#and he literally adresses everyone in the same way. like the way he talks is like going ‘hey bro what’s up’ to like an old Man U just met

[leoleolovesdc]

It’s so weird that Heathers the musical toned down so many things from the story (Veronica’s gray morality, JD’s behavior as a whole, Kurt and Ram’s sa on the girls, etc.) but decided to make the Heathers way bigger assholes than they are in the movie.

McNamara doesn’t do anything in the movie, she just goes along with Chandler and kicks Veronica one time at the beginning but then in the musical she’s setting up a fcking date rape??? She goes along with the boys during Sword Fight in Her Mouth and is just a bitch to Veronica all of the time, but everyone in the fandom (and also Veronica somehow) kind of ignores it because she acts innocent.

Duke, even though she isn’t made that much worse from her movie version, (except for the date rape thing with McNamara) is also way more agressive and obnoxious. In the movie, even after Duke turns into a Chandler carbon copy she’s still a funny and likeable character. In the musical she is an asshole even before Chandler dies and her and Veronica keep antogonizing each other from beginning to end when in the 1989 version they were pretty much friends until the last minute.

I think one could make an argument that Duke’s bullying of McNamara is also worse in the musical, but I’m a bit lazy to adress that, so just have in mind that in the musical she’s also more agressive, screaming at Mac at live TV instead of just writing “poor little Heather” on the board.

Chandler in the musical is more of a cartoon character than a person. She screams at everything and everyone for no reason whatsoever, she isn’t necessarily a worse person, just very flanderized and, I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that somone who acts that way could even have a chance of climbing so high on the social hierarchy of a school. Heather in the movie was a bitch, but she knew how to keep up appearances. She acted nice, she played people, she never had to scream to get things to go her way, that was how she managed to be so powerful.

The movie is a parody of teenage narratives, the musical takes that parody and plays it straight. That’s how you get an absurd story where the three mean girls of the school are annoying bitchy monsters and the literal murderer is a sympathetic villain.

I think the Heathers 1989 is interesting because of how literally everyone is a bad person, but at the same time not everyone is the same kind of bad.

You have bad Chandler, an fatphobic asshole who doesn’t care about anything unless it affects her. You have bad Kurt and Ram, homophobic, sexist guys who have raped multiple girls. You have bad McNamara, only follows other people’s leads which makes her act like an asshole. You have bad Duke, is not evil when controlled but when given the opportunity she will become an asshole. You have bad Veronica, an uncaring and murderous person who in the end makes the right choice. And you have bad JD, the kind of guy who he thinks he’s justified in blowing up a whole school just because everyone there kind-of-really-fucking-sucks.

All of these people are assholes and some of them should be in jail, but that doesn’t make the psycho who’s killing them some kind of martyr, he’s still just as bad, maybe even worse, than all ofthe others. The musical makes JD look justifiable.

He was good person, he was just traumatized!

If only he had gotten help!

No. Just no. JD was psycho. He was trying to blow up a school. That’s not justified, doesn’t matter what sort of heroic reason he may have he had. Which, by the way, he didn’t. He wasn’t killing people because they were assholes, he was killing people because he was an asshole.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Yes, I still love all of thsoe characters despite how much shit I talked about all of them, sorry this got long, one thing lead to another, and now I have spent like two hours writing this and my arms hurt from holding an ipad. Bye.

#heathers #heather mcnamara #heather duke #heather chandler #veronica sawyer #jason dean #jd #heathers the movie #heathers movie #heathers the musical #heathers musical #heathers 1989 #heathers 1988 #kurt and ram #kurt kelly #ram sweeney

[scarefox]

The way some people straight up deny soft criticism of the BL industry (stuff that isn't even a secret if you don't close your eyes and ears!!!) Criticism by literally LGBTq people working in said BL industry in Thailand..... basically one of the only ones who's voice are most valid here in this discourse. That's not hypocrism of people working in the industry to open their mouth! That's called self-awareness and using this genre to convey a message and trying to fix issues. This is about Step by Step and Lovely Writer atm. But those are not the only dramas who brought up some critic but somehow people get salty now about that little poke from SbS? Did you sleep the past 3 years?? And it's not a coincident that it's always the same topics certain BL dramas brought up!

I feel like some people here don't get that you can criticize your own work place, your own industry, your own country WITHOUT hating, shaming or demonizing it completely! Yall need stop this black & white thinking and the constant urge to feel personally attacked by something like this...

Especially the message of LW (the same people who make SbS now) was that there is nothing wrong about loving BL stories and they do like producing them. BUT that there are some things in the industry that are bad and harmful NOT ALL OF IT, SOME THINGS! Like the treatment of actors and certain topics by companies and producers. And the main theme of LW: the toxic overstepping and overcontrolling shipping culture that can (and did) destroy real life relationships / friendships under the weight of the pretend relationship (pretend as in they are not dating for real (everyone knows that! or should know that! this is also not even a secret if you watch interviews outside of the fun and couple game shows) at least in most of the cases.... in some rare ones yes, in some very rare cases some actors actually date but they are too afraid to come out due to homophobia and the way the industry & fandom treats those cases (source Dr. Thomas Baudinette who studies the industry as a form of queer asian media and interviewed companies and actors since years... somewhere in this he talks about actor relationships, I can't find the time stamp atm))

ALSO the point about exploiting the LGBTq community is NOT about the fans or LGBTq audience who love these dramas. But about businesses and literal Thailand itself. For using those stories and actors / couples for advertising, for marketing, for tourism even. BUT at the same time some don't care for real life LGBTq issues and rights or the fact that Thailand is still not agreeing on equal marriage (which is not just about them not being able to marry but they get denied a lot of things married couples get. alone the fact that they can't see their partner in the case of an emergency in the hospital because 'they are not family'). In the said SbS scene they were literally discussing which pretend couple has the most fans and how they could use their fandom and fan clubs to gain profit. Don't you guys get how fucking frustrating this is for the LGBTq people and allies who work in the BL industry, to get paraded in front of the camera for money and image but still don't get treated equally??? THAT is what they mean with exploiting.... And it's a lot of producers, writers and some actors who voice those points, not just these few self-aware BL dramas. But doing it through the medium they adress is the best way to reach the right people, to make the right people aware and ask for their support. Since they can't say such things directly (even though they should) unless they want to lose their job, they still like to a degree.

