Ashton’s intern out every hour on the hour with updates, in which you two were also informed of the parents’ recovery.

Just before the four hour mark, Ashton let out a small hum of approval and you nodded. “Close and get him a room on the peds floor,” you told the intern.

“You don’t want me to update the family?”

“No,” Ashton cut in, already discarding his gloves, mask, and removing his scrub cap, shocks of curly brown hair falling forward and plastering to his sweaty forehead. “I will. Give Dr. Y/L/N any trouble and you won’t see the inside of an OR for a month.”

The intern gulped, knowing their boss meant what he said and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Y/N, I’ll meet you after I update the family to make sure we’re on the same page for how to proceed from here?”

“If you can remember how to page me, that is,” you smiled sweetly.

Ashton chuckled as he left the OR, while you stayed to oversee the intern closing, providing probably much gentler instruction than they were used to.

~~~

You rubbed at your eyes and stifled a yawn as you made your way to the cafeteria, still waiting for Ashton to page you. As you walked in, you realized why Ashton still hadn’t paged, spotting the man chatting with a few other attendings.

“Heard Y/N chewed your ear off,” Michael snickered.

“Yeah, she was pissed. Thanks for that, Cal,” Ashton said with a small giggle before changing his voice to do his best impersonation of you, “ ‘It’s a peds trauma case, and in case you forgot, I’m the peds attending who also happens to be trauma certified. Do not make me go over your head.’ Like yes, darling, I know. I’m the one who gave you your trauma certification.”

As the men started to laugh, you set your tray down in an empty seat at their table. “Morning, gentlemen!”

There was a cough as they tried to stifle their laughter, each of them getting out a choked, “Morning.”

“What were we talking about?” you asked innocently.

“Uh… just how Luke needs to learn to loosen up on the stitches,” Michael thought quickly. “Turns a five minute procedure into a half hour ordeal, it’s insane.”

“Sorry that I care how my patients look after a trauma,” Luke said with an eye roll.

“I’m sure, psych would call that mentality projection,” Calum teased.

“Paging Dr. Pretty Boy!” Ashton cackled.

“Hey! Rather be Dr. Pretty Boy than Dr. Arrogant,” Luke rounded on Ashton playfully.

“Who calls me that?”

“Uh… everybody. Y/N’s pretty accurate with her nicknaming,” Calum grinned.

Ashton let out a breath of disbelief as you smiled sheepishly at him, shrugging your shoulders. “Have you considered being less arrogant?”

“I am not arrogant!”

“Yeah, you are,” you all chorused, while Ashton crossed his arms and pouted. “Oh, whatever, the best surgeons usually are” you continued, turning your attention to Calum. “Before I got stuck in surgery, I meant to talk to you about artificial bones. Found some promising stuff.”

Calum paused in his sip of coffee. “Mmm, shit, awesome. Uh…” he checked his watch, “I got a half hour before rounds. You got time now?”

You checked your own watch. “Yeah, I got t-”

“Actually,” Ashton interrupted. “Y/N, I was wondering if we could talk real quick first. About the kid.”

“Oh! Yeah. We should probably do that. Cal, I’m off after rounds, if you’re free then.”

“Sounds good,” he nodded as he went back to his coffee while you and Ashton rose from the table, bidding the other three goodbye.

“So, his chart’s all up to date. I have one of my fourth years monitoring the situation, but I’m not expecting any complications to arise. Should be good to discharge probably later today or early tomorrow at the latest,” you brought him up to speed as you walked.

“Yeah, that’s great,” Ashton rushed, eyes darting around as he pushed open an on-call room and locked the door behind the two of you. “How long we got til rounds?”

“A little under a half hour, why?”

Ashton smirked as his hands landed hot on your waist, his lips finding yours. “Wanna boss me around some more?” he murmured against your lips, before he was trailing kisses down the column of your neck, before sucking into the sweet spot just before your collarbone, his hands jerking you to be flush against him. “Or, do you want my sincerest apology for being Dr. Arrogant, and forgetting to page you earlier?”

“Mmmm,” you moaned softly, tilting your head back, eyes shutting. “Little bit of both?”

“Yes ma’am,” he winked before scrubs went flying and your back hit the mattress.

__

Tag List

@aquarius-hood1996​ @creator-appreciator​ @philthepegacorn​ @myfavfanficsever​ @cxddlyash​ @youngblood199456​ @stormrider505​ @iknowyouthinkimbulletproof​ @hoodhoran​ @metalandboybands​ @maybeememez​ @major5sosstan​ @kaitieskidmore1​ 

#nights in the or #ashton irwin #ashton irwin fic #ashton irwin x reader #ashton irwin au #5sos #calpal irwin

[elderbwrry]

Girls' Night

tags: the knights of ren, All Women Knights of Ren, Girl's night, Girl's Knight, haha please like me, Fluff and Humor, Adversarial Kylux, Very much a WIP, Kylux, although fair warning it might not be that relationshippy

Read it on ao3

Summary: Hux is surprised by what the Knights of Ren get up to in their free time - it's strangely humanising. Unfortunately, Ren is still being the Lord of all Assholes. Hux needs a way to get back at him. It gives him an idea.

