#also not shown but totally happening in the background:

[artist-issues]

I Saw Wish

And it was the worst animated Disney movie I’ve ever seen. I have to watch it again before I can get into the nitty gritty details. But I don’t need details to sum it up, because my dad actually said it perfectly as we left the theater:

“It was like someone who didn’t really understand Disney movies tried to make a Disney movie.”

Both the form (the technical arts of filmmaking) and the content (the morals, values, and themes of the movie) were totally horrible.

I don’t know who’s fault it was. Jeremy Spears was in the storyboard room and Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg did some 2D animation. But they must have gotten outvoted, or they must not care anymore.

Because holy cow. Here’s some stuff that’s just off the top of my head.

SPOILERS. Not that it matters, because nothing interesting happens in this movie.

The writing? Terrible. Ninety percent of it feels like the characters are filling time with quirky one-liners that are trying too hard to be appealing, then failing, then taking you out of the movie. The jokes aren’t funny. The characters just respond to each other in conversation to check a one-liner box. The other twenty percent is whole conversations repeating tell-don’t-show exposition that has already been covered, usually twice, in previous scenes. Like if in Tangled, every scene had included some variation of Rapunzel saying to friends and enemies alike, “I have to see the floating lights so I’m sneaking to the castle with this thief who wants a mysterious tiara I hid from him. Don’t tell my mother, she’s a bit overprotective!” Over. And over. And over.

The character motivations are way too broad. Asha? Her dream is just “that everybody around me gets to be happy.” That’s it, in a nutshell. No deeper exploration of that. Nobody asks, “why do you care so much?” Nobody tries to convince her she should look out for herself, and then she proves she was right all along. The King? We are told (not shown) that he doesn’t want anyone else’s dreams to be “destroyed.” But he in no believable way expresses that that motivation is still what’s driving him during the movie—what’s driving him is just a plain old lust for power, no nuance.

By the way, the whole premise of the movie? Undercooked. Half-baked concepts strung together with no definitive meaning. Therefore, it’s not believable. Example: The characters act like the wishes are beautiful—well, actually, no, this movie doesn’t know how to show, so there’s not a lot of meaningful acting—the characters just tell us that wishes are “the most beautiful part of someone,” and that’s why it’s worth going through this adventure to give their wishes back to them. But there’s no proof of that in the movie. In fact, it directly kicks it’s own legs out from under that idea, because it has every character who gives up their wish forget that part of themselves. Asha’s grandfather has forgotten his wish, but that doesn’t make him any less “beautiful.” She, and everyone, still treats him like he’s this wonderful old man who deserves the world, who everyone loves…but why is he so appealing? If he “gave up the most beautiful part of him?” The only character who is changed by their lack-of-wish is the Sleepy-analogue character…who is just sleepy, which is described as “boring.” But nobody else who’s given up their wish in the whole kingdom acts like that. It’s just him. Also, the King acts like it’s so important to protect the wishes from destruction. But what does destroying a wish look like? That actually happens to Asha’s mom. Her wish-bubble is broken, literally, and she just says she feels grief. But like. Why? She never remembered it in the first place; it had been missing from her life for years. Also, what the heck is a wish?! It seems to range from broad concepts like “inspire people” to “fly.” Just “fly,” like a bird. The desire to levitate off the ground is the most important, beautiful essence of one background character. Like, what?! But no character ever has the why behind their wish to make us care.

I could go on and on about that point. Like, think about Disney movies that wrote the book on how to make movies about characters with wishes. If Ariel were in Wish, her bubble would look like “dancing and learning and exploring on the Surface with someone who understands her.” But we believe that that is her real, genuine wish, and that it matters to her, because we are shown why being understood is so important to her. Because it’s missing from her life. There’s a scene where she explores a boat alone, and even her best friend doesn’t get excited about it with her. Her dad won’t listen to her point of view. Her siblings don’t ask her about her life even when they think she’s in love. She wants what she wants because of pieces of her life that we are shown.

We are never shown why Asha’s grandfather is obsessed with inspiring people, so we have no reason to believe it, or care whether he gets it or not. We can’t feel disappointed when his wish is said to “never come true,” like we did when Quasimodo was abused by the people he wished to join. We can’t feel elated when he finally “gets” his wish, like we did when Simba smiles on Pride Rock remembering the same way he used to as a cub and claims the crown with a roar. We don’t have anything to hang on to, nothing to relate to, nothing to grasp and feel with the characters. So we don’t feel, because they didn’t put the work in to help us feel. They just say, “the mom’s feeling grief. Feel grief.” And expect us to do the work ourselves. I have to stop harping on this point and move on.

But The main point of the movie is very broad because of that lazy premise, and it’s barely reinforced by any kind of appealing storytelling. If I had to guess, the point would be “Keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” But the story they told to communicate that meaning was so unimpactful. Asha doesn’t have a dream of her own that’s such hard work to accomplish! (Neither does her grandfather; his wish is “to inspire people.” And at the end, we’re supposed to see him strumming a guitar and believe it’s inspiring? We were never shown how he worked hard to learn how to play the instrument. Or that he carved it with his own hands, or anything like that. So there’s no meaningful demonstration of working hard for it or achieving your wish even if it’s far out of reach.) And nobody except the king is trying to take wishes away from anyone, and he just does it literally, after they voluntarily give them to him, so there’s not even any impactful demonstration of “don’t let anyone tell you your wishes are dumb or unachievable, or stop you from reaching them.” Even when he takes them away, it’s just because they…could, someday, be used to threaten his kingdom in a vague, really unlikely way. There are so many things you could do with “keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” For instance; you could say the main character has always been afraid to dream (wish for more), because maybe when she was a kid something wonderful almost happened but ended in tragedy, so she keeps her head down and doesn’t want much because if you don’t dream you’ll never be disappointed. She takes no risks, and has to learn that sometimes trying and failing is worth more than slogging through life all self-protective. I mean, the pieces were right there. She has this line about her dad, and how she wished he would get better but then he died. She has lines about how nobody should have to live with grief?? Then that’s never addressed again! It’s just a throwaway emotion-moment with no buildup or follow-through to tie it to and support that main theme.

The compositions of too many shots were so terrible. Characters got cut off in weird places. One shot has Asha dead center, with her grandfather on the left side of the table and her mother on the right, having a family dinner with a super exposition-heavy conversation that is meant to be emotionally charged. But despite everything else being perfectly centered, half of her mother’s body is chopped off. The movie’s shot like someone’s mom who doesn’t understand technology tried to take a video with her phone.

The charm of the art “style” wears off basically immediately. I know what they were going for. I see the sketch lines and watercolor textures. This is maybe the first time Disney ever failed to accomplish a visual “look” that turned out good. Everything looks dull. Muted. De-saturated. Slightly out of focus, but not in a cool Spider-Verse way. The sets or backgrounds are lazy; at no point does the scenery look complete; big, empty, boring spaces that do not create any kind of “stage” for impactful moments. The rendering looks unfinished. When Asha’s hair moves during her belting of the “I Make This Wish” song, it’s bad. It’s unnatural. It flops in a way that doesn’t make sense for the weight of her hair. The most impactful visual moments come from the villain, and they’re moments when he looks way too unhinged for the kind of line he’s saying.

There is no interesting character development. Asha goes from believing everyone is basically good and their wishes deserve the chance to come true , to….that, again. That would be fine, she could be a static character, if she proved contrast-characters wrong, in a believable way. But she never does. Because no other characters argue with her except the King. And it goes no deeper than “everyone’s wishes are basically good and they deserve the chance to make them true” vs. “nuh-uh, because I get to decide what makes them deserving.” The King doesn’t have any kind of interesting development, either. They don’t expand on his tragic backstory—it consists of one drawing of him near a broken boat, and a few images of the corner burned off of his family taoestry. They never say “King Magnifico wished for _____ and it was taken away!” They literally never tell you what his wish or dreams were, or what motivated him to create the whole kingdom that the movie’s premise sits on. So there’s no convincing sense of progression, how he got this way, why he’ll keep going “so far.”

The pacing is weird. It undercuts every moment that could have any kind of emotion behind it. One minute Valentino is suavely bouncing around, then he’s given a two-second beat to blubber with badly-animated tears that he’ll miss Star—then he instantly gets to have another funny one-liner so we forget he might’ve been sad a second ago. We’re clearly supposed to believe that the King and his wife are devoted to each other, and his turning evil was such a big betrayal, but there’s no time and no impactful evidence for us to believe either of those things. And even if we did, the moment he’s defeated and trapped in a mirror, and begs to be let free, the Queen kind of shrugs it off, makes a forgettable one-liner, and tells them to throw him in the dungeon. And he doesn’t look remorseful. And we don’t even get to assume he’s embarrassed or emotionally devastated that he’s come to this—because the last thing he says is “nooo, the dungeon is so smellyyy!” Like this is a half-baked LEGO short that can’t get emotionally deeper than what an actual 3 year-old’s parents might be okay with.

And that’s the worst offense: The movie is not genuine. It works hard for nothing, and it has no vulnerability. It just uses old Disney standbys to pretend to be vulnerable. Have the music swell and the characters gasp and the songs drip emotion when characters are meant to be saying or doing something emotional.

But truthfully, think of all the Disney movies you’ve ever seen with the hardest emotional moments. The sheer joy of Genie when he realizes he’s free. The anguish when Elsa thinks Anna’s been frozen forever, or when Anna thinks she’s dead. The trauma when Simba loses Mufasa. The longing and dreaming of Ariel when she reaches up out of her grotto. The sense of foreboding when Mother Gothel says “fine, now I’m the bad guy” or the heartbreak in Rapunzel’s eyes when she thinks Flynn has abandoned her, or the shame on Aladdin’s face when Jafar reveals he’s a street-rat, or the horror of cruelty when the stepsisters rip up Cinderella’s dress, or Kala’s tears when Tarzan leaves her in the treehouse, or Sarabi’s tears when Simba comes back, or Mulan’s father tossing aside the sword and token of the Emperor to embrace Mulan, or heck, even just Lilo pushing Stitch in the woods and telling him “get out of here.” This movie has no moments like that. It has moments you can tell that the filmmakers wanted to hit like that—but they don’t.

Because no work is put into building them up. You know how much Simba loves Mufasa, because you’ve been watching their chemistry more than any other character all the way up till he dies. You know how much Mulan wants to please her family because she spends all of Act I desperately attempting to do that. You know Quasimodo believes the world below is beautiful and wants them to accept him because he has interesting things like—talking to gargoyles, convincing us that he’s lonely; building a scale model of the townspeople, convincing us that he sees them in a beautiful way and wishes he were beautiful in more ways than one like them, too.

Right down to the facial expressions, none of them are as anguished, happy, sad, excited, silly, in any convincing way like all of Disney’s other movies. Asha’s “low moment” when she’s afraid her “wish” hurt everyone else (still vague on what that wish ever was) lasts two seconds, she’s not crying, she’s barely sitting with slumped shoulders, and her family barely spend two seconds comforting her. They basically just say, “aw, no, it’s not y fault, it’s the king’s.” And she’s like, “yeah okay” and that’s that. It’s like the animators we’re afraid to animate really intimate emotions on the characters’ faces. The voice actors, too.

And the whole movie is peppered with Easter eggs to past Disney movies. But all that does, if you really know Disney beyond the visuals, is make you think of how hollow this movie is in comparison. How much you wish you were watching Cinderella or The Little Mermaid or something with depth and vulnerability instead of Wish.

#I’ll talk more in an organized fashion later #wish #disney’s wish #wish Disney #wish 2023 #critique #spoilers

[pinkacademiaprincess]

“she’s like a real life elle woods…”

fictional study icons guide, part 2: elle woods

relentlessly chase your goals

similar to rory, elle set her sights on harvard law and let nothing get in her way. people doubted her, she had no background in law, and nevertheless she made it happen. having a goal and wanting something is one thing, but you have to make it happen. elle spoke with an academic counselor, created a plan for herself, and meticulously checked off all the requirements. you can’t just sit around and hope you get what you want! determine the end goal, outline all the steps that you need to take to get there, and get to it.

have faith in yourself

throughout the process of getting into and attending harvard law, elle dealt with so many people who doubted her, were mean, and underestimated her. if she listened to all those people, she never would have applied or stayed in law school. no one knows you like you know yourself, so do not let strangers’ negative opinions of you rule your life. people assumed elle was unintelligent and not fit for law school, but she knew that she could succeed and she did. no one decides what you can or can’t do but you. tune out any criticism that isn’t constructive, focus on your strengths, and seek your goals.

let your personality shine

elle always had a strong sense of self. even when she started going to law school, in a totally new environment from her previous college, she stayed true to her personality. she continued dressing in pink outfits, getting her hair & nails done, and got school supplies to match her girly aesthetic. when you go to class, let your personality show through your outfits, accessories, school supplies - find little ways to bring yourself happiness through self- expression. especially when school and classes might seem to rule your life, these small personal touches will help keep you positive.

study with others

elle used the tactic of studying with others to help stay focused & accountable. when she was studying for the lsat, she had one of her sorority sisters keep her on track & practice with her. for some, it can be helpful to “body double,” or to have someone else with you while you study/ work to keep you on task. it might also help to have a study buddy to quiz you and work through problems together. at harvard she also tries to join a study group, which shows she generally thrives when studying/ working in a group setting. if this is something that works for you, find a classmate or group of classmates willing to meet up & body double or study together!

stay active

nowadays, a lot of schooling requires you to either sit at a laptop or hunch over notes for countless hours of your day. being seated for so long with questionable posture is not good for you, humans are meant to be active! elle is shown walking on a treadmill while she studies, and combining physical activity with schoolwork can be really effective for some. engaging your body while engaging your mind might help you focus better. otherwise, try to get some daily movement to give your body a break from being stiff & seated. find physical activity that you enjoy - going for walks outdoors, taking a sports class, hitting the gym, doing a youtube workout video, playing music & dancing like a maniac - move your body and have fun with it! in the words of elle, “exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make you happy.”

pet therapy!

elle woods is always accompanied by her beloved chihuahua bruiser. spending time with animals is a great way to boost your mood & relieve stress. if you have a pet, spending time with them, petting them, having them in your lap or nearby are all ways you can take advantage of their presence to feel happier & more relaxed.

that’s all! elle is such an inspiration to me tbh. she really embodies that being true to yourself & being kind to others are the keys to success. good luck in your studies! 🩷

#pink academia princess #it girl #becoming that girl #that girl #wonyoungism #pink academia #pink blog #girl blogger #studyblr #studyspo #study motivation #glow up #motivation #self care #self improvement #dream girl #academia barbie #girlblogging #pink pilates girl #clean girl #self love #pink pilates princess #pink aesthetic #study blog #study aesthetic #university #student life

[popironrye]

Max's reveal at the end of The Lost Boys is another one of those scenes I've been overthinking about. Particularly the few seconds post revelation that the boys were all dead.