And I am sorry but the opinion of actual thai people who are inside that industry is more valid than some random fan who just doesn't want to understand those things in order to enjoy their shows without feeling bad.... What if I tell you that you can do both and that this is not about shaming you or making you feel guilty (unless you participate in toxic overstepping behavior or are actually LGBTq-phobic, then yes feel guilty)! Acknowledging issues, supporting to fix those issues and still have fun with these dramas and actors.... Those things can and do coexist and nobody said otherwise!!

#damn i said i stay away from discourse and I am not here to discuss but I have to say something about this since I saw some bs #sorry my patience is very thin the past months and I am so damn tired of stupid discourse #rant #bl drama #bl actors #step by step the series #Tee Bundit Sintanaparadee #tee bundit #salt post

[iamumbra195]

Y’know, the reason tatsuki probably latched onto Orihime is probably because she lost Ichigo. Not in the literal way but in the sense that Ichigo was probably her closest friend as a kid and even now, she’s still incredibly fond of him but there’s this very palpable distance between them. It’s like when you have a best friend for years and then suddenly you don’t feel like your their best friend anymore while they’re still yours

So when Orihime came along who 1) had orange hair and 2) is the literal embodiment of sunshine like little ichigo, she latched onto her. And then when Orihime got her powers and sort of started to drift away, Tatsuki noticed

she doesn’t like change because change took away her first best friend and now she’s scared of losing her second. But when things don’t change the way she feared they would she doesn’t say anything when she sees Orihime and Ichigo doing weird spiritual stuff, content to ignore it because unlike with Ichigo at first, she and Orihime both began seeing spirits about the same time and supported each other so even if Orihime can fight the monsters there’s like an equalization in their relationship-- Tatsuki protects Orihime from real world stuff and Orihime protects her from spiritual stuff. It’s why their relationship works in a way Ichigo and Tatsuki’s didn’t at first, because Orihime doesn’t stonewall Tatsuki in the same way Ichigo does. At first, anyways.

It even says the Tatsuki can sense her so even if she doesn’t have powers they have a connection on a spiritual level and she’s scared to lose that. So when Orihime disappears out of nowhere with no warning, she’s angry and terrified and she knows exactly who to go to because this kind of stuff only happens around Ichigo

So when he stonewalls her YET AGAIN, she snaps because this time, one of the most important ppl in her life is missing and someone who is supposed to be her friend refuses to tell her anything despite all the time, the years they’ve known each other. It’s double the hurt for her, seeing how little Ichigo trusts her, even in matters that concern others

which is great call out to Ichigo’s issues with trusting ppl and making every little thing his responsibility while refusing to rely on anyone else, adressed by Renji and Rukia later on in the arrancar arc when they yell at him for not waiting for them and trusting them to come back and help

the repeated theme of being asked if they’re friends and why he can’t trust them is just so painful because the difference in thee responses to Tatsuki and Rukia just put into perspective how much Ichigo pushd Tatsuki away since his mom died

That was tatsuki’s breaking point and it’s an accumulation of all the hurt of losing her best friend and hearing him say that probably hurt both her and Keigo and Mizuiro because they’ve been there the entire time, haven’t they? It wasn’t fair for them to be sidelined like this, especially when it’s their friends, when they can see all the weird stuff that’s happening but feel as if they can’t talk to Ichigo because he tries so hard to protect everyone that all he ends up doing is hurting them

once again, Ichigo’s trust issues, even with ppl who can fight, even with ppl who have raided sereitei with him

‘Not strong enough’ is interesting. He tries to deter ppl from helping him and coming to his side because he feels that being around them hurts them, he feels that Orihime’s kidnapping is all his fault. And he does this by hurting them with words.

‘Don’t come near me’ ‘You aren’t strong enough’

Another beautiful call out

Hearing Ichigo say he’ll save Orihime and apologize to her and the others probably made her realize how much he’s been surpressing and how much he’s been hiding from her in a stupid attempt to protect and she hates it, hates how much she understand it because it’s always been in his nature

It makes their friendship post-aizen both bitter sweet and awesome because she finally knows everything but he no longer has his powers so their positions are switched because no she’s the spiritually aware one while he has nothing to hold onto

But she treats him the same nonetheless (Mizuiro and Keigo do as well, Keigo even goes out of his way to check up on Ichigo, after the timeskip to makesure he’s doing okay)

Anyways that’s enough of my rant about the messy friendship that is Tatsuki Ichigo and Orihime :)

A beautiful fic from Tatsuki’s perspective and some cute Ichigo & Tatsuki friendship: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47193712

#tatsuki arisawa #ichigo kurosaki #keigo asano #mizuiro kojima #orihime inoue #chad yasutora #ishida uryuu #kisuke urahara #rukia kuchiki #renji abarai #bleach #character analysis #relationship analysis #Ichigo's an idiot with trust issues and guilt complex #he tries SO hard to take everything on by himself that he pushes people away #and he doesn't realize just how much he means to all these people #but he's getting better #and it's very clear in the tybw arc how much better he's gotten #cause he actually relies on ppl to do their part and they do #even if he ultimately does have to save the day

[humanmorph]

C/W (01-05) thoughts

Finished the first C/W arc + first faction game (which really took me a while. I'm blaming PALISADE and also the bad weather and ALSO getting obsessed with finishing a bigass drawing in 2 weeks)!