Hux marched down the corridor in the Finalizer's quarters deck, the section dedicated to command personnel. The immaculately tiled and polished floors glinted as he whipped past them. He was walking a little faster than usual, he noticed with distaste, but it wasn't surprising; this was his last task before he could officially count his shift as “over” and, instead of standing stiffly on the bridge checking reports, he could settle down to checking them in the comfort of his quarters. His sofa beckoned, along with another three hours of beloved admin, then five necessary hours of sleep before his next shift.

Moments ticked by as he had to pause and wait for a security door to open, and he felt his frustration manifesting itself in his brow. He was currently delaying himself by heading approximately six minutes out of the way of his own quarters, all to give Ren little more than a telling off. This wasn't the first time the glorified poser had caused him this kind of issue – trust Ren to get in the way, he excelled at it – but it was the first time Hux was personally carrying the message round to his quarters that he needed to file a report for the mission he returned from over a week ago.

Hux had tried the usual ways of getting hold of Ren; on his return to the ship, Hux had informed him a report was due; an automated reminder had been sent; a follow-up reminder had been sent; Hux sent a reminder himself. Today, when his agenda noted that Ren still remained unresponsive, Hux hailed him over internal comms. No reply. He called Mitaka in, intending to send him to Ren's quarters, but the poor man had paled at the knight's very name. So, Hux had dismissed him, and undertaken to deliver the message himself.

Hux didn't bother to wonder the reason why Ren wasn't completing the report – undoubtedly it was because he was irresponsible, disrespectful, possibly illiterate – he only amused himself to wonder what foolish excuse would be employed this time. “Meditation,” Hux's mind supplied in a mocking approximation of Ren's voice without that ostentatious helmet, “important Force matters,” “training,” “I was just really tired and forgot :(”

He was just shaking his head disapprovingly at the imagined pout as he drew up outside the door itself. He pressed the button to request entry, pushing it harder than necessary until his thumb joint hurt, as if somehow that would convey through the automated, equalized buzz sound how annoyed he was with Ren taking up his time like this.

The door puffed open, and Hux's mouth was already opened to give Ren a piece of his mind when he realised that the person in front of him was not, in fact, Ren. Instead, stood before him was a woman nearly a head shorter than himself, her long, black hair piled on her head in a decidedly non-regulation messy bun, drawn away from her face, on which was slathered some kind of light pink paste. She was wrapped in a fluffy, pink dressing gown, under which appeared to be heart patterned pink pyjamas.

Hux's planned rebuke of Ren fell away into an, “Uh.” Usually, he had time to prepare himself for any kind of non-work-related interactions, but he had planned to go into this with a clipped, righteous annoyance and come out of it with a self-indulgent bit of riling Ren up, and now that Ren was not available for that, he had nothing.

“Yes?” she said, about as neutrally as Hux supposed anyone would, when called upon while attired as she was.

“I must have the wrong quarters,” was what he managed to reply.

“These aren't mine,” she explained, pointing behind her, around a corner which Hux couldn't see, “You looking for Kylo?”

“Yes,” Hux said stiffly, “is Ren here?”

The woman leaned back inside the door, around the corner Hux still couldn't see. “Kyle!” she called, “visitor.”

“He's not getting up, wet nails!” someone called back, another female sounding voice.

Just what was happening in there? How many women were there, and what were they doing in Ren's quarters, of all places, clad in such unofficial wear? Hux shuddered to think. Was he also going to have to remind Ren of the rules against fraternisation with inferior officers? That was sure to be a fun conversation of Ren not giving a kriff and Hux being able to do little but barb his words and maybe mention the situation to Snoke. Odd, though – Hux had never thought Ren had showed any preference for women... or perhaps that had just been wishful thinking.

The woman before him remained still for a moment, her brown eyes glazing over just slightly in a way which made Hux think she wasn't entirely mentally present. Then the look was gone as soon as it had come, and she frowned, annoyed. “He wants you to leave,” she informed him, “but he wasn't very nice about it, so you're coming in.” She turned and retreated back inside, beckoning casually for him to follow.

After a moment, once Hux's brain had caught up – Ren had just communicated with the woman through the Force, and now he was being invited in against those wishes. He slipped through the door, letting it puff closed behind him.