When Max and Lucy return home he takes little time to head to where David died. An obvious choice given the fates of the other boys what with Paul being soup, Dwayne blown to pieces, and Marko's body being way back in the cave.

In the background Sam, the Frog brothers, and Lucy are pretty loudly arguing and talking over each other in the other room but this scene is eerily quiet. The scene plays out is a realistic view of mourning. Max's actions here are rather tender and you can tell by the look on his face that seeing David like this does have an affect on him.

There's a blatant pause. I like to think that was Max grieving, coming to terms with what's happened. His boys are gone, probably reliving a lot of memories. It's never revealed, but I choose to believe Max turned David first, and the following boys were slowly turned the same way Michael was, by drinking Max's or David's blood. And I headcanon he was turned a long time ago, meaning Max had a lot of years with the boys. He is shown as hostile in the beginning to them when they come in the video store, but I like to think that's just Max wanting to keep a reasonable distance to keep suspicious eyes from prying (and to keep things a twist for the audience) especially since he's playing the childless bachelor as that's what's has worked for them for so long so far (although come on Max, if you played up the single father to Lucy, you would have totally won. Just saying.)

But what about the rest of that scene? Max recovers pretty quickly from losing his boys. While some may argue it's because Max didn't really care for them, I choose to believe that's not the case at all. I think he's putting on a face to remain calm in front of the others, especially Lucy. Since he still wants to turn her into his vampire bride, even without his boys to mother. Perhaps he could just be thinking he can start his vampire boys over with others boys, but then there's THIS scene!

The scene where Star reveals to the audience that David was hiding Max's involvement from her and Michael. David wasn't just keeping Max a secret, Star declares that he was "the secret David was protecting." Key word being, 'protecting'. Max's identity as the head vampire is important and it's in his best interest for the vampire boys to be seen around him as little as possible. Especially since Sam figured it out early on in the movie he was one of them. And so, David and the boys choose to act on their own most of the time. Not only to give themselves the feeling of carefree freedom, but also to keep Max safe. And it's clearly a situation they all like, or at least tolerate, as while there is no hope in them turning back if Max were killed first, but David and the others had no intention of ratting him out and letting him die.

My favorite part of this scene. Max's smile. After Star says her line, Max nods in agreement, but the smile afterwards is interesting. I think he looks proud. Proud of David. Proud to have heard that David, even as he died, was protecting him. I choose to believe Max cared a lot for the boys and I also choose had he be given the chance later, would feel very lonely without them.

#the lost boys #the lost boys 1987 #max the lost boys #max tlb #discourse #discuss #film discourse #share your thoughts #character analysis #my gifs

[sarahowritesostucky]

📖"Temporary Custody"

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Steve x ofc x Bucky; Steve x Bucky

Word Count: 3399

Tags: Dom/sub, bdsm au, dom Bucky, sub reader, hurt/comfort, enemies to lovers, gay sex'n'stuff, straight sex'n'stuff, Steve being a literal Golden Retriever, mental health issues, dub-con, forced submission, bakery au, m/f/m, gentle domination, total power exchange

Summary: The stigma and shame of being a submissive has kept Mary unfulfilled and in the closet her whole life, until an inciting incident leads to Bucky and Steve taking her in and giving her everything she was always too afraid to ask for.

Trigger warnings: This story contains background/minor themes of eating disordered behavior, body image issues, self-harm, and alcohol abuse.

Series Masterpost for all chapters

2. Hazelnut Ganache Tart

Mary does sober up during her shift.

She feels kind of miserable, so she’s thankful that it’s a slow Monday. She’s also vaguely ashamed of how she’d shown up to work. It’s a new low, even for her. And then someone had seen her and called her out on it. It’s mortifying.

The encounter with Bucky preoccupies her thoughts all day, and she winds up burning a batch of croissants as she daydreams. She’s more careful after that, taking extra care with the assembly of her hazelnut ganache tarts.

Focusing on the intricate details of the pastries, on executing them perfectly, helps her to calm down and forget about the embarrassing encounter. For a little while at least. Alcohol would be better, and by the time she’s clocking out she’s already thinking about getting home so she can have the relief of a drink.

Or ten.

If anything, she throws back the first few even faster than usual, eager to wipe the memory of what’d happened that morning out of her mind.

Bucky, she thinks acerbically. What a stupid name.

And the nerve of him! To just assume those things about her. Has that loser never seen somebody hungover at work before? It's quite the presumptuous leap from that to … submissive.

‘Dominant’. Mary rolls her eyes. He could’ve just been making it up. Probably was. She’s certainly never met anybody who’s just come out and announced it the way he had. What a bizarre thing to do. It’s not like it’s something people go around broadcasting. It’s … well it’s a mental disorder, isn’t it?

They’d mentioned it in her Psych101 class back in college, but she’d dropped out before that semester was halfway through. Unable to help herself, she pulls out her phone and googles “Dominant,” then navigates to the Wikipedia page on “Dominant and Submissive Personality Disorder.” She winds up getting sucked into reading about it. But as soon as the article starts talking about the submissive subsection, she closes the browser in discomfort. 

She remembers back to the encounter with that guy—Bucky. He hadn’t seemed like there was anything wrong with him (other than being bossy and intrusive as fuck).  But where the heck did he get off throwing out psych diagnoses at total strangers? Mary's cheeks grow hot the more she thinks about his cocksure attitude and the pitying way he’d looked at her.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Doll.” 

She remembers how he’d spoken to her, how he’d called her out on her behavior and spoken so assuredly, like he could see right into her. Like he knew all her secrets. It’d been unnerving.

Her pulse quickens as she thinks about it. The way his big hand had felt, wrapped so securely around her wrist. And how he’d squeezed her wrist—slowly, gently.

“Oh, honey. I think you are.” 

Fuck, it’d made her knees go weak.

Sighing, she takes the bottle of vodka and her glass to the couch and plops down, using the remote to turn the tv onto YouTube. She starts up a playlist that she can lose herself in—music videos, stuff from all the tv shows she likes, edits, fail compilations, whatever. Maybe it’s pathetic that this is how she spends most nights, but there’s no one that she has to impress. And she can’t bear the feeling of being alone in her brain otherwise. At least this way everything is warm and entertaining. She pours herself a little more, throwing off the ratio of vodka to ginger ale, but the taste doesn't bother her nearly as much once she's on the third or fourth drink.

The bottle’s half empty, and she wonders if she’ll finish it. She’ll be drunk again at work tomorrow morning, if she does. Yikes. She’ll stop after two more. One more. Two more.

The bottle’s three-quarters empty and an Adam Lambert music video is blasting on the tv. He really is the most underappreciated vocalist of his generation! And he’s got such nice makeup, too …

Maybe she won’t even go to work tomorrow, Mary thinks manically. They don’t appreciate her there anyway. Maybe she’ll just stay here and drink the rest of this and enjoy herself until… until…

The bottle’s empty and the party’s in full swing. No worries though, she thinks, she’s got some of that nasty cheap rum in the back of the pantry. Blecgh. She orders DoorDash that she doesn’t really have the money to be wasting on, puts on makeup while lip syncing to the tv, and thinks about calling Chase to tell him what a loser he is and how glad she is that they broke up. Haven’t had to use this concealer to cover up anything but acne in over a year.

Rum isn’t so bad when you mix it with orange juice!

She gets on a depressing video kick. She bemoans the state of politics, then society, the world, her life. She goes through all the old pictures in her phone and gets pissed at the ones with Chase in them. She imagines running into her ex somewhere random, with a super hot new boyfriend on her arm. She imagines the dumbstruck expression he’d have on his face, and how she’d introduce her way-hotter new boyfriend to him. 

Ohmygosh, Chase! How’ve you been?! Oh me? I’m doing great. This is Bucky, he’s a surgeon-slash-green beret-slash-musician. Ha! Yeah well we just got back from two months in the Bahamas, so that’s why we’re so tan. 

It’s the rum, Mary decides. It makes her sad. She stops feeling fun and happy, and starts feeling lonely and morose. She finds the cardboard sleeve that Bucky had written that phone number on. Hell no, she’s not calling it. She’s got the internet. There’s tons of info online about this stuff that she can look up. Besides, it’s just curiosity. She’s not like him. She's not like that.

She googles BDSM disorder and clicks on the first search result, which winds up being porn. That’s a mistake, but then she decides to watch the porn anyway, because it’s sexy—plus, it's sort of educational, right?

The porn starts making her even more sad. She stares at the paper cup sleeve in her hand while some girl gets the tar beat out of her backside. The last video had been an over-the-lap spanking video—Mary had liked that one. But this doesn’t look nice at all. Especially when the guy switches to hitting her with a friggin’ stick. 

Is this the sort of stuff Bucky likes to do? Jeez.

She has the receipt that Bucky wrote his own number on, too. On impulse, she pulls out her phone and starts to enter a new contact. 

“Asshole Dom Bucky,” she mumbles as she types the words and saves the new contact number with a giggle. It takes more than one try, her fingers not hitting the right keys very often, but she gets it done. 

She comes very, very close to calling Bucky, but winds up calling the hotline phone number instead at the last minute. She’ll whine and cry to them instead, she thinks. At least they’re strangers. She can tell them anything. It’s confidential, anonymous. They can’t tell anyone what she says.

A woman picks up the phone and greets her in a calm, friendly voice.

“Hello, my name is Sharon. I’m a volunteer counselor at the National Submissive Crisis Intervention Hotline.”

“Whatever,” Mary slurs. She is so drunk. She gulps more of her rum and OJ, thinks about going and getting the little razor blade that she only thinks about picking up when she’s wasted. Sometimes it feels nice to do something outrageous when she’s this sad. Nobody can stop her from it, and that feels nice, too. “M’not having a crisis,” she mumbles.

“Okay,” Sharon says, voice still so pleasant and accommodating. “What’s your name?”

“Mary.”

“Okay Mary. I’m glad you called. Would you like to talk to me about what you’re going through? We can talk about anything you’d like.”

“I’m not a freak,” Mary blurts out. “You know? Submissive, or whatever. I’m not. M’normal.”

“Okay,” Sharon says calmly. “Well just so you know, I’m not here to judge. I’m on the spectrum myself.”

Mary blows air through her teeth disdainfully—though deep down, she guesses it’s nice to know that. "So what," she mutters. "You're like, a submissive?

“I’m actually dominant, but I’m not going to do anything to try and boss you around or control you. I’m just here to listen to and support you.” 

“Oh.” She looks down at her glass, feeling like she doesn’t even want to finish drinking it. She’s tired … And sad. “Kay,” she mumbles. “Well I’m not. Like that.”

“You don’t think you have a designation disorder."

Designation disorder, pfft. Mary scoffs again. “Yeah, no.”

“Then why did you call tonight? Do you need someone to talk to?”

She grumbles unintelligibly, then repeats herself when the woman on the phone prompts her. “Some guy just gave me this number. He said that I was.”

“He said that you were what, Honey?”

“… Submissive.” She says the word quietly, embarrassed of it. “But what does he know, right?” She huffs. “Fucking stranger. He doesn’t know me.”

“Okay. What are you going through tonight?” Sharon asks, still sounding kind but also mildly worried. “Do you want to talk about that? About what made you call the hotline?”

Mary sniffles, feeling stupid. She’s suddenly tearing up and she doesn’t even know why. She wipes her eyes hastily and takes another big sip of her drink. “I’m drinking,” she says tearfully, bluntly, expecting to be scolded for it. "M'drunk."

“Okay,” Sharon says. She doesn’t sound mad. “Okay Mary, are you by yourself right now?”

“Yeah. M’in my apartment.”

“Okay. Okay. … Do you drink alone there often?”

Oh. That hits hard for some reason, and suddenly Mary’s crying, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to hold back a sob.

“Mary? Are you there, Honey?”

Honey. Mary cries harder. That's what Bucky had called her. She likes hearing it, but also she feels desperately sad because it reminds her about how she’s all alone and doesn’t have someone to call her ‘Honey’ or ‘Doll’ or ‘good girl’. And nobody’s ever spanked her over their lap, either. 

“Mary?”

“Yeah,” she says, voice all choked up. “Yeah, m’here.”

“Okay. Good.” Mary can hear the sound of typing on the other end of the line. “How are you feeling Mary? Do you think we could make a plan together? Maybe drink some water and get you ready for bed? It’s late. You must be tired, huh?” 

Mary sniffles. “Um,”

“It’d make me so happy if we could make a plan, Mary. Would you do that for me?” 

“... Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s so great. Good girl.”

Mary’s face crumples. She’s not a good girl. She’s not good at all! 