I've said this in a different post already when I had just started listening, but I had like, way lower expectations on this, which seems silly in hindsight. I think I just have a tougher time relistening to podcasts (it's not an issue with rereading books or rewatching movies, really), and often stop about halfway... But it's just really fun to look at C/W again having listened to the rest of the Divine Cycle (and also the other seasons, because it's fun to look at the different player characters throughout). And like. They've gotten better at this over the years so by comparison C/W is 'worse' but it's still fucking good. When it hits it hits, and it honestly hasn't even really started hitting yet (though there's some good moments already for sure. Mako buying a bunch of robots was exactly as funny as I remembered it being)! I'm pretty much just excited for everything, but the Kingdom Game expecially. Something else I'm enjoying (and he'll always continue to do this, but it's so Present in C/W) is how Austin describes scenes. He uses film making language SO much (Counter/WEIGHT is an anime, right)! It's good stuff. I'm trying to not get too used to the system because I know they'll switch. I know WHY they switched and stuff & agree with that decision but I still think it's a cool system & am enjoying the time with it, even if some scenes do drag on quite a bit (which isn't only because of the system, but it also isn't helping).

Some character stuff, I guess: AuDy: They were my favourite at the start last time I listened and I think that pretty much holds up. They're just good. They don't even do that much in this first arc (although dropping from the ceiling as a distraction is pretty fucking great), & I think most of the really good AuDy moments are still coming up, so it speaks to the fact that it's just a good concept for a character that I immediately enjoy. I'm pretty sure they continued to be my favourite pretty much until September? I guess l'll can talk more on it when I get there, though.

Mako: I'm gonna be honest I remembered Mako as way more annoying than he is. At least in this beginning arc. He's literally fine. His whole fogging robots deal is kind of weird to listen to now, since it's something they'd either not do now or actively adress in the story since it's a kind of way to take away agency that's pretty uncomfortable when you look at it longer. I wonder if there's a way that'll come up in the first Chime mission mini-arc? Their hands are a bit tied there since it's a prequel I guess, but there's probably a way to do it. Anyways, Mako ends up as my favourite by the end of the season, and I actually don't quite remember how he got there? But same with AuDy, I'll talk more on it when I get to September (it's possible it was the clone reveal. I love those).

Cass & Aria: They have to share a paragraph because I don't have an extremely strong opinion on them either from my last listen at this point in the story, nor do I now. I'm excited for Aria stuff expecially though. I've mentioned this before, but I'm definitly better at listening and actually processing information now, and it's extremely possible that I just missed things about both Aria and Cass that were just kind of mentioned in a sentence but are actually very important to their characters. (Looking back, I listened to C/W right after I had covid, so some sort of brainfog might also be at fault.) Expecially because Ali isn't very. I can't think of the right word now. But she's just quieter in play (not audio! that's Art.). It's nice seeing everyone get better at this, but for Ali expecially I'm super excited to see her go back to Aria for that mini-arc.

Re: the faction game - it's really good that I know that they cut back on factions later / consolidate them because it is. Not overwhelming necessarily but it's easy to get confused? I feel like I need to take notes on what factions do or like, also have a list of all of them to check to keep track. It's probably a good idea to check out the summaries on the wiki after I listen to these & see if I missed anything. (I keep zoning out because I'm thinking about different, later Counter/WEIGHT stuff, usually related to something they just mentioned.)

All that aside: with the scenes and also just ideas generally they are pretty much immediately crushing it. Like oh my god that first Snowtrak scene just rules so much. That's critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends right there.

I definitly didn't draw fanart when I was listening in 2020, and I don't know if I will now, but I'm at least in more of a mindset to even want to do it. (& actually, there is ONE scene I was extremely wanting to draw even back then, I just thought I couldn't do it. I do think I can do it now! And I will at the very least try.) But speaking of art, here's a Hudson Thorne for your troubles if you read to the end:

#i should take more notes while listening im so sure i forgot something i was thinking about mentioning. whatever itll come back to me. #or not #counterweightposting

[blessedshortcake]

SPOILERS FOR MEGAMIND AND MEGAMIND "2" youve been warned

Hi chat im here to bitch and whine give my 2 cents on the new movie even tho im like. A little late. Obligatory read more

I havent seen anyone talk about this yet so im starting with it but... why did they rename Minion? I am not Too bothered by it, i mean a little but thats probably just me im just mostly confused? Is it because of the Minions stuff? So hes more uniqe? Augh my poor boy they did him so dirty

Point 2. Roxanne. What. Just what. Why did they make her like that? I loved how she had different clothes for (probably) every scene, that she wasnt just a generic cartoon character wearing the same outfit for the whole 90 something minutes and yet they just... put her in an (in my opinion) ugly dress and made her hate her job?

She seemed happy in the first movie for the most part. She wrote her own speech in the first scene of it!! I get that things are different now that Megamind is a hero but ITS BEEN 2 DAYS!! Unless her aspirations changed in the first movie and im just too tired to remember then its a huge change. Besides that she was.... okay i guess? Shrug i liked the original more

Oh right! Their relationship or lack there of with Megamind! I was never a huge shipper of them but i didnt mind. I find it sweet at most since they can be silly together but only if given more time and fleshed out more. Im more interested in seeing their progression, learning about each other, adressing past stuff (like how Megamind was hiding as Bernard for god knows how long i am so tired i cant remember this move killed my brain) and i dont care if theyre a couple or just friends or something in between for all of that

But...... seeing as (and i can only assume) the first movies last scene of him accepting the new museum that was rebuilt for his image happened months after the Titan thing and they literally Kissed and whatever id ASSUME there is something between them to kiss like that IN A PUBLIC EVENT IN FRONT OF THE CITY?

And yes i love my platonic kisses but lets be real. This was made by a Company and this is a het couple theres no way they would let them kiss as just friends. Like id be the happiest mf on earth if they did but from previous movie track records i dont think thats the case

If the movie was like set between the Titan thing and the reopen of the museum id understand. Then yeah, things are complicated between them. But we SEE the museum like at least once so??? Ugh i dont know why im so caught up on everything this movie was full of contradictions

Before i go to the main issue (the whole movie is the issue but i digress) i wanna talk about the world itself.

Where did the smart phone come from?????? Hello??? Movie 1 had flip phones at best + whatever Megamind made but hes like a genius so like that doesnt quite fall into public tech stuff. Why did they nerf the dehydration gun? That was instant or near instant before why did it take seconds now?? Megamind has a whole new lair AFTER 2 DAYS-

Why is everyone so stupid and disrespectful? The whole key ceremony was 100% unneeded if hes already an esteemed hero? Whatever.