The first fact of the place was that Ren's quarters were larger than Hux's. Hux had known this, of course – he'd scoffed over the confirmation for the allocation when Ren had first transferred over, perfectly happy to take moderately sized quarters himself – but, as he walked down the grandly inlaid corridor from the entrance antechamber to what was presumably a living space, it contributed to the sense of an impending mystery as to what, exactly, he was about to discover. He hoped it was nothing too debauched.

“You're that General, aren't you?” the woman a step in front of him asked over her shoulder. “Hanks? Hugs?”

“Hux,” he corrected. He disliked intensely when people got his name wrong. He was the General of the ship they were all currently hurtling through space on, he was the General Starkiller – how could she not know who he was? “Who are you?”

“Ushar,” she replied easily. No rank, no designation of any sort, no actual deference to him as a General; all things Hux made a mental note of for later, when he could check the ship manifest.

“Might I ask what you're...”

Hux had begun to speak with an acerbic self-confidence – it was his ship, and he demanded to know what was happening on it – but it all became clear when Ushar opened the door to the central living area and the situation was revealed. It was the second time Hux had been caused to falter in his words in the last five minutes, and he didn't appreciate it. “What is this?” he asked, minorly horrified, as he took in the scene before him.

Ushar shrugged. “Girls' night.”

The room looked like some kind of stereotypical, tacky imitation of a Zeltronian spa had taken over. There were tall glasses of something bubbly scattered around, half-drunk, the bottle chilling in a bucket of ice on the coffee table, which was scattered with cosmetic items. A holo-romance was playing off to the side. Boxes of chocolates fountained forth crunched up wrappers. There were four women – two humans, a zabrak and a twi'lek – lounging around in the pit of cushions the room had been turned into. The cushions were allpink to match the identical pink bath robes and headbands and fluffy slippers the room's inhabitants were sporting. And, at the centre of it all; Ren.

“You...” Hux started, under his breath just enough that no-one would take notice of the stammering. He had certainly not expected this. “I...”

Ren, clad too in pink fluffy bath robe, seemingly with nothingunder it this time, finally took notice that Ushar had led Hux in, as he sat up quickly and angrily, removing slices of some green vegetable from over his eyes. The woman who had been painting his toenails – black, possibly the only thing that could reconcile the Ren Hux was used to with this strange, pink perversion before him – protested, but he ignored her, instead hurrying to his feet and wading his way out of the pillows.

“I told you to make him leave,” Ren growled at Ushar, but the effect was considerably diminished thanks to his appearance. The bathrobe he wore was the short, fun kind of style which only came to his knees; the pink headband kept all his hair back from his face gave him a kooky sort of bird's nest; his face was slathered with a light green version of what Ushar had on, all except for comical spaces around his eyes and lips.

Ushar glared at him. “You shouldn't have ordered me like that, then,” she said, going over to sit next to the zabraki woman, shuffling in closer than was strictly platonic and picking up one of the glasses. “I'm not some stormtrooper.”

“You're ruining the night,” Ren brandished the vegetable slice at her. It wobbled.

“You'reruining the night!” the woman Ushar was sat next to shot back. “He's here after you!”

“Yeah, Kyle,” the twi'lek said from the sofa in a tone that was very much mocking, but still friendly, popping a chocolate in her mouth. Who were these people, that they could speak to Kylo Ren like this and get away with it?

Ren turned back to Hux, glowering. The face paste made him look like a clown. The outside finally reflects the inside, Hux thought to himself while wondering if Ren had waxed his legs or if they were just like that naturally, and had to force himself not to laugh. He obviously didn't mask his expressions quite as well as he should have, however, because Ren seemed to sense that Hux was amusing himself at his expense. Seizing Hux's upper arm in a grip to rival that of a hangar-bay droid, Ren manhandled Hux back to the door of the room, away from the group.

“Unhand me, you oaf,” Hux admonished, shaking Ren off him and lowering his tone a little so as not to disturb the ladies, who, in their disregard of Ren's plumped-up edginess, had endeared themselves to him.

“Why are you here?” Ren demanded before he'd even finished speaking, also at subdued pitch.

“Why are you here?” Hux returned, hissingly. “Who are these people? Why are you not completing the mission report which you have had no fewer than five requests for? Why the hells are your quarters this gods-awful colour?”

Ren took a moment to glare at Hux.

Hux interpreted this as having the upper hand. “Well?”

“I'm not completing any more of your stupid kriffing reports,” he said as if it were obvious. “I told you that already.”

Hux cycled through his memory quickly. He remembered Ren slamming down the last report onto his desk and threatening something similar, but he'd disregarded it, because reports were Necessary, and it was not a possibility for anyone to simply not do them.

“You will do the report,” Hux replied.

“No.”

“You'll do it now.”

Ren snorted. “No.”

Hux bristled. “Ren, I have been forced to come down here – well out of my way – to extract this report from you, only to find you sitting around like some... pampered princess, when I could be-”

“Good point actually, let's return to it. What are you doing down here?” Ren frowned and crossed his arms, but his lips curled cruelly, ready, Hux was sure, to make some insult about his doing such menial work.