Sharon hears her crying harder and asks worriedly what’s wrong. “Mary,” she says, voice sharper—stern-sounding. “Mary, you need to talk to me and tell me what’s happening.” 

“Sh-sharon?” Mary cries. “What I tell you is private, right? You won’t tell anyone or report me, will you?”

“... The goal is to keep you safe, Honey. I’m here to help you do that,” Sharon says. “You can tell me anything you want to. I’m here to listen, remember?”

She sounds so kind and caring, so steady, and it makes Mary want to tell her everything. It’s been so hard, not having anyone to talk to. And anyway she’s already crying at this point, and it feels good in that way that crying sometimes does, so she might as well. It’s confidential.

She takes a deep breath, takes another big gulp from her glass, and starts spilling her guts to this stranger named Sharon over the phone.

Bucky’s phone rings early in the morning. He groans as he wakes up, grumpily reaching for it. He peeks at the red numbers of the alarm clock over on Steve’s side of the bed: 4:30 AM. 

If this is a robocall this early in the morning, he’s going to be tempted to commit capital murder. “Hello?” he rasps.

“Hello. Is this, um … ‘Bucky’?”

It’s a man’s voice. Bucky squints blearily up at the bedroom’s popcorn ceiling. “Yeah? Who is this?”

“Sir, my name is Officer Santiago with the New York Police Department. I’m calling from Holy Cross Hospital.”

“Hospital?” Bucky says, more alert at hearing that. “You’re a cop?” Why is a cop calling him? Bucky can’t think of a good reason.

“Yes Sir.”

He sits up in the bed. Beside him, Steve starts waking up, too. “Mmph, who is it?” he asks sleepily.

“What’s happened?” Bucky asks, dread already curling in his gut, imagining who could be hurt or dead at the hospital that they’re calling him at this hour …

“We have a woman here,” the officer says. “She called a crisis hotline. The operator was worried about her safety, she contacted us.”

“Those hotlines are supposed to be confidential,” Bucky growls.

“She was making threats of self harm. We had to pick her up. We’ve got her down here at the E.R. at Holy Cross. Involuntary hold.”

“Wait a minute ... What was the hotline she called?” Bucky asks, as the thought occurs to him and he hopes he’s wrong. “It wasn’t a D/s hotline, was it?” 

Beside him in the bed, Steve is grimacing and rubbing his eyes. “Babe?”

“Some submissive crisis line, yeah,” the officer says. 

Bucky’s heart sinks. The woman from the coffee shop yesterday. “Mary,” he murmurs, remembering how neat and cute her handwriting was on her nametag and on the side of his to-go cup. “Shit,” he says.

“She’s stable. She has minor self-inflicted injuries but nothing life threatening. We found your number in her phone.” Here is where the officer starts to sound uneasy. “You’re listed here as her, um … her Dom.”

“I … am?” Bucky’s eyebrows climb his forehead. He hadn’t thought the girl would keep his cell number, let alone save him as a contact. He’d thought he’d pissed her off, that she was too proud, too mortified.

“Babe, who is it?” Steve asks, awake now and frowning at Bucky in concern. He can tell something’s wrong. Bucky shushes him with a gesture and Steve’s face flashes with annoyance. Bucky gives him an apologetic wince.

“Specifically, you’re listed under ‘Asshole Dom Bucky’.” The officer clears his throat uncomfortably. “She wouldn’t give us a number to call, and department policy is to contact designation partners, if possible.”

Bucky opens his mouth to tell the officer that he’s not Mary’s partner, that he doesn’t even really know her. But he stops himself, thinking about what happens to subs who get dragged into the E.R. and go unclaimed. “I … yeah,” he hedges. “Yeah, that’s me.” After an awkward pause and feeling guilty for the lie, he checks, “You said she’s okay?”

“Yes. She’s pretty upset, and intoxicated. But the doctor checked her out and said she’s okay. Well … physically-speaking,” he adds awkwardly. “They’re ready to admit her.”

“Psych unit?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky sighs. “No. That’s not good. It’d be better if I came and got her.”

“Okay.” The officer sounds relieved. “She uh, she’s pretty upset.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that,” Bucky says. “What does that mean? Is she frantic?”

“She’s angry,” the officer says, and it sounds like he’s trying to keep his voice low now. Bucky wonders if Mary is somewhere in the near vicinity of the officer. “Drunk and super pissed. Belligerent.”

“Is she restrained right now?” Bucky asks, worried.

“Yeah. Cuffed to the bed.”

Bucky grits his teeth. “She shouldn’t be restrained by a stranger. It’s not healthy for her. Can't you just watch her?”

“Sorry Sir, that’s our policy when we bring in the involuntary cases. We have to do it.”

Bucky is already up and heading to the closet to grab clothes. “Okay,” he says curtly. “I’m coming to get her. I’ll be there within the hour.”

The officer thanks him and Bucky hangs up. He looks back at Steve, who is propped up on his side and staring at him in something close to shock. 

“Buck, what the hell?”

Bucky winces and goes back to the bed. He climbs up and takes Steve’s hand. Steve isn’t on the spectrum, but his dynamic with Bucky has always been more on the subservient side. Bucky sees that he’s not mad, is just waiting for an explanation, so he takes a breath and tells him, “You remember the woman I told you about? The one at the coffee shop?”

Steve nods. “The lemon tarts.”

“Yeah, her. She’s in the hospital. A psych hold, that was the NYPD on the phone. Somehow they think I’m her Dom, and she’s being difficult. Won’t give ‘em a name of anybody they can release her to.”

“Oh, man.” Steve is well-educated on the intricacies of Designated people: He’s married to one, after all.

“Baby.” Bucky rubs the back of Steve’s hand. “I have to go get her.”

“You don’t ‘have’ to,” Steve corrects. He looks at Bucky knowingly. “But you want to, don’t you?”

Bucky doesn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or not. “I … yeah. I want to.” He and Steve have talked about the possibility of bringing another person into their marriage one day, a submissive to meet Bucky’s needs. Steve has always been open to the idea, especially since they’re both bisexual.

“We gonna try and make that work out?” 

Bucky scoffs. “That’s way down the road.”

“But it would be good for you too, wouldn’t it?” 

He shrugs, and then admits, “Yeah, probably.” Bucky’s what’s known as a ‘high needs’ dominant. The condition affects him more severely than it does others. He tries to figure out if Steve is at all upset by what they’re discussing. “It’s crazy, I know,” he says. “Not exactly what we always talked about. We don’t even know her.”

“But she’s in trouble,” Steve says. “And you were drawn to her.”

Bucky sighs. “Yeah. I don’t think she has anyone else to go to. And they’re talking about admitting her to the psych unit.”

“That’s not good, is it?”

“No. They won’t have the knowledge to help her. Places like that tend to use meds first and ask questions second.” He sees Steve’s wince and nods. “It could definitely make things worse.”

“What’s wrong with her? Subdrop?”

“I don’t know. Cop said she was self-harming and drinking. That’s all I know so far.”

Steve nods. “Can I go with you?” he looks hopeful and ready to jump into action, and Bucky is surprised—even though he knows he shouldn’t be.

“Babe, you want to do this? Bring her home? Take care of her?”

Steve nods, stalwart. “We should try. It’s the best option she has. If it works out, great. And if not … well we can get her the help she needs, at least.”

Bucky nods. Steve is on-board. He doesn’t think this is stupid, or crazy. Bucky’s chest swells with affection for him. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Steve leans over and kisses him on the mouth. “I trust you,” he says. “And I love you.”

Bucky smiles, stupidly in-love with his husband. “Love you too, Stevie.”

They kiss once more, and then Steve is pulling back and clapping his hands together. “Alright! Let’s get going if we’re really doing this.” He hefts himself out of the bed, moving with purpose. “She’s waiting for us.”

Us, Bucky thinks happily, realizing that it’s true: They’re husbands—soulmates, in his opinion. They’re partners, an inseparable unit ever since the day they got married, and they do everything together. So it’ll be the two of them taking care of this woman together. They’ll be a team, each giving her what she needs in their own ways. And maybe it’ll go somewhere, who knows? Thinking about it makes Bucky feel settled and satisfied inside, the barest ghost of the sort of feeling he gets from domming someone.

Impulsive as it is, he’s got a hunch that this is the right decision.

Series Masterlist

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#dom/sub #bucky barnes #mcu #marvel #stucky #steve rogers #steve rogers x bucky barnes #fanfiction #fanfic #dom bucky barnes #dom/sub au #d/s au #trigger warning ed #bucky x ofc #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x female reader #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x oc #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x oc #bucky x ofc x steve #m/f/m #steve rogers x ofc #bucky barnes x ofc #enemies to lovers #bakery au

[probablyhuntersmom]

It's me again. The therapist/illustrator who can't stop squeaking and screaming about her beloved son Hunter.

I've been thinking nonstop about him finding the terrible grimwalker graveyard, imagining what would be going through my mind if I were him. Sifting through whatever moments, dialogue and frames that I can find from the existing material, along with references outside of the show, to formulate what an offscreen scene would've been like.. (And seeing if I can find editable and salvageable enough backgrounds so I could perhaps even depict this scene one day)

A soul like him who not only wants to help others, but also acquire knowledge:

heading back here to see the graveyard:

You can't tell me that this wouldn't still be on his mind, and he's even anxious while saying this below, scratching his face a little:

Whether he follows up on this or not, also depends on how he looks back on being shown this:

And is he just going to go cold turkey and totally drop these leads he was pursuing in the episodes before the finale? :

Three things prompted me to finally write this post:

@polyhexian's and @ashanimus's analyses of Hunter's fight scenes in Hunting Palismen and Eclipse Lake (links here and here, they're really cool to read!!), based on their years of experience with martial arts. Reading those was a revelation to me because learning about how high Hunter's skill level is, how in touch with his body he is by default, portrayed so well thanks to the crew...that allows me to make far more educated guesses about his mental health in the early stages of the pre-epilogue gap of about 4 years. Because he is so used to high activity and being on high alert, no thanks to having C-PTSD.

Observing how light and free Hunter's expressions are, and how transformed his demeanor became, in the epilogue sequence. That transformation is an indication to me of the magnitude of grief which had to be transformed within him. To be put back together, in order to be so radiant, generous and self-actualized in the epilogue...imagine how much had to be deconstructed and further broken beforehand. He wouldn't have room to fill his life up with all that amazing newness if the old isn't emptied out first.

This psychoeducational video by my fave author, also a practicing therapist, who specializes in traumatic grief: link. Hearing her address the topic of entering the second year after a bereavement vs. the first year, was interesting. Definitely confirms to me that Hunter wouldn't have carved Waffles until past the 2nd year of navigating his bereavement.

In the years that pass before the epilogue, Hunter will not be able to understand why the efforts he puts into all the rebuilding work, coordinating and leading others, and trying to have fun - only cycle back to him experiencing a mix of a restlessness and emptiness in the deepest layer of his mind. It'll exhaust his energy bit by bit. I bet he's going to generally look as tired as depressed Luz does below, even if he's had an acceptable hours of sleep per night:

That restlessness will be an awful psychological itch that he'll be unable to scratch, caused by losing Flapjack and now also Belos. This is the same as what happened with his anger in For the Future, except Belos was still alive back then. It will be harder to understand and messier to navigate the bereavement this time round. It'll be something gnawing into his soul which I really think only professional help can heal, especially since the show promotes that it's okay to not be okay, and more than okay to seek professional help (Steve and Lilith's conversation in Edge of the World).

He will be trying to claw his way out of that C-PTSD pit, but he'll be aware deep down that he simply cannot reach any emotional high points for long, and something will be blocking his feelings of connection with his loved ones. He won't feel nearly as free and easy the way he used to be in the human realm:

Having a routine like he used to in the Castle, and moving around a lot, was what helped him survive. However, he won't have the awareness that the shift resulting from Belos passing away has been at such a fundamental level: to the point that those old, supposedly tried-and-true methods no longer serve him in any positive way. At least, not until his mental health will be back in better shape.

As he puts in more and more effort to escape that restless emptiness, getting annoyed at himself because he doesn't know what's going on...he'll use up the rest of his strength and eventually crash. That itch won't be solved by going back to overworking tendencies, and like how it is with addiction cycles, he would need some kind of fix for the deep restlessness within. The answer? Productivity to feel useful, which we have seen even in his efforts to fix damaged clothing and well, making stuff in general.

Where the grimwalker graveyard comes in is...once he hears news about its existence, he will stubbornly insist to want to help in investigating it, saying he has already read a bunch of books about them, and can be useful, etc. Worse, if his offer to help to investigate is refused, he will do what he did in Eclipse Lake. Go to the location anyway, to fill that deep void within.

Old habits die hard.

I don't know if he may hear from King (who he'll be seeing fairly often, I think!), The Collector or even Kikimora about it. Since they were the three characters who went all the way down there in King's Tide, and The Collector already knew about these horrors for literal centuries. King and The Collector are also still young kids! Will they have the sensitivity and awareness about breaking this news to Hunter?!

On the other hand, I don't know how the timing will be with Darius, Raine and Eberwolf..Darius will want to get serious about investigating his mentor's disappearance. Once the searching and scouring extends to the location of the Head of the Titan, they will find the evidence staring them in the face. If they want to scour every inch of the Isles, there's also a high chance they'll find the godforsaken grimwalker lab.

Worst of all, Darius would be aware by then of how much Hunter loves to help out in operations like this to be productive. At the same time, Darius's own grief will surface even more, I'm not sure he'll be able to hide that, and Hunter is highly observant. If Darius is trying to hide his own priority of finding closure re: his mentor, I think Hunter will sense that.