Now the main bone i have to pick. MEGAMIND.

He could not be more OOC. I cant belive this was an actual movie not like some fan project. God

They already had a whole thing in the first movie how he needs Minion more and he needs to listen to him and how he appreciates him. Why did we go back to ground 0?

If they REALLY needed a conflict where Minion wanted to be a sidekick and Megamind didnt want that to happen (which... i dont even know why they needed that? Perhaps with Minion away from the lair when the DS showed up the issue dragged on much longer? Shrug) THEN THEY COULD HAVE DONE AAAANYTHING ELSE!!!

Might i remind the creators that in the highpoint of the first movie, when Minion used the disguise watch and helped Roxanne escape so Megamind can defeat Titan as a fake Metro Man he got (kinda) hurt? Like his tank shattered and he was drying out. Sure he was fine but THAT already couldve been a better motivator!!

Megamind being scared to let Minion be his sidekick because he has been with him for all of his life, his first and best friend in the whole galaxy, his caretaker since he was a baby, his last connection to his home planet even, got hurt and could have easily died. I mean they pretty much killed like 3 people if not more in this movie so its not far fetched but like-

The conflict being Megamind grapping with his concience (spelling??) of wanting to make Minion happy and letting him express himself more, and his terror of the possibility of losing him. Like if thats too heavy they can make it more lighthearted and jokey there are Definitely ways to do that but that already is a better conflict oh my GOD.

Also DS couldve been soloed with the dehydratuion gun if it wasnt nerfed. He just walks behind them and bam. Problem solved. What the hell

point 3? I lost count. WHY DID THEY DUMB HIM DOWNNNNNNN OMG

HES SUPPOSED TO BE A GENIUS!! Sure Minion takes care of him since he can get too in his head with his ideas as we see. Multiple times. But hes not an idiot. He would know how a toaster WORKS HES NOT XBDNSN MAIMS!!

Anyway

I finished the movie like an hour ago but i already forgot that little girls name oops. She was... weird. I wasnt too annoyed about her more so confused? Since shes the only person with a smart phone? And she had half a million followers for her Megamind blog? IN 2 DAYS? Right. Felt very forced to put her into any and all of the scenes

Back to our massacared blue hero. He would NEVER be like that. More specifically with the DS. One of the main parts of him is that he was lonely!! He never had friends!! He is sooo socially stunted he doesnt know many many basic concepts as an adult!! Like how phones work or views or i cant remember anything else what a disgrace but like!!

He would never go to evil school. Why would there be an evil school also?? But he never had anyone but Minion!! He was sooo lonely without Metroman he had to DIY a new dude!! He became a villian because people kept bullying him for being different and weird and so he decided to become what they make him out to be! If he had friends like how the DS makes it out to be, hell, like how the movie makes it out to be then he would never abandon them like that. He would NEVER

Also him the leader?? Are you kidding me?? Where was Minion during all that? And even then why didnt they just use the original DS material? I was hoping to see the fire lady where did she go :( (i cant remember any names tonight huh)

Everyone is so dumb in this movie it hurts. 0 spacial awareness, the conversations dont feel like they fit together, some scenes they literally repeat stuff that was either said already or just dont relate at all. I dont know why that is but it bothered me a lot

The DS looked and acted dumb, they were the most generic ass villains like... WHY DIDNT YOU USE THE ORIGINAL- whatever im. Sigh. But really it was so weird???? If Megamind was supposed to be their LEADER why were they so disrespectful to him? He feared them plenty and yeah sure its because he lied to them but leaders usually are respected. They treated him like shit and didnt listen to him once. Rushed him the whole time and kept making him do things like....... girl... thats your LEADER. Ex leader at worst. Maybe dont throw a party in his HOUSE without even asking or warning him and tell him to not be a party pooper when he demands you to stop it. I have a headache now

The ending was....... interesting. Roxanne becoming mayor feels unrealistic and rushed but alas it fits to the theme of the movie because of that (aka being rushed and unrealistic). The M signal is. Laughable. Silly at the very best. It got a laugh out of me but its just.... unneeded. I dont know i dont get why they had to add it you know. Also obligatory Minion out of the tank moment oh wow woo yippe Why

Overall? There were like 3 jokes at best that i liked + the dance off scene was nice. Funny and kinda in character even. The rest? I will be mad about it forever. 1.5/10

#this took 30 mins to type #im not reading back to edit it #idc #this is my midnight rambles #🧶 #im gonna eat some cheese and rewatch the original movie to rid my thoughts of this evil #megamind #megamind 2 #megamind vs the doom syndicate #this is probably not all thats in my head about it but again #it is midnight and i have a headache so #this is mostly incoherent #long post #cake rambles #cake rants

[agirlunderarock]

Hi, for the character opinion bingo, how about Brunnhilde?