“That brings me to the next matter,” Hux plucked the opportunity of throwing in this additional argument, squaring up. “You have intimidated my administrative staff to the point where it is necessary that I waste my time in a way which is thoroughly unacceptable to me.”

Ren widened his eyes in mock sympathy. “Did you forget how to use a comm?”

This only pissed Hux off more, because something about the movement was ridiculously attractive. He wasn't sure whether it was the slight shrug which emphasised Ren's muscular arms, the fact that the pink really brought out the rich shade of his hair, or even the cruelty behind the act itself, but it could not stand.

“I'm quite familiar with the comms system,” he spat, “it seems that you are the one having trouble, since you failed to reply to my hails. As my co-commander,” (Hux had practised in his bathroom mirror not grimacing as he said this) “you are expected to answer your comms when I call. It is highly unprofessional of you to shirk your duty like this.”

Ren momentarily pursed his lips. His next words were caustic. “I don't intend to waste my life away at work like you do, slaving over a tablet until I look like the living dead. At least I know how to relax.”

Hux's eye twitched. “I know how to relax.” An imagined image of himself on his icy blue sofa in his black and red robe, his cat to one side, his data-pad in hand, appeared in his mind. That was relaxing.

“No you don't,” Ren scoffed. “You should see the bags under your eyes. You look more drawn out than all the Starkiller blueprints put together.”

Mentally, Hux's self-image adjusted so that his porcelain skin turned grey, the lines of his face more prominent, the room dark until only he was visible by the harsh light of the data-pad. It could not have been more different than his current surroundings of pink and fluffiness and companionship and soft lighting.

“Get out of my head, Ren,” he said, putting the warping of his imagined scene down to some Force meddling.

“I'm not in your head,” Ren replied, “you're just sad and lonely and jealous that you have to go do a report while I have a nice night with my knights – my friends. You,” he pointed sassily, “could never have this,” he pointed back to the ladies. “Now kriff off, I'm not doing the report. Maybe you should do it yourself, since you have such a boner for that kind of thing.” The door far behind Hux puffed open, presumably manipulated by the Force.

“I expect the report before the end of my shift tomorrow,” Hux said, voice dangerous and low. How dare Ren speak to him like that. How dare he judge what Hux did to relax, while he was being a layabout with these random, cool ladies... doing... fun things like... painting nails and getting tipsy... and watching holo-dramas... and... he wasn't jealous.

“Leave,” Kylo told him.

Hux narrowed his eyes. “You will regret this, Ren.” He turned on his heel and marched from the room, commenting to himself once more as the door puffed closed behind him, “You will regret this.”

[line break]

Kylo watched Hux retreat from the room, waiting until the door had closed to turn and make his way back to his knights. He flopped himself back down onto the floor, jostling Ap'lek's sofa cushions in the process.

“Ah kriff,” he complained as he saw his black-smudged toes stretched out in front of him, “he made me ruin my nail paint.”

“I'm not doing them again,” Trudgen said, tossing the little black bottle at him, shifting around to watch the holo and grabbing a chocolate. “You shoulda been more careful when you got up instead of rushing off to be a bitch.”

Kylo sighed over-dramatically and called out, “Cardo!” She and Kuruk were in the kitchen, probably making an unsightly mess of the place, but Kylo knew only she would be willing to finish the paint for him. Of course, he would have to take the chance that the stuff would end up even more smudged than it already was, and, now he was thinking about it, he would probably be better off just dipping his entire feet in nail polish.

A chocolate wrapper hit the side of his head. He turned to see Ushar had thrown it. “Just do it yourself,” she told him, “it's not like it's hard.”

But he wanted to feel spoiled, that was the whole point of this spa evening anyway. He called Cardo's name again, whinier this time.

“What?!” came the shouted reply, “We're making mug muffins!”

Vicrul frowned, straightening up a little where her arm was thrown around Ushar's shoulders. “In the microwave?”

“Yeah!”

“Huh,” Vicrul shrugged, settling back down again. “Good luck cleaning that.”

Kylo groaned, letting his head fall back onto the sofa cushion behind him. First Hux was on him about a report, then none of his knights would do his nails for him, now Cardo was splattering his lovely microwave with chocolate batter. This was all Hux's fault. Kylo wasn't sure how yet, but it was.

He opened his eyes to see Ap'lek looking down at him, where his head rested by her left elbow. “What's this about a report then?” she asked flatly. Kylo just groaned again and re-closed his eyes.

“You can't be procrastinating this stuff again,” Ushar nagged him over the sound of footsteps, accompanied by a smell of chocolate, and a thunk-clink of a tray with spoons being set down on the table as the cooks brought the muffins through. “Your job is important, here, Kylo. Snoke wants you to do well.”