Therefore I wonder if this will happen except it's Hunter with Darius:

and then this poor beloved skrunkly son of mine, who so famously said these words at the beginning of his arc:

is probably going to get reckless, and endanger his mental health...not unlike moments like this:

by venturing to the graveyard, whether stealthily or accompanying the grownups, because he'll rationalize it as "getting closure" and once again "being useful". Remember how used he is to moving around so much and being active, combined with growing up isolated so that asking for help can still be a foreign concept to him. He would be anxious about grinding to a halt, and he'd want to be on the move instead.

He may demand to see the graveyard, and holy Titan I'm not sure any dilemma will be as tricky for Camila and Darius to navigate as this one. Because preventing him from seeing something he already knows exists is, in a very twisted way, also an unhelpful form of avoidance. Avoidance is a hallmark criterion for diagnosing both PTSD and C-PTSD.

How far do they go in protecting him from himself? Where do they draw that line? They might reach a compromise where Camila and Darius accompany him there. Once he sees it, it'll hit harder than this:

Letting him see it means his new parents would have to fall with him, in the sense that they follow him to that emotional place: but while he figuratively does not have a safety harness when falling into this deep dark hole, Camila and Darius are equipped with harnesses a.k.a. higher maturity, less of a trauma history, and some tools to help him get better, navigate the trauma, and manage his symptoms.

Camila will have the warmth and sensitivity to catch and meet him as he falls (she interacts with animals in her profession, who don't have the capacity for human language, in a similar way to how serious trauma can't even be put into words at times: it makes you voiceless). Darius's shared past living in the Castle and grieving over his mentor will help Hunter not feel as alone once he has seen these horrors.

And because his heart generally became more open to receiving love and support,

I doubt he'll close himself off almost completely, the way he did in the first two-thirds of For the Future (god, remember these deleted storyboards??):

It wouldn't surprise me if he weeps and panics as soon as he sees the graveyard, and his parents give him maximum support through that breakdown. As complicated as it would be for Camila and Darius to give in to his desire to see the graveyard, a response like this from him - a child seeking attachment with proper timing - is a good sign of growing into healthy attachment with parental figures.

It is an arguably better response than one of the hardest aspects of C-PTSD: where the outpouring of grief only happens after a delay, sometimes a significant delay, at very inconvenient or strange times. Hell...if I were Hunter, I'd probably want Camila and Darius to just hold me close in wordless silence for half an hour until my initial distress and shock passes.

If I use King - a child who is securely attached to Eda, who's definitely had a more stable upbringing - as a control experiment here, he could have the appropriate response immediately in Echoes of the Past and expressed his emotional needs clearly enough:

Whereas this is what Hunter has to now learn, at twice King's age, as he settles in with new parents who take care of him instead of mistreating him the way Belos did. Hell, I can't imagine what kind of Belos punishment awaited him if he cried to demand attachment.

(I need to use more King scenes as a comparison to Hunter's upbringing in my next metas! I realize this can make my explanations clearer)

Anyway, what may happen next after he can't unsee the graveyard is...Hunter will then swing to the other extreme of high activity. I.e. being passive, physically inactive and psychologically crashing into depression, which may translate into habits such as oversleeping (catching up on all that lost sleep...but at what cost?). Supposedly sliding deeper into the C-PTSD pit. A place from which he has to express the desire to seek the forms of help he needs.

Remember that this kid has only known extremes for most of his life. Until he settles in properly with his found family and attends therapy, he has no clear reference point for more balanced approaches in living.

The trauma he went through is a quadruple whammy for a 16-year-old who just survived growing up in a cult. It would be so much. I can't see him not falling into months of deep dark depression, as unfortunate as this sounds.

Grieving over Flapjack, grieving over Belos, over his childhood/upbringing, and now a grisly memory of his predecessors who didn't make it (to add to what he saw in Belos's mindscape). I simply cannot see him handling a load like this without a highly-equipped and sensitive professional, paired with his support network of family, friends and even possibly the wider community at times. Especially now that we've seen him in action during the epilogue.

The epilogue sequence would've had a different feel (and in my opinion, a not-so-good feel) for me if Dana had established that the grimwalker graveyard was still untouched after those 3.5-4 years and if Hunter never found out about it. Something like that is different compared to Dana mentioning in the recent Post-Hoot that in the he does not know about Caleb and Evelyn, or that he is related to the Clawthornes. Mysteries like the Clawthorne heritage can remain an eerie secret that only us in the audience know about, but I wouldn't feel comfy if this were the case for the graveyard as well.

To quote @idlescree's video essay about Hunter's death (link), the show's writers didn't pull any punches when it came to Hunter's development arc. Which means they had to take his story to the "categorically appropriate place for him to overcome" his greatest challenges.

Something tells me that with respect to the grimwalker graveyard and the avoidance theme in C-PTSD recovery, Hunter would've had to put in more work to confront a number of terrifying foes even beyond his Thanks to Them speech. One of which was the graveyard containing the remains of his predecessors.

PS: This is a spontaneous post which branches out from my giant post-finale meta (link) that I pinned to my blog, I suppose.

#toh hunter #the owl house #hunter noceda #camila noceda #hunter deamonne #darius deamonne #toh analysis #grimwalkers #grimwalker graveyard #loz writes a meta

[theboxfort]

List of details I've noticed in TPOT 1

Because I miss Pie, Liy, and Stapy. Gonna start AFTER the Cake at Stake

A lot of the focus will be put on Death PACT Again because. That's my favorite team.

Also ran out of space, so all the Exitor stuff after the credits is in the reblog!

Details in the elevator scene (seen above):

The most obvious one is where Two opens the door and it hits Puffball's face

Pie gets pushed into the elevator by the crowd (she's just sitting there)

Alternatively, she might actually be sliding backwards by herself instead of being pushed by the crowd

Coiny is most likely the first object to get into the elevator, as seen here

Fanny started out quite far away from the elevator but then scampered into the elevator. Also her legs barely moved

Pen was just out of the shot and had to haul ass into the elevator

Lightning waited for everyone (aside from Two) to get into the elevator before getting in there himself

Alternatively, an observation by @sweeswawswussy on twitter (a REALLY good one)!

lightning kinda look like hes contemplating to either float down the building with black hole or getting into the lift the face he made when he looks at black hole tho hhh looks like he felt sorry for him

BH didn't get in, because he didn't want to accidentally suck anyone up (which will 100% happen in such a small space), so he went down on his own

The rest of these are set AFTER the team picking scene (under the cut, because it's LONG)

When Two announced the challenge, everyone's standing in teams :]

The painting in the lobby, next to the elevator

During the elevator gets stuck scene with Just Not, while everybody reacted to the alarm, Pillow didn't. When the elevator falls, she's the only one smiling

Remote added a face to her drawing after she finished explaining <:]

PIE HOPPED DOWN FROM THE STAIRS LOOK AT HER GOOOOOOOOOOOO

Are You Okay's scene, yeah, let's go

This is shown in order! TB does not scream at all. GB seems excited at first, but after she got flung back, she's now. Not screaming in excitement. Eraser has the classic BFDI mouth in the first two flings.

COMPUTER ENHANCE THE PILE

80% sure that this is Cloudy's pile, I think that's a painting/drawing of Cloudy? The shape seems to fit him. There's also Balloony and Woody in the background, and maaaaybe Roboty to the bottom right, I'm not too sure.

BACK TO DEATH PACT!!!

In this scene, Fanny's the only member who doesn't seem to be tired! She's not panting, she's up straight (can't really tell if she's sitting or standing), and she's >:C

Remote gets recharged later, that's why she's also up in the second pic

When Just Not made it to the top, Book has the scrunkly old BFDI arm asset (the arm that's waving)

FANNY, SHE'S SMILING EHEHEHEHEH IT'S NOT A DETAIL, I JUST LIKE HER!!! Also Pie opens up her eyes :]

Sorry for the Death PACT Again stuff, I really like them. Here's a shot of them getting thrown by Remote

Remote grabs Trees and tells him to get Black Hole

TINY DEATH PACTERS...

Okay, so I counted all the hits Two got in this scene, and here's a list of what happened:

2 punches from Snowball

1 kick from Eggy

Another smack (1) from Snowball

1 jump/stomp from Marker

2 face slams from Robot Flower

1 slam from Bell

2 zaps from Lightning

1 BODY SLAM from Basketball

1 tray slap from Pillow

1 vomit to the face from Rocky (with Tree holding him)

1 jump kick from Foldy

1 knee strike from Basketball (GO BASKETBALL GO)

At least 10 stomps from Grassy (since we don't know if he kept stomping after the cut)

So in total, Two received 25 hits from these guys. The team that did the most damage is...

The Strongest Team on Earth with 20 hits! 10 from Grassy (the MVP), 3 from Snowball, 2 from Robot Flower, 2 from Basketball, 1 from Bell, 1 from Eggy, and 1 from Foldy!

A tangent here, from this screenshot, we can see that there's 6 floors in the hotel! Each floor is color coded too, red = lobby, orange = 2nd floor, yellow = 3rd floor, green = 4th floor, teal/cyan/blue = 5th floor, and the roof. Is a roof.

Fun fact, Basketball's lab from TPOT 2 is on the 4th floor!

Exitor stuff in the reblogs!!

#osc #battle for dream island #bfdi #bfb #tpot #long post #pink posts #part 2 done and it's in the reblogs hi hi and good night

[gravitycircuit]

Gravity Circuit has recently hit 60K total units sold!

Never in our wildest dreams did we expect the game to sell as much as it has done in just a few short months. As such, we thought this was a moment to celebrate, with new art provided by @jmanvelez!

Now, you might be asking: why are we taking a moment to celebrate such a specific number? Well, in truth, we were planning on doing a celebratory announcement earlier, at 50K. We were on track to hit that in December, but then the holiday sales happened. Thanks to the holiday sales on various storefronts, we essentially skyrocketed past 50K, climbing all the way up to 60K before the sales were over, so didn't have the time to prepare for it! Goodness, the sales performance just continues to surprise us. All in all, the reception and feedback we have received over these past months have been overwhelming, and we can't thank you, the players, enough. You are the best. Now, you might be curious about the sales distribution among the platforms? Fret not, we have prepared a pie chart for you (based on sales as of January 18th, 2024):

Note: PS4 and PS5 are coupled together due to crossbuy. This means that if you purchased the game on one, you can download it on the same account for the other at no extra cost.

On PC, the game is available on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, as well as Stove (Korea). Out of these, Steam is the most popular storefront.

On consoles, the game is available on Nintendo Switch and Sony's PlayStation 4 and 5. The game is also physically available on afore-mentioned consoles, by Pix'n'Love (PEGI), Red Art Games (ESRB) and Oizumi Amuzio (Japan).

Given the amount of wishlists on Steam before the game's release, as well as us getting Steam Deck verified by Valve, PC outselling the other platforms is not a wholly unexpected outcome. Steam is a huge storefront, after all.

But after all the sales across these platforms, what about the reception? Well, even on that front, Gravity Circuit has performed better than even our wildest expectations, as shown by the collage below:

Truthfully, before the game's release some six months ago, we weren't sure about what the reception ultimately would be. As a developer, it can be difficult to distance yourself from whatever project you have been working on for so long, to see the game for what it is. So, ultimately, it was up to you, the players, to determine the game's overall quality. Needless to say, we didn't expect the majority opinion to be this good, both from critics and players alike!

To provide some background: throughout the development, there were a plentiful of sleepless nights, fueled by stress, energy drinks, boatloads of work, and constant lingering doubts about the game's potential success. Creative endeavors while on a deadline are never easy, but we soldiered on, so to try and complete the game to the best of our abilities. Now, months after release, it has been a truly humbling experience that players have enjoyed Gravity Circuit as much as they have. Such a warm reception has made all that effort behind the game worth it. Again, we can't thank you all enough.

Of course, it might go without saying that even with all this positive feedback, the game hasn't been without its own sets of issues. Especially around the game's launch we had to do multiple quick rounds of bug fixes, so to address various situations and oversights that had slipped past us during development and Q&A. While doing all this was taxing, it's perhaps thanks to these rapid, quick responses that have helped minimize any lasting impact that the various game crashes and bugs could have otherwise had.

Essentially, on that point, our policy has been to accept any and all feedback from players with open arms. Whether positive or negative, we have read all points of feedback, and even responded to them wherever we have been able. Ultimately, this back-and-forth discussion with players has then resulted in us implementing various additions and changes post-launch (Speedrun Mode, Armor Paints, Boss Rush, small quality of life additions, etc), completely free of charge. And while we do try, it's not exactly realistic to act or respond to every bit of feedback without fundamentally changing some of the game's DNA. Nevertheless, we do try our best -- and perhaps hold onto the lessons learned for any future endeavors.

In the meanwhile, we at Domesticated Ant Games want to thank you all for all the support so far from the bottom of our hearts -- and we wish you all a good start to 2024!

#gravity circuit #devlog #gamedev #blog

[nostalgebraist]

Here are some fun / amusing / potentially-interesting facts about the process of writing and plotting Almost Nowhere, if anyone's curious.

Major spoilers for the whole of Almost Nowhere under the cut.

(There's really no way to spoiler-censor this material without rendering it incomprehensible. If you haven't read the book, do that first before reading this post.)

(1)

A large fraction of the book's eventual plot emerged from my attempts to patch a single, in-some-sense trivial continuity error I made while writing the very first chapter.

The Mooncrash section of that chapter ends with this sentence (emphasis added):

All parties were used to stillness, now, for the Mooncrash was nearly four years old.

And a few paragraphs later, in the opening of the Academy section, we get this (emphasis added again):

For (as everyone knows) the Shroud is upon us and while it tolerates the Academy — as it presently is, as it has been for the last eight years, a chrysalis, preparing itself step by minuscule step [...]

So: The Mooncrash is 4 years old. The Academy crash is at least 8 years old, and indeed older.

Yet the Mooncrash is also as old as the crash system itself! It was made by humans, during the period between the discovery of the anomalings and the mass-crashing of the human race. (This is only shown in the second chapter, but I had it in mind before then.)