OH HELL YEAH!!! LETS GOOOOOOOO

My dude I have not talked about this King in so long and with the release of the Thor Love and Thunder trailer I'm so excited to see her on screen again. I've missed her so much. I almost got a bingo on this card, because I really do like her in a team dynamic, but Brunnhilde is also one of the few characters that I can read for that absolutely does not need any of the other lead characters in the fic. I don't know if I've really talked about how much I love her arc here. I know I've done so in the past- but Brunnhilde and Thor's character arcs are nearly the same. We just didn't get to see her's play out on screen. I mean we sorta did. We know she was the leader of the Valkyries and helping to carry out Odin's conquest, at least thats the impressions I've always gotten from the flashback sequences. But then of course that all goes south and I can only assume she exiles herself until she stumbles into Sakaar, but it takes Thor desperately asking for her help to give her the push to start getting back to herself. She's still not the same person, she probably doesn't even give her real name to Thor, Bruce and Loki (Thats the only reason I can think of that no one adresses her by name after two movies and over 5 years passing since their first meeting), but she's making progress. She steps into this new version of herself, maybe more suspicious and jaded than before, but a leader and probably a compassionate and determined one at that. Dude I think about those five years she spent building New Asgard and watching Thor slip into that depressive state he found her in so much. Their relationship is so important to me and I know its not going to come up in the new movie, but I wish we could see some of that. How important their friendship has been for both of them recovering from their past traumas and overcoming new ones. I trust Taika to give us hints of it, but I still remember how many of the fans seemed to cut her out of the narrative completely when Thor Ragnarok came out. Brunnhilde is a character that I pay close attention to how people critique her, and write her in fanfiction. If the complaint is that she's introduced as the Strong or Angry Black woman stereotype, then absolutely go off, I feel that is a valid criticism, especially because the only way we see her addressed other than by Scrapper 142 is Angry Girl. However, I like to think that she herself has moved away from that, and Professor Hulk calling her that in Endgame speaks more to how out of touch with everyone he is (guy didn't bother to check in on Thor either so like???? but I also don't think the writers thought that through and I am absolutely giving them too much credit). This is quickly going to turn into me getting frustrated with the way friendship is shown with the Avengers so I'm going to move on to the fanfiction and how fans do her dirty. I am INCREDIBLY picky when it comes to Brunnhilde fanfic, and theres a handful that I constantly go back and read- (Go read Better Laté than Never on AO3 I promise you will not be disappointed) but a lot of the ones I find either end up making her seem preditory, or just straight up a bitch and its so exhausting and frustrating to come across. I trust very few people to write Brunnhilde with nuance and accuracy. She's such an interesting character with such an interesting story, and the parallels between her struggles and Thor after Infinity War are so nice and I can literally talk about her for ever. Theres a shot of her in the new trailer fighting the main antagonist and let me just say, I have never felt so much fear for a character than in that moment. I trust Taika, and I know I need to chill, but the last thing I want is for her to get so roughed up she's taken out of the plot and used as motivation for Thor and Jane, or worse killed for their development. I did not mean to ramble this much, I don't even know if any of this makes sense, but I feel like the MCU is just setting her to the side so often, and fans are even worse.

I'm sorry this was so long- but if anyone would like to hear me ramble and rave about other characters feel free to send me some characters for Character Bingo. MCU, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings/Hobbit and Avatar the Last Airbender and Game of Thrones is all fair game

#character bingo #brunnhilde #Valkyrie #MCU Brunnhilde #mcu valkyrie #thor love and thunder #I swear if no one adresses her by name I'm going to blow a gasket

[bellmo15-blog]

How To Be A Critic In 2024

Hi.

If you’re reading this then that means you have shown interest in becoming a critic! Are you tired of reviews that are purely based on the writers’ opinions and back their views up with “logic?” Do you hate seeing people have fun with a game or movie you otherwise don’t enjoy? Do you just like ruining other people’s fun in general? Then by reading this well detailed guide in a few minutes you two will become a skilled and competent critic able to review and criticise anything on the face of the earth. All you need to do is follow these easy steps and soon you will be on your way to becoming a super smart and super famous critic.

Step 1: You can’t like ANYTHING!

The first step to being a critic nowadays is that you can not like a single thing. EVER! You MUST hate everything! You can’t show any positivity towards anything that releases nowadays even if that thing ends up being good anyway. When everyone else is enjoying themselves with the newest Sonic game that just released, it’s up to you to rise up and complain that Sonic was never good and that he should of stayed in the 90’s where he belongs! Oh and also throw in some random line about how Sonic had a rough transition to 3D and how he doesn’t work in 3D.

This is because every bit of entertainment that releases nowadays isn’t good anyway and we need to remind people of that! Things were so much better in the 80’s where games were much shorter and had way more bullshit in them to make you keep playing. “But what if I play or watch something new that comes out nowadays and I do end up liking it?” Oh, that’s easy, just don’t talk about it! After all, you need to keep up appearances. And don’t bother talking about indie projects either, they aren’t worth your time. “But my friend told me Ultrakill is a really fun arena shooter with a lot of content that makes it worth playing as well as super satisfying gameplay and that it’s well worth the…” IT’S NOT WORTH YOUR TIME!

Step 2: Learn what the term “Hyperbole” means and use it. CONSTALLY!

Okay, this is one of the most important steps you gotta learn people. Hyperbole is your friend! If you’re not being hyperbolic in your reviews then your not doing your job! You can’t just say stuff like “Ehh, this wasn’t for me/I didn’t really like this as much as I wish I did/maybe I’ll like the next one more.” NO! You GOTTA ramp it up! Exaggerate to high Hell and back! Say stuff like “WORST MOVIE/GAME EVER! THIS MOVIE/GAME IS A COMPLEATE FAILURE! IT RUINED THE FRANCHSIE! IT’S TARNASHING THE LEGACY OF THIS FRANCHSIE! IT KILLED MY CHILDHOOD! IT TOOK ME TO BRAZIL TO RAPE ME AND THEN DOXXED MY HOME ADRESSE AND SAID IT WAS GOING TO DO THE SAME TO MY FAMILY!” Does this seem a little extreme to say about something you don’t like? No, not at all! It’s completely justified, and you’ll be taken more seriously as long as you remember to use hyperbole as much as you can!

Step 3: Everything is woke now! And that’s bad!

So, you may be reading this and wondering to yourself “What is woke?” Well in case you really have been living under a rock allow me to define it in simple terms! It’s when creators shove some kind of politics down our throat that we never asked for! A person of colour being in a film? That’s woke! A female character being a badass? That’s also woke! Two characters of the same sex being in a relationship? That’s also just as woke! This is woke! That is woke! EVERYTHING is woke! EVERYTHING is political and you have to point it out even if it seems like there’s no real political motivation to the stuff you’re pointing out! If someone says your stretching, then you have a right to defend yourself by saying that they are defending that stories wokeness!

And remember, when talking about wokeness always remember to take a jab at Disney Star Wars as they have shoved there wokeness into the franchise and destroyed it entirely and also remember to ignore the fact that your talking about a franchise that literally has the word “wars” in it, George Lucas has admitted that he based the battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi of the Vietnam war and if A New Hope was released today we’d get a bunch of people complaining about the scene where C-3PO and R2-D2 get kicked out of the cantina because “we don’t serve there kind here.”

Step 4: Make your reviews an hour long!