“To hell with Snoke,” Kylo mumbled, hoping the crusty fart wasn't spying on his thoughts as they spoke. Paperwork was a fate worse than a fate worse than all the Sith hells combined.

“Then we want you to do well,” she continued.

“Plus we blew up so much shit on that mission,” Vicrul added, and Kylo opened his eyes to glare at her as she accepted a mug from Kuruk.

“You have to tell the General about that some time, why not put it in a report? You'd save him lots of time, probably. I bet he'd be so appreciative.”

Kylo accepted a mug proffered by Kuruk and waved it about a bit. “Since when do we care about saving Hux time? I meant what I said, he loves paperwork so much he probably,” he picked up a spoon and stabbed it into the fluffy top of the muffin, watching steam come out as he tried to pick a suitably ridiculous image of Hux. “He probably sleeps with all the files strewn over his bed and like,” he made a face, “rubs them on his body, gets all cozy with them at night. I don't know.”

“I'm pretty sure he does paperwork on his data-pad,” Ap'lek said, and she was right, though Kylo resented that she'd killed his roll.

“Just do the kriffing report, Kyle.” Trudgen hadn't pulled her attention away from the holo enough to face him as she'd said it, but apparently had been paying enough attention to comment, “Anything to stop him showing up and interrupting us. Girls' night is a no-business zone.”

Cardo chose that moment to vault over the back of the sofa and land heavily on the cushions. “Ooh, General Hux came over?” she asked cheerfully. Her hands were, predictably, still coated in chocolate powder. “I can't believe I missed him, I want to see if his hair is gelled that solid from close up.” She grabbed her mug and dug into the muffin.

“The General shouts too much,” Kuruk said, sitting cross legged on a cushion by the coffee table. “He should check his blood pressure, it can't be good for him.”

“Hey, a bit like you!” Cardo added, “You must call me through next time. He's cute.”

Kylo opened his mouth – partly to gape at what had just been said, and partly because the muffin was too hot and he hadn't had the impulse control to prevent eating a large spoonful. “Hey!” he started a few times, mouth full and burning. Finally, he was able to swallow. “He is not cute, and there will be no,” he wobbled his mug and spoon in a no-fingered version of quotation marks, “next time.”

“Then do the report,” Ushar shot back.

Kylo made a loud complaint noise.

“He's not gonna do it because he wants the General to come over again,” Ap'lek teased, and, to Kylo's horror, all his knights laughed. Traitors. He didn't want Hux to come over again.

“I don't,” he replied vehemently, “I want him to kriff off and stop annoying me.”

“I think that's against his job description,” Kuruk said, prompting further laughs.

“You should just do it,” Ushar said, getting to her feet after a moment more.

“Hey, where you going?” Vicrul asked sadly, not letting go of Ushar's hand.

“Babe, I gotta peel my face.”

“Wait, let me come with, it's really satisfying.”

The two disappeared off, and Kylo had to add 'his knights screwing in his bathroom' to his list of sub-par things to happen this evening. He wasn't going to do the report. He couldn't be bothered, he didn't want to, he hated writing things and making them sound 'formal'. No, tonight he was going to finish his mug muffin, paint his nails and fall asleep with his knights in front of a trashy holo-romance. Hux would get the hell in eventually and do the report himself. Give it a few more days, and Kylo was sure Hux would drop the issue.

#kylux #fanfiction #my writing #girls night #armitage hux #kylo ren #knights of ren #the knights of ren #star wars #star wars sequels

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x07 Review

The Field Trip was a campy ep that recaptured some of the charm of S1. Let’s dig in!

S2 has often struggled with taking itself too seriously but finally we got some good campy fun that reminded me of why S1 was so great. North High finally come into their own as villains. The Howie reveal was very well done, poor Kourtney inadvertently being the source of the leaks. I can’t tell if Antoine’s accent is bad on purpose or not but he was funny tonight when he dragged Big Red and I loved how forward he was with Ashlyn. It’s good that the trio of new characters finally feel like they’re part of a larger plot rather than being somewhat random additions to the cast.

Lily continues to act like she’s on Glee which is exactly the right energy for the role. The stick to the stuff you know line was great as was Seb’s bop to the top retort. North High clearly won the dance off though Gina being in a skirt limited her. Lily was doing it with bad intentions but she was absolutely right that the rose song was a dig at Ricky and didn’t fit the musical and that they’d be disqualified for performing it. Miss Jenn should have already known they’d be disqualified for adding it and Ricky should have already been able to tell that the song was about him. I think it’s more and more likely that Lily is the party crasher who Ricky re-evaluates in 2x12 and she could well be the unexpected face time call he gets in 2x10.  