How long has the human race been crashed, then? At most 4 years, and at least 8 years? How could that possibly be?

It would have been easy enough to just edit the chapter, but that's not how I do things. Restrictions, famously, breed creativity. I enjoy attempting to solve puzzles I have inadvertently created for myself, and many of my best ideas have been produced through this process.

It would also have been simple and easy to merely say: "OK, I guess time elapses at different subjective rates, in different crashes."

Amusingly, I ended up doing that anyway! But for some reason, this avenue didn't occur to me at first. By the time I started asking myself whether to include this kind of effect, I already had a different solution in mind.

I spent a lot of time beating my head against the figurative wall, trying to resolve the 4-vs-8-year issue. The early parts of my AN notes are full of this stuff.

----

At some early point, I came up with the idea that the anomalings/shades would deal with troublesome crashes by "rebasing" them, rewriting their histories.

I didn't intend, initially, for this idea to take over the plot as much as it eventually did. It was just a fun idea that underscored the huge power differential between the anomalings and their captives, and felt in line with the Cartesian/Wachowskian themes of transcending a "fake"/illusory world, radically doubting one's own perceptions and memories, etc.

But, having stipulated that "rebases" were a thing, I hit upon the idea that they could be used to modify the total quantity of past (subjective) time inside a crash -- turning 8 years into 4, or vice versa, or whatever.

So, I could fix the problem by stipulating that one -- or both -- of the problematic crashes had already been rebased, in this way.

But why? And by whom?

----

Now, at this early stage, I also had the idea in mind that the character "Anne" would eventually escape from her crash, and that she would have a hand in various major events in the story -- including some events that had already occurred, relative to the "present" of the textual PoV.

But I didn't know, yet, what these interventions actually were.

(I put "Anne" in quotes, here, because in the very early stages I casually assumed that only the PoV Anne introduced in Chapter 1 would be a major character, and that her sisters were merely background material for her personal narrative, like the tower itself. Of course, in the process of thinking through the details of things, I realized that this assumption was needless and indeed counterproductive.)

As often happens when I'm plotting a story, I found that two unknowns slotted neatly into one another, each one providing a potential solution to the problem posed by the other.

We need something for "Anne" to do in the past. Something consequential, something that shows off her newfound agency -- but also something that obscures her role from view. Ideally, something kind of weird, esoteric, "advanced"; something that feels buried inside the deep, dark center of the backstory, which the reader will only "excavate" at the end of a long, strange journey.

And we need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

That answers the "who?" question. But again -- why?

Well, it was already in the plan that Azad would join forces with Michael, when Michael went in search of his lost Anne. That Anne would meet Azad, as a result, and that it would be Azad who persuades her to return to Michael's crash.

I didn't, at the time, have much else planned for the Anne-Azad connection.

As originally conceived, the "Azad convinces Anne to return" scene was about Azad's uncertain loyalties, and about Anne's lack of exposure to other human beings (and to the power of words, as deployed by human beings with access to real human culture). That is, it merely served specific, separate purposes in the sub-stories of these two characters. There was no intent to set up, or develop, a thread connecting these sub-stories, making Azad a major character in Anne's arc and vice versa.

But that seems like kind of a shame, doesn't it? Why go to the trouble of preparing these characters, and bringing them into contact, if I didn't have anything for them to do together?

Anne and Azad.

We need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

We need Anne to learn about real human culture, somehow, before she leaves. I knew that, already, though I didn't have a mechanism in mind.

(I also knew, by this point, that causing Azad's appointment as translator was another one of "Anne's" consequential moves. I had conceived of this, at first, as a relatively impersonal act, done only for its historical significance. Indeed, that would have been enough -- but the more the merrier, theme/motivation-wise.)

Problems paired up, interlocked, and became each others' solutions.

(1b)

As is obvious from the above, I didn't have the scenario planned out in very much detail when I wrote the first chapter.

At the time, the story had been gestating in my head for a while, but only as a bunch of vague inklings and intentions.

The proximate cause of writing-the-first-chapter was a sudden and unexpected burst of inspiration. I was riding the bus to a social event, and suddenly my mind was awash with crisp, never-before-glimpsed details about Anne and her tower, the Mooncrash, the Academy, Cordelia's blue dress -- all the stuff of Chapter 1. It felt like a crucial message was being beamed into my brain, VALIS-style, from the Muse / Higher Power.

I had an urge to bail on the social event, turn around, ride back home, and start writing immediately -- what if the magic went away, as suddenly as it had arrived? I resisted that urge and made a perfunctory appearance at the event, but then went back home and wrote as much as I could before falling asleep.

So, when I was writing that chapter, stuff like "four years" and "eight years" wasn't based on any single coherent picture, just vibes and vague inklings.

(I think 4 years probably sounded like the right amount of time for G&A to have been in the Mooncrash, character-wise. Meanwhile, Hector's ascension from the Academy had to be long enough ago that there would be no direct overlap between Hector and any of the current students. The "Bad Old Days" had to feel like something you'd only hear about in rumors, or from authority figures who probably weren't telling the full story.)

(2)

Like TNC before it, Almost Nowhere was originally conceived as relatively simple and straightforward story, only to become something much weirder and more complicated as I fleshed out the details.

As I said above, I only had a very vague "plan" at the outset of the writing process. But I kinda knew where I was going with it, in very broad strokes.

The original arc, insofar as it existed at all, was something like:

The bilateral / anomaling tension is introduced.

The bilateral PoV characters come to an understanding of their situation.

Many of the bilateral PoV characters join up with Hector Stein, who is already trying to defeat the anomalings and free humanity from the crashes.

Azad temporarily sides with the anomalings, and Anne temporarily returns to her captive state. But both them "come around" eventually.

Anne eventually triumphs over Michael, delivers a dramatic monologue castigating him for imprisoning her (etc.), and mounts a successful escape.

Shortly after Anne's escape, some (TBD!) resolution to the main conflict is achieved. Whatever it is, it is proposed/spearheaded by the bilateral faction (and specifically Anne herself), and it somehow exemplifies "the bilateral way of thinking/being."

The humbled anomalings conclude that "the bilateral way of thinking/being" has its advantages, both practically and morally.

So the story, as originally conceived, was much more straightforwardly about the "good" PoV humans fighting back against aliens.

It unabashedly took the bilateral side in the conflict, and it ended with a "beauty of our weapons" sort of moment in which the bilaterals are both victorious and righteous, and in which these two kinds of success are closely linked and almost merged.

I have to imagine that, even in counterfactual worlds where some things went differently, I never would have stuck to this version of the story all the way through.

Because, one way or the other, I would have eventually realized that.. like... this version of the story kind of sucks, right?

I mean, why go to the trouble of introducing these aliens, and trying to make them interesting, only to say "nah, actually these guys were just wrong, it's us and our existing 'ordinary' pre-conceptions that are right, and that's what the story was about all along"?

It would have been "inventing a guy to be mad at," as the saying goes.

Not a great foundation for a story. And the least interesting possible direction to go in, given this kind of setup.

It also presents a seemingly unresolvable tension, for the writer, about how to portray the distinctively "bilateral" nature of the bilateral side in the conflict.

If "bilateral" is as broad a category as the anomalings say it is -- if you and I and all of us, whatever other qualities we possess, participate equally in this sin -- then it's hard to strike a note of emotional triumph around the quality of "bilaterality" that doesn't feel wrong, vacuous, or bloodlessly abstract.

"Woo, yeah, humans are great!" I mean, are they? All of them? You don't get to say "well, only the good ones," here, or "in their ideals if not always their acts," or anything like that. Everyone is included in the relevant category, except for the guys-who-aren't that were invented for this specific story.

It's difficult to make this land properly, in the same way it would be difficult to write a story that inspires "carbon-based life pride" or "having-DNA pride" or the like in its reader.

So this version of the story was dead on arrival. And indeed, by the time I was thinking through the stuff chronicled in (1) above, this version of the story felt like a provisional placeholder, at best, in my mind.

Nonetheless, there are various echoes of it in the story I eventually landed on.

For example, in the original version of "Anne's" escape -- conceived in a much more straightforwardly positive way -- I had Anne reading "real" books in secret, drawing moral strength from them, and then including a bunch of literary quotes in her big dramatic monologue to Michael. (I took inspiration, here, from John the Savage reading Shakespeare in Brave New World.)

And I had the idea that "Anne," being an autodidact, would read omnivorously without making culture-bound distinctions familiar to you and me; that her selection of quotes, in the monologue, would put low culture alongside high culture, infamous books alongside famous ones, etc.; and as a particular case, that it'd be fun if -- before going on to quote Shakespeare and co. -- she began the whole thing by quoting Ayn Rand.

And that one idea stuck, even if the rest of it didn't.

(Or, consider how the idea of "a powerful move in the conflict that exemplifies the bilateral way of thinking/being" actually crops up multiple times in the finished story, right up to its last scenes. One can see traces of it in the "trick" that obsesses Michael, in the use of autobiographical writing to build up nostalgium, and in Annabel's improved crash design.)

(3)

I came up with the Mirzakhani Mechanism relatively late, in between writing Chapter 13 and writing Chapters 14-15 (in which the MM is introduced).

The MM was a product of looking back at the sci-fi elements that already existed in the story, like crashes and rebases, and trying to invent some single underlying explanation that covered all of them in a relatively parsimonious way.

This basically "worked," I think -- it certainly worked better than I had been expecting, after playing the dangerous game of "write a bunch of weird stuff and hope you'll be able to explain it all later." (I remember talking to one reader who was shocked that I hadn't had the MM in mind from the very beginning, which was flattering.)

It also had unintended consequences that kinda took over the story, but largely in a good way.

Earlier, I had planned to have the post-rebase crash timelines "screened off" from the outside world somehow, so that rebasing a crash wouldn't mess up the timeline of the outside world. But, once I'd fixed the idea that "rebasing is an MM event" in place, I realized that this wasn't consistent with the way MM events were meant to work. Instead, the exposition in Ch. 15 directly implies the stuff about rebases that Grant realizes much later in Ch. 41.

Once I'd noticed this, it was obvious that it was extremely important, and I re-incorporated it into the broader plot.

On a related note, I eventually decided that the account of the anomalings "going backward in time to our era" in Ch. 15 didn't really make sense. This meant I needed a different, more viable way anomalings and bilaterals to exist at the same point in time.

This line of thought, along with several others (like "what happened to all the nonhuman organisms?" and "which parts of the MM multiverse are real?"), eventually led me to invent Everywhere-Heaven and the beasts.

That happened right at the start of 2022, between Chapters 21 and 22.

It quickly became clear that the E-H/beasts stuff could be put to a lot of valuable use in story's third act, which was largely a worrying blank space in my head (even at this point!). From thereon out, I worked on fleshing out the third act behind the scenes while writing the second.

Not coincidentally, Chapter 22 contains a ton of E-H-related foreshadowing, and also some hints that human scientists (like Aidan in Ch. 15) had never fully understood the anomalings.

The use of Maryam Mirzakhani, a real (and recently deceased) mathematician, was a weird choice and arguably one in poor taste. All I can really say in defense of it is that it came to me suddenly, and had a number of properties that fit the vibe of the part of the story in which it appeared, and I have a policy of "going with my gut" when it suggests such things to me.

I felt similarly about this choice and another thing introduced in Ch. 15, the nuclear attack intended to kill scientists. Both of these things underscored the fact that the story took place in an alternate reality. And both felt sort of "edgy," "too dark," "too close to the real world" compared to the tone of the story so far. But I wanted to take the story to new places in the coming acts -- "darker," "more real" places -- and something felt right about introducing these elements at this exact point, as signposts providing an indication of where things were headed.

(4)

The phrase "NOWHERE TO HIDE" was originally "NO MERCY," in my notes.

And the abbreviation "NM" for "NO MERCY" was used throughout my notes for Nowhere-To-Hide related stuff, e.g. "NM Annes."

This wasn't the product of much thought, just the first thing that came to mind that had roughly the correct vibe. I almost immediately concluded that I'd have to replace "NO MERCY" with something else in the work itself, since it would seem like an Undertale reference that I didn't intend to make.

"Moon" was originally just a placeholder name -- a shorthand for "the 'NM Anne' who rebased the Mooncrash." But I liked the idea of actually using it, once it had occurred to me.

The corresponding placeholder name for A11 was "Ling," as in "linguist" (but also an actual name).

(5)

I went through 3 different outlines of the third act.

Really, there was a first outline, which was really bad, and then there were two slightly-different versions of a very different outline that mostly corresponds to the finished draft.

The first, bad outline was amusingly titled "notes-satisfying-ending.txt", because I explicitly used this post about "satisfying endings" as a guideline while writing it.

(To be clear, I don't think the linked post was to blame for the badness of that first outline. I didn't ultimately find the post very helpful as writing advice, but the "satisfying ending" outline wasn't even a "satisfying ending" in the post's own terms, and was also bad in unrelated ways.)

I don't want to go into much detail about the bad outline. It was really bad, and also really different from what eventually occurred. It's honestly a pretty embarrassing document.

A lot of the key ideas were there (E-H, etc.), and the very end of the story was roughly the same. But it had a ton of needless flaws that I later corrected. Various existing character arcs and motivations were dropped and never picked up, or suddenly diverted in some new and unfruitful direction; way too much time was spent on getting characters and objects from point A to point B, or otherwise sort of rambling about in a way that didn't matter in the end; it included a lot of whimsical "fun ideas" that weren't necessary and would have added clutter to an already very full canvas; etc.

I never got to the point of building a chapter-by-chapter version of this outline, but I'm sure it would have much longer than the existing third act, also.

The existing third act is pretty long, but it was actually the result of an aggressive pruning and tightening process.