“Wait, an hour long?” I hear you asking. “That seems a little long. Why not 10 minutes? Or 30? You know, long enough to get the point across?” And to that I say your not thinking big enough! Dragging out your videos to an hour or more long will guarantee you get your points across and ensure the ad revenue you make is worth it. Hell, why stop at just 1 hour!? Why not 2? Or 3? OR 8 HOURS!? Talk about absolutely EVERYTHING in a bit of fiction! What’s that? Journey only takes an hour beat and is a game where your meant to come to your own conclusion about what it’s about or what you think it might be about? Oh no no no, you need to drag it out into a 3-hour long essay about how it’s about the concept of death and have an hour-long intro talking about how no other games up to this point have even come close to what Journey archives and only barely scratched the surface. Speaking of…

Step 5: Over analyse EVERYTHING!

This one is self-explanatory. Look deeply into absolutely everything that you can even if the conclusion you’re coming to is a massive stretch. Take the Mortal Kombat character D'vorah for example. A character who kills of major characters in the story yet get’s away with it every time. Now, why would she do this? Is it because she’s super smart as a result of her being a collection of various bugs controlling a humanoid shell? Could it be because she’ll do anything for her hives survival including playing both sides and betraying everyone so much it would make Revolver Ocelot blush?... If, you know, Ocelot was into Anthro bug ladies. NOPE! It’s because someone on the dev team loves this character with a passion and just wants to piss of the fanbase by using her to kill off popular characters… For some reason. Yes, that is DEFINENTLLY the reason why D’Vorah get’s so much love from Netherrealm.

Step 6: You are ALWAYS right!

You might think that as a critic who’s job it is to criticise other people’s work for a living that other people have a right to criticise you for when you make a mistake. Except no, they don’t! The calm and reasonable and level-headed guy who backs his arguments up with logic will always, ALWAYS be wrong compared to you, the man who’s angry 24/7 and doesn’t like anything. Because that is a WAY healthier way to live!

Step 7: Make shit up!

Finally, when all else fails and you can’t think of anything else the best thing you can do is just make random shit up! Lie, spread rumours, feed into the bullshit machine, say that this game/movie/show/whatever is going to bomb and not make any money because you think no one will be interested in it and keep yourself that little bubble of yours because if you say something enough times then it will become true. And when something does come out and your proven wrong and people do end up enjoying the thing you spent the last few months trash talking because your own personal bias got in the way and you refuse to go outside your little bubble you live in just say those people have no taste or that they are being paid off or that they live in their own bubble!

And that’s it! That is the guide! As long as you remember to follow these easy steps then you will be sure to get over a million subscribers on your Youtube channel. As well as never being happy, never being fun, never being able to enjoy anything and always putting others down. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go make a 24 hour long essay about how Super Mario RPG Remake is an insult to the original SNES classic and bully the people who are enjoying it while supporting harassment of the people who worked on the game all for that sweet sweet Youtube money! Thanks for reading and don’t forget to like and follow!

[goyurim]

i love this new trend in romcoms with no forced breakups towards the end, just real problems that couples face and work through them together to resolve them

i think it started with run on and now homecha is doing the same thing with highlighting how one person might be a lot more vulnerable than the other in the relationship and that takes a toll on them because the other is not ready to open up to them yet and instead of crying about it to literally everyone else they know, they actually speak to them about how much it affects them and try to resolve it in any and every way they can

mi joo talks to seon gyeom about how it hurts her that he keeps climbing over her walls but never lets her climb over his and seon gyeom understands and apologises. and now hye jin tells du shik how she's shown every side of her to him yet he hides away his pains and that burdens her because she wants to know him. all of him. and when he can't give her an answer she takes a step back and lets him figure things out with himself until he can.

it's a very real issue in relationships, to be able to lay down all your cards in front of someone and wonder if they'll still love you the same after they've seen all of you and it takes a lot of courage to face something like this head on. what i particularly appreciate is that neither of them argue. neither of them fight or break up. they just adress the issue as maturely as possible. and its so refreshing to watch

#hometown cha cha cha #run on #yeah ok run on had a break up in the end #but it wasnt technically a Break Up break up #it was just a break #like it was in homecha #idk i just really like it #its all about the ~ healthy communication ~ *italian hands* #moon talks

[juneviews]

I only started watching Safe House this season because of riding the OffGun wave from Not Me. (It showed up in my YouTube recommendations.) I've never watched an OffGun variety show or interview before, having only seen them in their roles in dramas. Because I don't speak Thai, I've been finding Safe House translations on Twitter and Instagram. A few of the translators were quick to point out Off's pronoun usage in Safe House: Off repeatedly calling Gun both "ter" (a form of "you" which is considered both highly affectionate and intimate) and "noo" (literally "mouse," but often used when affectionately addressing young children, so loosely translated as "baby" or "son"). My question is, is this typically how Off has addressed Gun in the past? Or is this new behavior from him? I also noticed that Gun dropped into goo/meung ("I/you" but very rude and informal) for a bit on day 5 when he was mad at Off for making him wake up from a nap to go get wet in the pool, which I thought was a hilarious. One translator claimed Gun never spoke this way as a rule, so it was clear he wanted Off to know how irritated he was at him. It was Gun's way of putting him in the dog house until he got a proper apology from Off. Anyway, I guess I just really want to know how they usually address each other (and if all of this is new or typical for them) because I know you've actually watched their variety shows and interviews. Thanks!

okay so lots of things to comment on! so usually off calls gun "gun" to say "you" or "he." he's also been using "ter" for a little while, which is not used by men a lot unless they're talking to their girlfriends most of the time & as far as I know he's the only actor who uses that pronoun when talking to his ship. I've never heard him call gun "noo" but since everyone says he does I think I've just missed it. "noo" is often a pronoun used by women to say "I" when talking to someone older. another pronoun I've heard off call gun is "geh" which is pretty informal but not too rude, easy to use for interviews & public appearances. as for gun, he obviously calls off "papii", or sometimes "p'off", but that's much more rare since as we know off doesn't like it lmao. I don't remember if he uses other pronouns for off though. as for "kuu" & "meung", they're a very vulgar way to adress others, so you should do it only with your friends of the same age. if someone is older than you, you cannot use "meung" but you'll use "phi" instead. for example, off uses "kuu" to refer to himself & "meung" with all the safe house guys bc he's the oldest, but no one calls him "meung" bc that would be just rude. so if gun called off "meung" (which I missed omg), it means that he's VERY close to off to be able to talk to him that way & was pissed off at him indeed lol. hope that was helpful, and I really recommend you watch offgun fun night & offgun mommy taste bc both shows are truly the best variety shows there is out there!!!