It took 7 eps but we finally got an ep where Gina wasn’t upset over Ricky and thank god for that; the constant angst was sucking the life out of her plot. Of course, the reason she wasn’t going through it is because she was spending her time with EJ. I think this ep should put to rest any notion of Portwell just being platonic. Some people are still clinging to Matt’s interview where he refers to EJ and Gina as friends but he was clearly being misleading, even if nothing else happens it’s clear that Gina is not just a friend to EJ. I’ve seen people try and claim that Gina and EJ are like siblings with each other or that they’re practically related because Gina is roommates with EJ’s cousin as if there’s some sort of Westermarck effect by proxy but family members don’t pretend to be dating. 

The morning show was a lot of fun and the fake dating was cute. In contrast to the last time they fake dated back in 1x05 we can see how much happier and more comfortable they are with each other now. Notably they had EJ circle back to it well after it happened which led to Gina’s line about everything going back to normal which is a tell that everything has not gone back to normal for them. We can see EJ’s inherent goofiness shining through with the Risotto inside joke they now have. Much like Joshaya on GMW there are valid reasons to not go ahead with the ship, although Portwell doesn’t have the creepiness or borderline illegality of Joshaya, but the chemistry between the characters is real and can’t be ignored. 

Rini hurtles towards a breakup which could come as soon as next ep. Hard to tell if Ricky was in denial or just too stupid to understand the songs meaning. I'd prefer the former since a 17 year old would have to lack basic comprehension skills to not understand that the lyrics were a thinly veiled attack on him.

Nini trying to claim it was just a song at the end was disingenuous, she didn’t want Ricky to hear it for a reason. Her deciding to use her given name Nina for her music account is obviously meant to symbolize her independence from Ricky since he first gave her that nickname back in the first grade. However, it makes Ricky seem like some malign influence on her basically her entire life when it’s not like he forced her to go by Nini or prevented her from going back to Nina during the 10 odd years of their friendship/relationship together.

Miss Jenn and Zachie were fun but such a risk on his part to steal the mask, that’s trespassing and theft and a sure disqualification not to mention the very real risk of being criminally charged. The door is now closed on Jike and Jachie and the path for Jazarra is open.

Rouge Grand was funny but I hope this Redlyn angst isn’t dragged out too long. 

Mob song wasn’t good, the skrillex beat drop was not needed. Around You was good though. I just noticed that Tim abandoned, or was forced to by covid, his plan to have 3 songs per ep instead of 2 which is for the best I think. 

Looking Ahead:

Looks like next week will be a big one for Portwell and EJ in general. We get Gaston, career day with EJ’s dad, and then EJ hanging with Gina and helping her knit which is very domestic. I’d bet if you showed that clip of them knitting to someone who had never seen the show  they’d assume the character were dating. So it looks like Mr. Caswell has bought EJ’s way into Duke which is no longer EJ’s dream, if it ever was.

As I said last week, there’s a clear path forward for Portwell to get together in the season finale and next ep will probably take a big step towards making it happen. We have the chemistry, we’ve gotten moments between them, and we know EJ’s feelings, we just need Gina to recognize her budding feelings for EJ. I think Gina running into Jack at the airport in 2x09 will help her clear her head on what she wants and a part of that will be whether she still wants to try and be with Ricky or does she want to take a chance with EJ.

Obviously S3 will almost certainly leave Portwell in the dust in order to do Rina for a bit which will piss off a lot of fans but Tim’s screwed himself over here; there’s really no way that this series ends without a large chunk of the audience being bitterly disappointed over who’s endgame. Love triangles are a done to death trope but they typically involve some minor characters who can written off once the triangle is over, not main characters who have to be in every ep no matter what. 

More Redlyn angst next week as well as the wildcats being benched for a week due to trespassing at North High. 

A lot of people think that the show is having Nini get into songwriting because of Olivia’s success but the scripts would have been written before she released Driver’s License and shot to stardom. She’s also still contracted for two more seasons though she’d clearly leave before that if Disney would let her. 

The Rini treehouse scene could well be the breakup, gotta go my own way would fit well if that’s the case. This is another area where Tim needs to tread carefully. He can’t have Rini hate each other or avoid each other for the remaining 20 odd eps of the series but also can’t fully close the door on them since he’ll almost certainly have Rini be endgame as they graduate from East High at the end of S4. 

At this point it seems pretty unrealistic that East High would win the Menkies but this is a tv show so who knows. There’s one big song left that would work for some of the couples they, Something There, which could work for Portwell, Howell, or Rina so we’ll see if we get it.

2x07 marks the last of the clips we saw in the original S2 trailer so we’re largely flying blind now.

Until next week wildcats. 