If the "satisfying-ending" outline had a single greatest flaw, it was terrible pacing. Lots of slack, lots of empty space, and when big things did happen, they came out of nowhere, not really prompted by what came immediately before them.

The next draft of the ending resulted from taking the raw materials of "satisfying-ending," purging all the dross, re-thinking all the obviously flawed stuff, and then trying to rearrange the pieces in front of me in a way that was maximally "tight" and interconnected, with questions and tensions introduced and then resolved in a rapid-fire manner, and without any major thread "sitting around in the background" long enough to feel stale, or get forgotten.

That outline was in a file called "notes-good-end.txt."

Much later, I tightened up the plan even further, merging some things that were originally in separate chapters. This was in a file called "notes-true-end.txt", and -- true to its name -- was the version reflected in the book itself.

So there was "satisfying-ending," which sucked; "good-end," which was good; and "true-end," which was slightly better.

(I realize the multiplicity of the ending, and the account of deliberate "tightening" etc., is in apparent tension with my recent account of working by direct inspiration.

There are a few things I can say about this tension.

For one, it really is true that the third act of AN was more deliberately reasoned-out, and less directly-inspired, than some of the earlier stuff. This is kind of inevitable: you don't get to do anything after an ending, that's what an ending is, and so you have to deliberately try to make the final act of a story fully work as a thing unto itself, rather than writing checks in the hope of cashing them at some later point.

And separately, I do think the final version of the ending feels "more real," "more true to the work" than the satisfying-ending draft.

I think I was aware, even while composing "satisfying-ending," that it felt off and wrong in some ways. But it was only after going through the exercise of creating a complete ending -- some sort of complete ending -- that I was able to look back and say "OK, this fits, but this doesn't fit," and distill something that actually felt right.)

#almost nowhere

[penpinetree]

Rhythm Doctor's tutorials are perfect and why subdivision beats are my favorite mechanic (SPOILERS FOR ACT 5)

before we get into spoilers: Rhythm doctor is a one button rhythm game where you apply defibrillation to numerous characters who each have their own tempo, mechanics and stories as to why they're at middle sea hospital, the game has a great story, amazing characters, and a simple (at first) gimmick, push the button on the 7th beat. its a good game, you should totally play it, and I recommend not reading this post if you haven't, if you have played it, then listen to me word vomit for a minute.

Act 5 is about subversion, even before the act officially starts the game tricks you into thinking it'll be a fun little baseball themed act

the entire act takes place in a new (to you) ward where you've overheard from two other patients that a popular baseball player has just been admitted there.

immediately you'll notice that this is not a ward in a hospital, this is a baseball field, strange, but whatever, doesn't matter. this song introduces a new gimmick, subdivision notes, which are a type of SVT beat (i realize i didn't explain those, basically you're given a get, set, go count and have to hit the beat on go) subdivision beats are simple (at first) where all you need to do is listen for a queue and hit more than one note.

they look like this (it was so hard to time snipping tool to get these). the top image is for a double subdivision and the bottom is for a triple subdivision the tutorial for these notes is really good at getting you used to these types of notes being matched with each other and regular notes respectively and you'll have a good grip on them by the end of it.

the song starts out in the same field that going into the physiotherapy ward brought you to, and the music is nice, mostly just a test to see if you have the subdivision beats down by now.

that is until you reach this point and a baseball suddenly flies into the screen, putting the song to a pause and pulling away the curtain.

it was a dream, this is lucky, the baseball player who was admitted to middlesea hospital for tearing their rotator cuff during a game. after a quick cutscene the song starts again, cutting back to the baseball field, except it's no longer a dream, it's a nightmare, its pouring rain, baseballs fall from the sky in larger and larger amounts, every now and then you can see the eyes of Lucky's fellow teammates staring at you from the dugout. and then it happens, my favorite part of act 5, the one queue that made me fall in love with this game for a third time.

FOUR! TONK-TONK-TONK-TONK

all of the sudden you're hit with a quadruple subdivision beat, they didn't teach you this, lightning strikes in the background as its called out, normally this would be bad game design, throwing something at you out of nowhere without explaining how you're supposed to deal with it. but you hit the notes anyway, because by now you've learned to ignore the visual cues and go based off of the game's rhythm, because the queue's "Tonks" are also in tempo with how quickly you have to hit the divided notes, so without making a sweat you hit the notes perfectly, even while the nightmare sequence starts to fall apart, telling lucky to wake up, you still hit every note perfectly until the end of the song

at the end of the song the screen zooms out from lucky, and you're shown the real physiotherapy ward, this room will no longer look like the baseball field unless you go to it on a new save, act 5 is such a good example of why this game is so dear to my heart (haha) and if you still somehow haven't played it, please, just buy it, give the developers your money.

#penpen word vomit #rhythm doctor #i really hersplained to no one in particular huh #can you tell how normal i am about this game? #play it #just buy the game #its only like 16 bucks and definitely worth your time

[mettywiththenotes]

Okay okay okay

So Hawks clearly isn’t giving up, right? He’s just not. That’s not who he is, so of course he’s going to keep fighting. With the panel of Hawks holding the sword, with the sounds of the Twice rampage in the background, it really seems like he’s not going to go down that easy

Hawks saw “Twice” come out of the portal and his reaction was this

Total panic, right? He killed Twice for a reason - to prevent mass destruction from happening because, knowing Twice’s quirk and what side he was on (what side he was sticking to), he knew how chaotic the war could get. So seeing Twice come back? You can see the panic inside of him. This is not what he wants. We know he’s willing to kill “Twice” again

Fast forward to this chapter

All other threats are gone. AFO is gone. There are no Villains or Noumu in front of him. Dabi has been taken care of. Yet Hawks still stands because there’s one more Villain that hasn’t been taken care of, and that’s “Twice”/Toga

While we could say he’s only standing here to protect Tokoyami from the oncoming Twice’s that will surely attack them once they spread further, there’s no way he���s not going to be involved with the Twice clones anyway. And I don’t think Hawks would just stand there and wait for someone to take down Toga - he’d probably try to do it himself

So I think there’s a possibility that Hawks could go after Toga and try to kill her before the clones can spread further. I also think there’s evidence to Hawks joining the fight and attempting to repeat history

Hawks has already been through killing Twice. There’s a chance he’s willing to do it again based on the fact that he’s done it before. Something along the lines of “I’ve done it once, I can do it again. Only I will bear the burden of it”. It’s not farfetched at all for Hawks to do so because he wants to spare anyone else from having to kill. “I am willing to be corrupted” and all that

(He’s probably ready to face Twice, to deal with the image of taking him down again, but could he do the same with Toga? With the reality that he wouldn’t just be taking down the image of Twice, but a young girl too?)

Also, the narration says that the Heroes cannot falter

Who’s someone who won’t falter, no matter what the task? Who is willing to corrupt himself, willing to cover himself in blood for a brighter future? Hawks. I feel that the text is practically calling his name for him to enter. Also, the Todoroki’s are out for the count, Iida looks like he’s done too. The only Hero shown here willing to stand up and not falter is Hawks

There’s evidence for this Toga-Ochako fight paralleling with the Twice-Hawks fight

Firstly, Toga is on Twice’s side. She is quite literally Twice in this parallel. Someone who looks like him right now, someone who activated Sad Man’s Parade, someone who has shown care for members of the League in these moments

Someone who, as chocolate-biscuit has pointed out here, has the same hole in her mask just like Twice did

And what does this fight also have in common with the Raid one? A third person is shown ready to fight

Dabi was the only one shown running towards the fight, and Hawks is the only one shown so far who is actually up and still willing to fight

The red sparrow dream

That dream has always reminded me of Hawks, because of the specificity of the animal. It’s not just a bird, it’s a red bird. Red like Hawks’ wings. We know Hawks doesn’t have his wings right now, but also notice that the wings aren’t important to the dream - the type of bird is mentioned specifically, but the bird specifically uses its feet and its beak. Also notice that birds can represent the freedom to fly away, to escape, but this bird doesn’t use its wings and do that. Instead, it chooses to stay and inflict harm

I know this may just be a small coincidental thing, but still, I think there’s a potential for it to be connected to Hawks somehow

Finally, Horikoshi has said Ochako and Hawks are both “beacons of hope” in the final war arc. Hawks, who didn’t give up fighting against AFO and protected Tokoyami from getting his quirk stolen, and still refuses to lay down. Ochako, who won’t give up on Toga. She wants to save people from the Villains and the war but she can’t ignore a Villain’s cries either

How interesting would it be if we had both “beacons of hope” clash in their fights to protect and save people?

Of course, this is only a possibility, though I think it does have the potential to happen. I would personally love to see Hori dive into Hawks’ character involving Twice again, and putting him up close and personal with someone Ochako wants to save would be so interesting to watch

But, let’s remember that I’m theorizing based on 2 panels of Hawks lol. We’ll have to see what happens next, but again, it’d be really cool to see them all come together this way and fight against ideals and saving vs killing

#anyway. just speculation #rambling rambling always rambling #bitches want hawks ocha and toga to interact in a battle and change each other's perspectives #its me im bitches #bnha #bnha 391 #bnha manga spoilers #hawks #mettys posts #metty posts

[izzysillyhandsy]

Prince Ricky and Izzy Hands - WTF actually happened there and why?

Yesterday I was rewatching the finale with my first-time-OFMD friend, and she was absolutely baffled by Ricky shooting Izzy with his own gun.

In her words: "Nobody took it off him, that's not realistic! That's impossible, totally impossible, I can't buy that, you don't just forget a gun on a prisoner?!?!?!?"

And on my first watch I thought the same thing (as we all did), and then forgot about it a bit, but now I want to speculate. Because WHY did that happen?

The easiest explanation is, of course: Ricky needed a gun and it doesn't really matter where it came from. The writers didn't think it was important and neither should we.

But I'd like to expect a bit more from this show - I remember that I was taken out of my immersion quite a bit by this obvious "mistake". Ricky is a hostage who was just about to kill every single pirate we know - and nobody notices he's armed? And he's led through the enemy lines by Izzy with only a small knife to his back?

If Ricky still has his gun, that means that they took his sword but noone thought of searching him properly (and to really rub it in, Ricky is shown cleaning his gun in an earlier scene). The gun also seems very accessible later, so it probably wasn't even hidden well.

So why didn't the writers have Ricky take Izzy's (or Black Pete's) gun? I know Izzy almost never carries a gun (which is interesting in itself), but they were all in Navy uniforms anyway. Why not take the weapons too? Or have Ricky stab Izzy with a hidden knife (in a way that the other characters won't notice, like with the gunshot, presumably)?

Or was the whole thing actually deliberate? In a "it doesn't really matter if you take it at face value, but if you look closer there might be another explanation" kinda way?

(that was a really long introduction to what I'm actually here for, I'm sorry)

Who actually searched Ricky and took his sword? Was it the same person who stayed next to Ricky during the cool dressing up montage? Who led Ricky through the woods?

(Hint: it's the guy who's always in the background when these 2 are kissing)

Of course we have no proof that Izzy searched Ricky, but I think it is very probable.

Izzy had just been talking to Ricky. He'd been sitting next to Ricky when he was knocked out.

Izzy had just deeply insulted and provoked Ricky and made himself the spokesperson of piracy - "It's about letting go of ego for something larger." - "Kill me. Kill us all. Our spirit will last throughout your entire fuckin' empire." - thereby almost goading Ricky into killing him.

And then Stede presents his nebulous plan we never actually hear, and Izzy (why Izzy?) is put in the most dangerous position, right at the frontlines leading the hostage. Did he volunteer for that?

And are we really expected to believe that Izzy wouldn't double-check that Ricky was unarmed?

I really don't like where this is leading, by the way. Because the explanation that makes most sense from a Watsonian perspective is that Izzy either didn't mind or actively wanted to be killed/wounded.

The show went out of its way to portray Izzy as older, wiser and more resigned in the last 2 episodes - he looked like he'd aged 10 years in a few days, he moved around slower and seemed to be in more pain (and groaning when sitting down, etc.). Also, he seemed to have made peace with everything and everyone, and he seemed... tired.

(I know he's just been shot here, but he just looks exhausted)

I think there might be a possibility that Izzy let Ricky keep his gun because he did want to go. Stede's "It's only suicide if we die!" sounds almost to fitting in this context. Izzy might have thought that the one conversation Ed needed, the one where Izzy could set Ed free, could only happen on his deathbed (as I said elswhere, Iz and Ed are closest in life-and-death situations).

Or (and this is what I choose to believe until S3 comes around), Izzy took Ricky's pistol while he was unconcious, took the bullet out and faked his death to set Ed and himself free. He very pointedly doesn't want Ed to see his wound, after all (Ed: "It's not even that bad!"). If it's only about the deathbed absolution, and removing himself (and the spectre of Blackbeard) from the situation, Izzy doesn't actually have to die, does he?

This also fits with the song played over the end sequence, panning to Izzy's grave:

And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who that will be namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'

Yeah. A bit too conspiracy-theory-like maybe. But it was the first assumption my friend made - 5 seconds after the scene: "The gun can't have been there by accident, that's just stupid. Oh no. Did Izzy arrange that? Did he really want to die for Ed?" and I thought - you know what? That was my first thought as well. I just immediately dismissed it for being too dramatic.

So, either Izzy is the most reckless, stupid and negligent pirate ever (which he obviously isn't, quite the opposite) - or he trusted the person who (badly) searched Ricky (oooh, new conspiracy theory - it was Ed! Sorry.) - or there was something else at play.

OR

...maybe it was just lazy writing after all.

#ofmd #izzy hands #ofmd meta #you must admit it is a weird scene #it's such a glaring oversight #WHY WHY and WHERE did the pistol come from #I love over-analysing :) #Izzy lives btw I've circled back to denial - feels great!