xxx

#answers #offgun #gmmtv safe house #gmmtv safe house season 3 #axelle learns thai

[ptergwen]

Could you write something about Tom going live on IG with his gf? like, they recently went public and the fans freak out about how whipped Tom looks or something like that 👉🏻👈🏻

eep this is adorable 🥺 i def want overboard cuz it’s pretty long uh

“love, you getting in?” tom calls to you from the living room, phone propped up in front of him. “yeah, one sec!” you yell back and join him on the couch. he puts an arm around your shoulders with a kiss to the side of your head. you lean into him more, his fingers running up and down your arm. “you sure you’re ready to do this, hm? we don’t have to,” he says quietly.

it wouldn’t be an understatement to say the entire world has been buzzing about yours and tom’s possible relationship for months already. a few out of context paparazzi pictures sparked the rumors. tom held you protectively by his side while you headed to the car after dinner one night. the moment was captured along with a few other intimate ones as time went on.

there was so much speculation, fans scowering the internet for your social media, trying to figure out who you were and how you knew tom. they’d come up with the wildest theories not just about you two, but about you only. some funny, some creepy, some just completely untrue. you’d come to a point where you wanted to set the record straight.

tom didn’t have any intentions of going public at first. this was exactly why. he already didn’t like what people were saying about you, so he couldn’t and refused to imagine how it would be if he confirmed you’re together. he’d thought he was doing what was best for you until you asked him to break the news to everyone.

he was skeptical of doing so, not wanting to put that attention on you because his experiences haven’t been so great, but you assured him over and over again you wanted this. tom eventually gave in and made a post with a caption the length of an essay to tell everyone about your relationship. he’d only hit post after you read it over and approved everything, of course.

today, you’re going live with him so his fans can get to know you a bit better.

“i’m okay, baby. i think you’re more nervous than i am,” you laugh out and give his cheek a quick peck. “probably. gonna have to learn to share my girl with the world,” tom sighs, keeping his arm tight around you as he leans forward. “they’ll want to steal you away from me.” “other way around, i think,” you retort. he’s forgetting he’s the internationally loved one.

“not after this.” he glances over at you so you lock eyes. “can i start the live?” “go for it,” you agree and watch him press the button. it connects a few seconds later, tom exhaling as he sits back again. going live in general always makes him anxious. having you here, subjecting you to the possible wrath of his followers, spikes his anxiety even more.

you put a calming hand on his knee, which he smiles at. you’re okay, he’s alright, you’ll both be fine. tens of thousands of people flood the live at once. the numbers grow right before your eyes, so much that it’s intimidating. “woah,” you mutter, earning a chuckle from tom. the comments don’t take long to start coming in.

everyone is saying your name in all caps and keyboard smashing. tom likes to wait a little before officially starting, giving himself some time to figure out what to say and things. he grins at you in his camera, you furrowing your eyebrows back. “hey guys,” tom begins as casually as usual. he purposely ignores all the comments yelling at him to explain himself.

he loves messing with the poor people.

“how’s everyone’s day going? we’re great, having a blast over here,” he carries on, pulling you in closer to his chest. “oh, you’re funny,” you mumble and pat his knee. your head is resting on his shoulder while you read the comments from your lopsided angle.

“they’re telling me to talk. should i talk?” you jokingly ask for tom’s permission. “rather you than me,” tom mumbles and presses his lips to your forehead briefly. that sparks more hearts and way more questions. you sit up again to properly adress the half a million people watching you. it’s a fuck ton, definitely not as many as you’d expected.

you’re that popular, huh?

“jeez, there’s a lot of you in here. this is terrifying,” you gasp at the thought, turning to tom. “how do you do this?” “rarely,” he replies and bites back another smile. “i get so stressed.” adjusting yourself so you’re sitting criss cross, you raise your hands in defense. “no, i have too much power right now. i don’t like it.”

“you sound like thanos,” tom decides, bursting into a fit of giggles when you shove at his arm. you then kiss your hand and tap his cheek with it to make up. his skin is warm. “anyways. i guess i’ll, like, introduce myself? i’m y/n.” the fans are cracking up at you two, others dropping the soft eyes emoji. tom makes that same face at you in real time.

“that’s about it. um,” you let out a laugh. “i don’t know. thanks for having me and being pretty nice so far.” he keeps gazing at you while you link your arm in his, your head on his shoulder again. “keep being nice because tom will cry or something if you aren’t.” he’s looking at you with literal heart eyes, a small smile on his lips, listening to your every word.

“seriously though, i hope you guys like me. you seem pretty cool. we-“ you cut yourself off when more comments than earlier spam the screen. “what happened?” you pick up tom’s phone to read them. they alert you of his heart eyes, so you put his phone back down and see for yourself. his small smile becomes a toothy one.

“aw, tommy,” you coo, rubbing your nose against his, tom pecking your lips. “doing good, love.” he can’t help himself. he doesn’t have to anymore. everyone starts shouting iterations of she called him tommy and they kissed, but you’re both caught up in each other at the moment.

by high demand, you join tom for another live soon after this one.

#tom holland #tom holland fluff #tom holland imagine #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x reader #tom holland fic #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland smut #peter parker fluff

[raibebe]

Simple Lessons

Genre: fluff Words: 3.200 Prompt: 90s grunge boy Jeno x female reader

Warnings: smoking, mentions of food

A/N: Literally no one asked for this but this just poured out of me the other day... EVERLONG JENO IS MY COMFORT CHARACTER OKAY??