#HSMTMTS #Portwell #Rini #Redlyn #Gina Porter #EJ Caswell #Nini Salazar-Roberts #Ricky Bowen #Big Red #Ashlyn Caswell #HSMTMTS Reviews

[stxrrywildflower]

for better or for worse (2)

pairing - spencer reid x reader

summary - when the people they love the most are kidnapped and ripped out of their hands, the bau does everything they can to get them back before it turns dire

warnings - mentions of case, angst, injury details

series masterlist

drugs were coursing through your veins. you could tell that from the minute your eyes slowly opened.

instead of being met with bright lights or some random room, you were met with total darkness. the cloth veil over your head prevented you from seeing anything. a second cloth was secured around your face, acting as a gag to prevent you from calling out.

your head lolled slightly, due to both the drugs and actually having some form of control over your movements.

the cloth was violently ripped off, now exposing the environment you were in.

your eyes met andrew’s, who was sitting across from you. through still hazy eyes, you looked back and forth, desperate to try and figure out your surroundings.

penelope was to your right and leslie to your left. next to her was kristy, then andrew, krystall, and finally will.

the seven of you made up an almost perfect circle, one person facing another. you were tied of the same way, arms restrained behind the chair while your legs were tied to the base of the chair.

everyone was still fairly loopy, though penelope was sober enough to have tears already flowing down her cheeks.

“welcome everyone!” a voice called.

the three men, the same ones who delt with the fabric over your faces, stood in a triangle around the edge of your circle. each had on a full face masks preventing you from seeing their identities.

“what the hell do you want with us,” andrew spat out after managing to get the gag out of his mouth. everyone was more than fine with him taking charge, he was the fbi agent after all.

“you,” the one with the blue mask started, twirling a knife in hand, “are going to tear your other halves into pieces emotionally and i’m sure physically.”

he went on for another few minutes, the others chipping in occasionally. the whole thing was strategically planned out, unless the team found you, you wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon.

you were the first one to receive any form of an injury.

your occasional snarky and sarcastic personality trait was coming in force. as the three men entered the room, only to taunt the group, you couldn’t help but call them out.

“imagine thinking your going to get something good out of kidnapping all of us,” you started. “you guys are a bunch of morons who’s heads are pretty much wanted on platters by the team and i’m-” you were cut off by a hard punch to your cheek.

a gasp espacped your lips, pain radiating in both your eye and nose. a thin steam of blood trickled down your face. between the drugs hitting you even harder with the final effects on your body and now this, you were extremely exhausted.

they left the room soon after that, no clues or hints on where they were going.

“you okay?” will’s thick accent took a second to process in your head.

“fine,” you grumbled, moving your head to the side to wipe the blood from your nose on your shirt. “the teams going to get us out of this,” kristy spoke, as if to reassure herself. “i know they will.”

back at quantico, the team all sat around the table, still looking down at the phones. “i really hate to say it, but there’s little we can do until the kidnappers make contact.”

“are you joking?” spencer exclaimed, “do you really expect us to just sit here and wait while everyone is probably being tortured by the bastards who took them?”

they hated to admit, he did have a point.

j.j. led luke out of the room, keeping one hand on his back to comfort the agent who was moments away from breaking down crying.

“spencer, a word?”

the genius grumbled to himself quietly, pushing his chair back before following emily out of the conference room and into her office. “i need you to calm down,” she spoke gently.

that was easily one of the worst things she could have said to spencer.

“no i’m not going to calm down prentiss,” spencer snapped. “i lost maeve to an unsub the same way. how dare you tell me to ‘calm down’ when y/n is missing and we have absolutely no idea where her or the others went.”

emily frowned slightly at the mention of the event from almost eight years ago. while the current unit chief wasn’t on the case, she had heard about it while in london and did everything she could from where she was to help out spencer.

“i want you to take a walk. we need your head clear and ready to work,” emily spoke gently. spencer opened his mouth, wanting to protest but shut it quickly. he wanted to do as emily said, for your sake at least.

spencer shook his head, leaving the office after grabbing his bag and heading towards the elevator. maybe some fresh air would do him some good.

“why not me,” luke mumbled, barely audible to the blonde agent.

j.j. had taken luke to morgan’s old office to help him calm down. her motherly instincts had kicked in, especially as she knew how emotional luke could get in situations like these, stress adding on as it involved penelope.

“why did they take penelope instead of me? i’m apart of this team too,” tears started to flow down luke’s cheeks. j.j. pressed her lips together, wanting to stay strong enough for both his and her sake. her mind creeped back to will, desperately hoping he was okay.

“i don’t know luke, i really don’t. but trust me when i say, we will find them,” she reassured, wrapping an arm around the fellow agent. “thanks j, do you mind giving me a minute alone?”

j.j. nodded, squeezing his shoulder one more time before standing up just as her phone rang.

“my mom is coming down to get the boys. matt, she can take a few of yours,” j.j. announced once she met up with matt and rossi. they needed the kids handled so full focus could be on solving the case.