[tempenensis]

If you have time, do you mind helping me with some character analysis? Gojo is very hard to write because he's a very internalized person who doesn't actually show his inner thoughts very often. The times we get them, he is much more serious and analytical than his frivolous personality is meant to show.

Gojo is popular for the same reason that people hate him: truthfully we don't know much about *him* when it comes to the kinds of details which can be used to figure out where someone's personality came from. He comes from a privileged background, so there's lots of people who assume that he never really went through any troubles - that he never had moments of self-doubt or needed to find his place in the world, that his powers likely came easy to him because he's a prodigy, that his family "spoiling" him meant that he was never subjected to the cruel or intense training we know some of the nobles have set up in their family homes. He's also always been special, and it's unlikely that he ever had a desire to be a total non-sorcerer. He could walk away any time he wanted, like Yuki, and it's not like anyone could stop him either.

And Gege never truly refutes this. Gojo's personality is also so good at pretending nothing ever touches him (thematic!) that from the surface it could seem true. He is not the kind of person to be filled with self-pity so we never get panels of him hashing out his situation with the other characters (not that he can because no one is his equal enough to do this...). He's so busy he literally doesn't have time to dwell. He has been shown spending time with his friends, but no one wants to talk about the shit job they all do during down time, they unwind and talk about regular stuff, like regular people, and simply enjoy the company.

But deduction also tells us that people who grew up normal and well adjusted don't behave the way he's behaving. (Nobara and Yuuji had the most normal sounding childhoods of all the students and it shows, even behind the typical shonen characterization).

Clearly, the flashback arc is shown because in a way that is the origin story of the current conflict, and the origin of Gojo's current personality (Geto had a lot of positive influence on him).

Gojo turns against the sorcerer system because it cost him Geto, not because of anything that may or may not have happened to him. He was doing every mission the higher-ups could possibly have sent him on after Riko died. He wasn't rebelling against the system, he was trying to solve it by becoming the single solution all on his own. Again, not the response of a well-adjusted person.

He was not originally the kind of person to take revenge or turn against a system for personal issues, although he later becomes a little like this when he starts taking young sorcerer's under his wing.

There's a lot of fandom speculation that has hints that these things could to be true:

He was spoiled by his family, but they were emotionally distant in the way of all sorcerer families, praising the technique and seeing the technique instead of the child who was wielding it. It's possible he doesn't associate closely with his clan apart from very structured social patterns because he realizes that being "special" never meant he didn't deserve being treated like a child or taught how to behave. He's perfectly aware he has a "bad personality" and knows that this is in part because of how he was raised.

He projects emotionally onto the students in his care, and acknowledges that something about the way he was treated (mostly as a fine commodity) was deeply unfair, but he hasn't actually found another way except to acknowledge at the end of the day that this job gives you trauma and it's usually not worth dying for unless that's your thing (I mean how he throws the students into situations where they think they're going to die and his concession is to place himself as the safety net), and that you shouldn't miss age-appropriate events just because some grown up tells you to become a better little cog.

A lot of the fandom likes to assume that using Six-Eyes is overstimulating or possibly painful for him right away because at least then there's a cost to his using his power, and once again the sorcerer system doesn't care about the cost to its workers (I'm not sure about the right away part. we know that if he doesn't cover his eyes he gets tired, but Gege doesn't want to give gojo any weaknesses so who knows how long it takes).

Gojo is maybe not "afraid" of getting truly close to people but he keeps people at arm's length. No one at this point could bear the burden he does, and that's what he believes it means to be his equal. It's possible but unlikely that if someone reached out to him first, he would let him. We know touching Infinity can feel like you're touching him from the first vs.Jogo fight, and it's likely he truly does keep it on all the time, leaving him physically and psychologically prepared to keep anyone from touching him at all times, even if they don't realize it...

(Overall, it's very funny to me that Gege's friends apparently think his personality is like Gojo's. It makes it more understandable why he wouldn't want to talk about his character, or be annoyed that the person who is a secondary became too popular, but also the cat is a troll and is the kind of person to laugh and walk away if you try to ask them a question -_-. However, if you take the answers we do have literally, it sounds like Gege accidentally made a character with a lot of depth, but he doesn't want to deal with it…)

But we have no answers to the truth of these presumptions in a lot of cases, and I could keep going but I'm running out of steam and I'm already sorry to put so much in your inbox….

I know you don't give headcanons because your blog is more textual analysis blog, so I won't ask for them! Part of me is not even sure what to ask, because we simply have no answers, and I don't think anyone is going to give them to us. That's fine because fandom wants and needs space to do its own interpretations of the character, but when you want an answer that isn't there, it can truly feel like diving off a cliff to make that choice all on your own and run with it (cries because that means there are literally infinite choices to make and each of them alters the story a little).

Maybe what I'm really asking is, if you have time, would you pick apart my characterization of Gojo above? I'm a bit curious about what you agree with and what you disagree with because you're so good with finding the text evidence! I already appreciate you reading if you've gotten this far, and I appreciate all the work you do in the fandom. I won't feel bad if you refuse (not that you will, but I just want to make it clear I have no expectations!!) Thank you again so much for all you do and for letting us play in the space with you!

Hi, anon!

If you're asking about my opinion, I must say, this is pretty solid read. I agree with almost everything that you said, and can't really add much to this. Gege had said before that he "has no personality", I think that means he doesn't think too much about Gojou's character, unlike for example Yuuji or Nanami. This makes us learns more about him by crumbles dropped here and then - and not a lot actually told explicitly in the manga. ((it sounds like Gege accidentally made a character with a lot of depth, but he doesn't want to deal with it)) is actually a good point lol, fans' interest in Gojou is definitely deeper than Gege himself.

One of the most interesting thing about him is that despite his vocal opposing of the current jujutsu system, he still does his duty to this very system that he opposes. Even if he messes around sometimes, Gojou is the only special-grade sorcerer who actually goes to missions assigned to him and has been mentioned to clean other sorcerers' messes - which is why he is so busy all the time. This speaks more about him knowing that his priority lies in saving other's lives. I think for him, he is an actual proper jujutsushi who has lived as one since he was born because of the techniques he inherited - maybe the point of being a jujutsu sorcerer and what he has to do has been driven to him since he can handle his own technique. So all he knows is to be a jujutsushi first - and his desire to change the system only comes later, after he saw what this system does to people around him, especially Riko and Getou. Even then, he tries to change it from inside, as jujutsushi who is one under the very system he want to change. All he knows is how to live as a jujutsushi and he doesn't seem to want to stop being one, even if it means he can destroy the system from outside. He wants jujutsushi to continue, but with a better system, not to stop or destroy all of them entirely.

#le-ask #jujutsu kaisen #jjk manga spoilers #gojou satoru #jjk meta #a very good analysis anon kudos to you!

[dindjarindiaries]

I have seriously been thinking hard about this season. I know that there are people who don’t think Din has had character growth, or has been push aside, but I totally think he has. Din has never been overly emotional. He is struggling emotionally, as evidenced by the darksaber still being heavy for him, but he does it internally. He kept going when he lost Kuil. He kept going when he lost the Crest. He didn’t even show much emotion when Grogu was taken by the Dark Troopers. He’s very stoic and to want him to struggle with his identity is a fair thing to want, it’s just not something Din is going to do visually.

I also feel that they are very purposefully setting up Bo as leader as like a misdirection, but something will happen to change that. Either Bo will…not be leader for some reason….or they will lead together. It’s just Din needs to get to the point where he can see himself as leader. He absolutely does not see himself as a leader. As far as Din is concerned his quest is done. He has his son. He has been redeemed. He is ready to live his life in the covert with Grogu. It’s always been the Armorer…and I guess Paz as like her right hand…have always been higher in status then Din. I mean when you first meet Din in season one he doesn’t even have a signet. You get the sense that his station is lower in the covert. So he is going back to that position. Or he is trying to at least. The Armorer and Bo have shown him he can lead. That other Mandalorians will listen to him. Giving Bo the saber was so smart because Ace Woves would absolutely not have followed Din. However, he would follow Bo and Bo standing up for Din will help change Axe’s mind about Din. Plus….we still have the Mythosaur. If Grogu/Din can tame the Mythosaur then who knows. Co-rulers maybe possible.

All of this is to say that Din seems off because this is how he views himself (at least right now.). He is content to be in the background because that is what he is use too. That is what he knows. He is learning. Season 1 Din would never had spoken to the covert like Din did this season, but he still has some growing to do. We spent two seasons joking about how he doesn’t seem like a main character for a reason. Din has always acted liked this. It’s just more obvious now because the world is expanding. He has potential to lead. He just needs to see it.

Anyway, tl;dr I love Din Djarin so much and people aren’t being fair too him.

This is a perfect, perfect summary of my own thoughts. I cannot thank you enough for sharing this. You’re incredible.

#sooooo so good. #din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #you have spoken

[savrenim]

watched the first 30 minutes of the new live action ATLA bc I was Curious and they have already committed three different mortal sins that I can't Not Rant about, spoilers for the first 30 minutes below the cut

1. They rearranged the order of storytelling to open with the Fire Nation attacking the Air Nomads.

And I'm not.... totally sure why? Like, my guess is either "we need to make an immediate dramatic hook for the people who have never seen ATLA before!" or "we need to explain the background for the people who have never seen ATLA before!" But the truth is, people never saw ATLA before it came out, and they were perfectly fine catching on to learning about what happened to the Air Nomads and the geopolitical state of the world in media res!! That is not an excuse!

By opening with The Attack On The Air Nomads, not only do they rob the audience of getting to do my favorite thing throughout, which is the ability to piece together backstory via being told details as the story goes on, but it also..... vastly undermines the impact that That Attack Happening is going to have later in the story. Instead of piecing together tragedy from 100-year-old ruins and getting the moment of "oh god" and imagining it, we're shown it directly upfront onscreen, which not only to me comes across as unnecessary and gratuitous violence, but it means that every time in the story that The Air Nomads Are All Dead is going to come up, instead of it being this weighty thing that we can only imagine that each small detail adds even more to that weight, the payoff was all upfront. We've seen it, there's nothing to imagine, any detail they give us is not adding to our understanding of the tragedy and increasing the tragedy to us at all, it's just a reference to the opening scene.

2. STATUS!!!!!

So 'Status' is a concept that I rant about a lot and am highly sensitive to in writing, probably bc in the gay theater camp day camps the first thing you need to teach your 8-year-olds in improv workshop is How To Respect Status if you want to have at all a reasonable adventure game; otherwise you have kids interrupting the king's big dramatic speech and hence Undermining The King's Authority and the adventure game falls apart but also so you don't get trapped in scenes where you've got two characters yelling back and forth "well I'm [this thing] so you should respect me!!" and the complete lack of respect between them totally undermines what both of them are saying and the fiction falls apart. I kind of joke but not really that I stopped watching Supernatural in like. season 8?? 9?? because there was some episode with Greek Gods and you got to the finale of the episode and Zeus was going "dO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??? I'M ZEUS. I'M A GOD. PUNY MORTAL" and Sam and Dean went "dO YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE??? WE'RE THE WINCHESTERS. WE TOOK DOWN SATAN AND ALSO SATAN'S MORE EVIL OLDER COUSIN. PUNY MONSTER OF THE WEEK" and I went "by day three of camp my nightmare 8-year-olds can do Status better than this. Why am I even watching this?"

In the first scene, the live-action ATLA severely undermines the status of the Fire Nation and Fire Lord and then continuous to do so throughout the entire opening.

The initial scene is some random Earth Kingdom spy running away with Fire Nation plans to attack the Earth Kingdom and getting captured and dragged before Fire Lord Sozin (to be?? monologued at by Fire Lord Sozin of 'HAH you fell into my TRAP, those plans were FAKE, we're attacking the AIR NOMADS' which is just. dumb. kill the spy, don't monologue at him and kill him, but also why the fuck are you letting an Earthbender spy into your presence in the first place???????) which besides the aforementioned letting?? an earthbender spy??? into his presence in the first place????? He:

is not wearing particularly fancier clothes than the other people around him; like, they're okay, but the 'total desaturation of all colors including/especially in the clothing' aesthetic that Netflix has going makes it not look very royal. that shit should have been BRIGHT red or 10x fancier to make up for the fact that it wasn't Bright Red

they are STANDING IN THE THRONE ROOM and INSTEAD OF BEING BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF FLAMES he's just STANDING DOWN THERE on the SAME LEVEL AS EVERYONE ELSE????? WHY ARE YOU EVEN IN THE THRONE ROOM IF THE FIRE LORD IS???? NOT ON THE THRONE?????? JUST STANDING AROUND???? THE FIRE LORD DOES NOT JUST STAND AROUND WHERE IS THE POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE OF THE OFFICE????????????

and then beyond the absolute idiocy and letting a nobody no-name spy into his presence like that and dramatically revealing battle plans fucking idiot deserves to be assassinated for letting a spy earthbender get within three feet of him that's just extremely bad royal security, Sozin personally Murders this Random Spy. with his own firebending hands.

One of the whole things that makes ~the Fire Lord~ so terrifying is the sheer amount of weight around The Institution Of The Fire Lord, the courts and the backstabbing nobles of the fire nation, both the extreme imperial politics and complications there but also the almost deification of the office itself. The Fire Lord is untouchable, I forget if it's fanon or canon that they've got a 'descended directly from Agni / divine right' thing going but if it's fanon at least canon has those vibes, and one of the biggest aspects of the finale of the whole show is the combination of Azula's meltdown making it so that even though she was 'Fire Lady' she.... wasn't particularly scarier because in panicking and banishing everyone she'd totally undermined her own power structure, but also realizing that Ozai was Actually Just Some Dude Who Sure Was Pretty Good At Firebending And A Really Shit Person And Terrifying For What He'd Done With His Power but he wasn't a god, he wasn't impossible to defeat, when push came to shove he was just a firebender and as such his power could be stripped.