“joy is also flying in, she was on her way even before this whole thing. she can watch keely and the others” rossi chipped in. emily joined the group just in time to hear rossi’s offer.

matt nodded, the three parents in mutual agreement. “i’m going to meet up with tara and get started on some work. i mean what else can we do.”

“how’s spencer?”

“frustrated,” emily answered. “i’m honestly suprised no one else is on his level.”

j.j. sighed. “emily i don’t know what we’re going to do,” she admitted. “agents aren’t supposed to work cases when they’re personally involved. and with this, i mean we all are. what are we even supposed to do?”

“we really need reinforcements.”

——

“have you heard?”

“yeah i’m about to head over now. you?”

“same. are we really bringing our badges out of retirement?”

“hey don’t say retirement. makes us sound old.”

“true.”

“and yes we’re heading back. they’re family, and they need our help.”

with that, the phone call ceased.

the bullpen seemingly stopped, all eyes going over to the glass doors. none other than aaron hotchner and derek morgan stepped in, bags by their side and visitors badge clipped to their pants.

their styles altered greatly. hotch was dressed down in jeans and a patagonia quarter buttoned pullover, work boots as his shoe of choice. morgan was the same, opting for a t-shirt and zip up instead.

agents nodded as a sign of respect at the two former agents, their legacy with the bau team was still looked up to.

the current bau team seemed empty.

no one jumped up to greet them. no one hugged. no one could even muster up a convincing enough smile.

they all just looked down, going back to their individual work. spencer and luke were at the genius’s desk, chairs pressed close together as they put together information. rossi, j.j., and tara were in the conference room, boards put up with pictures of the phones as well as screenshots from street cameras. that left matt and emily who were engaged in a deep conversation.

emily stopped when she noticed the two men lingering. “go help spencer and luke. let them know to meet up with the other three when they’re done,” she ordered.

“thank you for coming, i wish we could meet under different circumstances,” she spoke, expending her hand out for them to shake. “we can talk in my office.”

the two former agents followed the current unit chief up, not bothering to sit in the chairs, preferring to stand. “bet you didn’t expect to be back in here,” morgan nudged hotch.

“is the team holding up okay? everyone seemed a little numb,” derek commented.

“how’s the investigation going? what do you have nailed down so far?” hotch quickly added.

“nothing, we have absolutely nothing. just broken cell phones and the word ‘love.’ we don’t have a tech analyst so we can’t even figure out half of the stuff we need to. no one can even focus right because we’ve had the people we love taken away with no means of communication or no clues. i think it’s understandable that we’re a little numb. and i just don’t know what to do because i’m dealing with myself and keely and also having to be a leader of the team,” emily stopped herself, running her hand through her hair to calm down.

her rant was pretty all over the place, mirroring the emotions she was feeling.

“which is why we’re here,” hotch stated. “morgan and i have the most clear heads out of everyone. if you say the word, we can lead this investigation and track down the unsubs. it would be the easiest way to make sure we get everyone back.”

emily nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “okay. just please help us find them,” she pleaded. “we will, i promise.”

it was almost five hours before the mixed team found anything. a postal service worker stepped into the bullpen, holding a box and ipad in the other. anderson talked to him for a moment, motioning for emily to come down.

“i have a package for emily prentiss. you just need to sign here,” he repeated. emily was still hesitant, but leaned forward to write her signature.

emily held the box out in front of her, careful to keep her movements still as one wrong movement could set it off if it was in fact dangerous. she brought it up to the conference room, placing it on the table.

“it’s not an explosive,” derek determined after his examination. silence fell over the room.

tara was the one who leaned forward to open the box. her hands were shaky, directly due to her nervousness. no one knew what was inside, other than that it wasn’t a bomb.

all eyes were on the box, listing as the tape was cut open, them the cardboard flaps lifted.

bloody jewelry was inside; three wedding rings, two necklaces, a bracelet, and finally a helix earring.

spencer took a sharp breath. each piece of jewelry belonged to an individual taken. yours was the earring, an anniversary gift from him. the usual gold piece was now stained red.

the hope the team had for you all being alive cracked just a little bit more.

☆ ☆ ☆

tags - @zozoleesi @emxlyprentxss @spencerreidfanatic00 @mrs-dr-reid @irjuejjsaa @ogmilkis @sageellesworth05 @mortallythoughtfulgurl @brainyreid @ah-blossom @kissessforharryyy @ssareidbby @spencersglasses @spenciepoo338 @mggstyles @emilouu @loki-an-idiot @reidsmyhusband-emilysmymistress @pianofirepirate @ssa-morgan @afuckingshituniverse @spencerslatte @reminiscing-writer

#criminal #criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #emily prentiss #jennifer jareau #david rossi #penelope garcia #luke alvez #matt simmons #tara lewis