Fire Lord Sozin standing on the same level as his advisors and a random earthbender spy, and then doing things with his own hands, instead of, you know, sitting on that throne behind that wall of fire while this scene was happening if this scene really needed to happen in the first place, totally undermines that sort of deification level of status that the Fire Lord is supposed to have. Sozin becomes an Evil Scary Murderer Villain, sure, but what proceeds to be established about his character is. Nothing to set him apart from "a particularly skilled Firebender." Hell not even that, as nothing ever demonstrates that he's substantially more skilled than the firebending soldiers around him!!!!!!!

And it undermines the severity of the threat of the whole Fire Nation to undermine the status of the Fire Lord and hence the Thing That Makes The Next Fire Lord So Scary. hnnnnnnnnnng.

3. Every single character keeps giving extremely stilted monologues about how they're feeling?

It just feels like Bad Writing. And it also kind of feels like incorrect characterizatons? Big "he would NOT say that" mood but also just, like. Aang giving a three minute monologue purely to Appa about how he never asked for the responsibility of being the Avatar, he just wants to be like other kids, that just feels. So Cookie Cutter. So "gotta check off our refusing the call so our protagonist is Relatable!" and also just he would not say that.

This doesn't quite bother me as much as the other ones because it doesn't feel like a fundamental undermining of the narrative and/or the setting but it is Highly Annoying.

anyways defs not worth the watch. 30 minutes of my life Wasted. some of the costumes are kind of nice tho so might go back for the costume refs.

#live action atla #netflix avatar #just some random musings but it's been a While since I've dropped any sort of writing analysis #and I kind of miss doing it #do truly love how like. the Vast majority of my media criticisms #or at least the ones that I get Annoyed enough to Go On Rants about #are the ones that break the rules of Status #bUT HNNNNG STATUS IS SO IMPORTANT!!!!!! YOU LITERALLY CANNOT TAKE ANY CHARACTER SERIOUSLY UNLESS THE CHARACTERS #OR IN THIS THE FRAMING OF THE SCENES THEMSELVES #RESPECT THAT STATUS #HNNNNNNNNNNG

[bcacstuff]

Oppenheimer

Tonight I went to see Oppenheimer. I was really looking forward to this movie, I know the story and have seen a number of documentaries. About how it all came about, the race to 'win the war', the 'end of all wars'... it's history we (should) all know and learned about in our history lessons. The end of WWII, or the beginning of the Cold War.

I'm going to try not to give any spoilers, well, that's always a bit weird to say with a story we all know. But I just want to share my experience, as this movie is simply outstanding all the way. From the first minute to the last, including the end credits. (and it's a long movie!) I simply want to share what makes it so outstanding to me.

The Story

Of course, you can take into account, I'm a (bit) history buff, I love history, love to read about it, study it, watch it. So no surprise this movie was high on my list to see. The way the movie tells and shows the story, is the first what stood out for me. It's so well written, it's not simply telling how 'the bomb' was made, it's a story about power, guilt, intrigues, accusations. They say all is fair in war, and the way this movie shows how that is played out, is mind blowing and immersive.

There are in fact 2 storylines shown, which Nolan shows in a fragmented way weaving the past and the present into each other. The past is shown in B&W in a magnificent way as flashbacks

The locations

I learned already before seeing the movie that most of it was shot at the original locations. Los Alamos, Princeton, Berkely, Oppenheimers office. Christopher Nolan is known to prefer shooting at original locations and not using much CGI or green screens. I've heard how the actors told how that helped them immensely to get into their roles. It shows, and it's stunning to see these locations. One of the reasons you have to go see this on the biggest possible IMax screen. It's totally worth it.

The Acting

I know who I would immediately give the next Oscar to. Cillian Murphy doesn't even have to say anything, those eyes... talk about how to show emotion just through these eyes. Goosebumps! He truly makes this movie a masterpiece. Robert Downey jr, almost not recognizable, Emily Blunt as Oppenheimers wife Kitty, Matt Damon are the outstanding actors, but also smaller roles like Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr are just fantastic.

The Music

The icing on the cake, and for me always an important detail many movies do not pay much attention to. But this movie... I just was so impressed how the music, which is constantly present at the background, also during scenes with lines for the actors, was woven seamlessly into the story. As a musician, you recognize what they did. The use of sequences, during scenes where it concerns science and physics. The constant heart beat of the bomb, the harmonies but also the intriguing dissonances that give you that 'unheimisches' feeling. There is just one long moment of complete silence, and that moment is extremely powerful. After that moment, you will literally get blown away. Please, if you go and see it, pay attention to the music.

Already during the break, I felt like, I have to go see it another time. That doesn't happen quickly for me, there are only a few movies I watched more than once. I will watch this one again, and I probably watch it a few times more when it is released on streaming or buy it on DVD. I see a lot of 10/10 ratings on IMDb, and I fully agree.

[riacte]

i never really paid attention to it but wow false and ren. they really do hover around each other huh. they r like bugs

Hiii anon thanks for the ask <3 I'll use this to talk about them and them in fanon because I have thoughts woooo (and I'm vibrating with excitement because I'm listening to the HC Grand Prix at the same time)

You said it exactly— like we all know they're buddies and stick together, but most of the times, we don't really notice it because it's just natural. Nondescript even. Like of course their pixels are next to each other in the background. Of course they're hanging out. It's not flashy or anything, they're just there.

[long and winding analysis that goes off in a Direction, will definitely not be maintagged, mentions of shipping and the fandom's worst enemy (comphet / heteronormativity)]

Pairing up

They're like those anime characters who are fully fleshed out individually, but for some reason, their screentime is tied together and they're always shown next to each other. That was actually my first impression of them back when I only watched Grian in HC6 lmao, every time Grian flew over the fantasy district he would casually go "that's False and Ren's bases" and my brain was like "hmm new names :) idk who they are but they stick together :)". Like you know when you're new to an unknown cast of people so you try to comprehend and memorise them as efficiently as possible? And so you start sorting the cast into duos / groups so it's easier to remember them? That was me trying to compartmentalize the hermits in HC6. Grian + Mumbo. Iskall + Stress. Scar + Cub. Joe + Cleo. ZIT. False + Ren.

It did not help that from Grian's POV, there was a part in the civil war arc when he collabed with False to prank Ren because they thought he'd pranked her and so my brain was like "weeewoooo I still don't know who False and Ren are but they continue stick together, and that's convenient for my internal sorting :)))". And that mutual association genuinely never stopped lmao (it only got worse).

Shared audiences?

I've talked about this on privtwt: False+Ren as a fanon duo (like duo Duo as in desert duo) is strangely niche even though they do stuff together all the time and they're both fairly popular on their own. And there is so much intermingling between their audiences— I know this is the case for all hermits' audiences, but it seems especially obvious between their audiences. I know in a stream Ren said he met up with False and they had a discussion like years ago about the two of them hosting a meet and greet with fans in a restaurant (that didn't happen) and internally I was like "yeah, that'll only work if they have a solidly integrated fanbase so no one feels left out in the restaurant WAIT. That's literally what's going on here".

Funny how when I was writing this, an anon sent an ask about Ren's chat basically being full of False emotes LOL. Integrated audience kinda real <3 like, even if you only watch one of them and don't actively watch the other, you still know and think of the other fondly.

Different styles? And sticking together

Actually outside of yayyy fun minigames, to me at least they have quite different styles + ways of presentation? Which feels slightly different from the above duos I mentioned? So I totally understand why people only main one of them and don’t watch the other (but still aware of the other obviously). In terms of taste and personal preference, I’ve been here long enough to know what loyal False mains generally like and what loyal Ren mains generally like. (Like, very verrrry generally.) Ren’s the dramatic roleplay storyteller and False is like, sneaky and shifty and has a wry sense of humour. They’re both funny and charming in different ways. I would say Iskall and Stress have similar presentations (“aha? AHA?”) even though they excel at different things. Cub and False are also similar to me— competent and cool people who are nonchalantly chaotic. And we all know Ren and Martyn’s instant chemistry and their similarities. It’s why a lot of Ren fans gravitated to Renchanting and Rendoc for their dramatics and flirting in the way some False fans gravitate to Fress and Falseren for the fun/mildly hysterical/teasing/sweet/pranking moments.

BUT

False and Ren bounce off each other well— it’s the playful tension and the sudden mutual whiny energy like “noooo don’t leave me🥺” but they start hitting each other 0.5 seconds later. And of course the mutual clinginess. I know people have made jokes about how they’re both smart and competent people individually but when they get together they suddenly become the silliest sillies and share one braincell <3 and I know people (read: mutuals in my DMs) have joked about Ren’s currently extremely obvious bias for her (it's as big as the BRR sign I swear 😭) and the usual “orbiting around each other group recordings”. Compared to other duos, they don’t get paired together bc of similar presentations / style. They get paired together because of the chemistry and they share so many moments lol.

Tldr: they make for entertaining on-screen interactions. It’s fun watching them rotate around each other and punch each other off things. And they do this so much that 1) everyone’s aware of it 2) everyone’s used to it.

Branding? (Or the lack of it)

Last I checked, their tag has 46 fics on Ao3 and 16 of those fics are from me (I love being spiders georg). As with every pair that's not the juggernaut pair, realistically the actual number of fics that actually focus on them is less than what we see. And you know how sometimes for the "niche" pairs, there's more ship fic than platonic fic? (Actually I think for most pairs, there's more ship fic than platonic fic.) That's also not it, they don't even have 20 ship fics. Like clearly, the current fanon interest in them is not ship motivated versus *gestures to whatever is happening in the general shipping chaos post 2021*.

What I concluded is that they lack the kind of branding that for example Convex possesses. I think it's kind of because... they're an ubiquitous constant throughout the years. They don't need a storyline or a named group to tie themselves together. No matter what they're doing, no matter what characters they're playing, no matter which servers they're on— they just kind of stay in each other's orbits. But they don't play it up or anything like hashtag SHIPrendoc or Renskall or whatever. They don't even have a proper fanon name ffs (outside of fairy pirate grotto or whatever in HC6).

(Although imo this is likely to avoid comphet irl shipping because God forbid a man and a woman are friends :))))) heteronormative irl shipping / truthing was an annoyance for years (pre the HC6 boom). But strangely enough, modern anti hermitshippers on Twitter rarely bring up the real problem of truthing in public comments and instead target people making Scarian fanart in a small corner or whatever. When many cases of Compulsory Heterosexuality literally exist in YouTube comments. But I digress.)

Ren and False are just there, pranking each other and basing together and playing five million minigames and being casually supportive of each other. Like, their biggest shared "storyline" that left a strong impression on fans / converted fans was probably MCC9. We all still talk about it today the way Ren and Martyn still talk about 3L Renchanting. And MCC9 was in 2020 when they'd already done a lot of stuff together prior to that (eg. literally being neighbours in HC6).

And the thing is, they do collab semi-frequently. In like every Hermitcraft season. In recent memory, we've got the Blue River Raceway of course, but we also get those pranks and minigames and random silly interactions like Ren breaking into False's eagle and False pranking him at her elytra race. It doesn't need to be big and theatrical in classic Ren fashion (I remember the Renbob / Falsewell storyline in HC6; her nonchalance and confusion was so funny in contrast to Renbob's hippie demeanor).

And I kind of like the way they've kind of (?? or not???) escaped from the intense duo-ification from the fandom. Okay, to be fair, I know I am the worst offender of the duo-ification of them (with my desperate do not separate agenda), and maybe I've had a negative effect on the fandom, so feel free to throw me off my soap box. I remember how hermitblr as a collective suddenly lost it when they split in MCC17. We took them for granted, we all got to used to them being together, we got used to seeing them in the background, and then suddenly they’re not??

So we’re all kind of aware of them. But it’s not a terribly big thing…. until it is.

It's the same on the M/CC Reddit. Everyone knows they're iconic. But nobody makes a post about how we need more False and Ren duo interactions because they already interact a lot. It's just a natural constant. They don't really need a spotlight because they're just... here doing funky cute friendship stuff.

But if they ever, for some reason, become a mainstream duo on twt in its mainstream duo way with some [insert random noun] duo name, I will be so 🫠😒🔥💥🔥💥. But I literally cannot see this happening unless they team with Grian / Grian adjacent people in Life series. But even then I think they’re kinda exempt because everyone’s so used to them lol. It’s not like a shiny new uwu duo. It’s like how Stresskall is just Stresskall. Or Jleo.

(Actually, speaking of Stresskall, the entire Stress-Iskall-Ren-False group would make for an interesting fanon discussion bc it’s essentially made out of very solid and fan favourite duos. But not now. Team FRIS my absolute beloved though.)

Also, thinking about the ensemble HC fics I've read and how they're just casually kind of chilling in the background. Ren is usually paired with Doc (both platonic / romantic) but False is usually somehow mentioned in a passing comment. Same with False who's usually with the Hermitgals in ensemble fics, but there's also passing comments about her hanging out with Ren. Again, it's just a natural part of the background. Trivia that's sprinkled in between.

And that's why I think I'm so 🥺🥺🥺🥺 because it doesn't need to be big and grand... it's all the little moments <3 they have such a fun and playful dynamic and all the love for minigames <3

I don’t know if this is comprehensible or I’m just going crazy and overthinking things no one thinks about. But writing this was fun at least <3 If at least one person gets maybe 30% of this post (whatever it is), I'll be happy haha.

Post sponsored by the three people who liked my tweet from months ago 🥹

#ask box #answered #meta #i guess??????? #this has subheadings bc i got uni coursework back and that was the feedback #ria.txt #this is 1.8k words long... could've written a oneshot lmfao #save me falseren save me #pogsupremacy