Everlong masterlist

“Do you want to go out to grab lunch? You don’t have classes until later as well, right?” Your best friend asked as she dragged you out of the lecture hall. “Sure,” you smiled, basking in the rays of the sun for a while after being stuck inside an auditorium with barely any daylight for two hours straight. “There is this cute new diner a little off-campus and a little birdie told me there is this super hot guy working there,” she wiggled her eyebrows to which you could just groan loudly, making her giggle in return. Mimi had talked you up during orientation days and you two hadn’t seperated since. Sharing majors surely helped with that and soon you had found a small group of girls to call your friends. While she was very much the flirty, extrovert in your group, a crush on a different boy each day of the week, you couldn’t not be fond of her shenanigans when it made all of you laugh out loud whenever she told stories of yet another drastically failed date. “Not everyone can still be with their Highschool boyfriend like you,” she accused, slapping your arm before tugging you in the direction of the diner. “Are we really going to this diner just because someone told you that one of the waiters is hot?” “Listen. This was a very trustworthy source,” Mimi pouted, “I’ll pay for your meal, just come with me please.” “How can I say no to free food?” You laughed loudly, letting her pull you along while complaining about all the assignments your professors had given out.

You had to admit that the diner was really cute. It had this old-school look inside with the red, big sofas and a variety of license plates decorated the walls and the female servers even wore cute puffy skirts. “This is so pretty,” you said once Mimi had chosen a booth, the leather of the sofa squeaking while you sat down. “Yeah, yeah,” she waved it off, looking around the place, “Now where is this hot waiter?” “You’re hopeless,” you giggled, picking up the menu that was already laid out on the table to look at their food options instead of helping your friend. “Shut up,” she grumbled, copying your action, “You also still haven’t introduced us to your boyfriend.”

“Yeah,” you sighed, “He’s...” Well, what were you supposed to say now? If it were to go how you had wanted, your friends would have already met Jeno at the first party you were invited to but he had declined the offer, only sweetly kissing your head and promising to pick you up at 2 am from the adress you had given him. Which he had done but by that time everyone was so wasted that they couldn’t remember a thing. Which had become a reoccurring theme, no matter how much you’d bribe them to not drink to finally catch a glympse at him. “If you all would stop drinking yourself into a coma every time we go out, you’d have met him already.” “I am beginning to think you’ve made him up,” Mimi grinned, “He seems way too perfect. Letting you go out and party on your own and picking your drunk ass up after but then he never shows up to your classes to walk you to the next one.” Well just maybe you hadn’t gotten around to telling your friends that Jeno in fact wasn’t even studying but working different part-time jobs to help finance your apartment until he had figured out what he wanted to do in the first place. They had just assumed he was studying something way different than you hence why you wouldn’t meet up during your breaks. “Well he is real,” you sighed, “He’s just... Different?” “Oooooh, I get it,” your friend grinned, “He’s older than you. Oh my god. Do you have a sugar daddy?” At that you let out an embarrassed screech which made her double over with laughter. “Why would you say that?” You whined, “He’s the same age as us, for real.”

“Hi ladies, I see you’re already having a great time. I’ll be your waiter for today, have you already decided what to get?” A deep velvety voice interrupted. You didn’t need to look up to know who the waiter was or what he looked like because his voice was almost as familar to your ears as your own was and you knew his body inside and out. Smiling brightly, your eyes met Jeno’s who was also smiling, throwing you a little wink. You had known that he had been working in a diner for a little while now but not this specific one so it was a nice surprise to see him here clad in a neat button-down and pants that for once weren’t ripped to shreds. Meanwhile, Mimi was stunned in silence, her mouth parted in what must be awe. “Hi,” you kept smiling at Jeno, “Anything you can recommend?” “Our burgers are pretty good,” he shrugged, “But what’s really good are our milkshakes.” “Then we’ll take that, right?” You asked your friend, kicking her shin beneath the table to get her to snap out of it. “Y-yeah sure,” she stuttered, still blatantly gawking at Jeno. “Great, I’ll be right back with your drinks,” Jeno smiled before walking off again.

“Girl he’s so hot oh my god,” Mimi exclaimed as soon as he was out of earshot, dramatically flopping down onto the table. “He’s really good-looking,” you admitted, a big grin on your face. “Better than your boyfriend?” “I wouldn’t say that,” you laughed, awkwardly shuffling in your seat. Was this the right time to tell her that the waiter apparently a lot of girls were thirsting after was in fact your boyfriend and probably not at all like they thought him out to be? “God, I bet he looks so good out of his uniform as well,” she groaned, “Just the thought of him in light washed denim.” At that, you had to mask a burst of laughter with an awkward cough. You had tried times and times again to convince Jeno to swap out one of his dark jeans for light-washed ones but he wasn’t budging, only in turn challenging you to wear one of his many black baggy T-shirts instead of your brightly colored spaghetti tops. “Sure,” you giggled instead, kicking your friend’s shin again to alert her when Jeno came back with your drinks. “There you go, food will be out in a bit,” he smiled politely. Not the kind of smile that turned his eyes into beautiful crescents but a more reserved one.

“Hey, uhm,” Mimi suddenly spoke up when Jeno turned around to walk away again, making him halt in his steps. “Have you been working here for long?” Oh god. You had to physically keep yourself from cringing at her awkward try to rope him into a conversation. “Just a handful of weeks, so not that long,” Jeno shrugged, “Looking for a job as well?” “Oh no, we both work part-time at a clothing store downtown,” she waved it off, “I was just wondering because I had never seen you around before.” “Well yeah, makes sense I haven’t been here for long.” “So you recently moved here? I’m sure I would have remembered a handsome face like yours,” Mimi now blatantly flirted, twirling a dyed strand of hair around her finger and just slightly leaning forward on the table to give Jeno a better view of her cleavage in her white cropped top. “Yeah, I’m not from around here,” he shared, his eyes firmly staying on her face but the redness of his ears and how his fingers were fiddling with his little notepad betrayed his cool facade. Was this the time where you should end this to save Mimi and Jeno from further embarrassment? Or should you enjoy this for a little longer? “Are you also a student?” She asked next, “We both go to university here.” “Oh god no,” Jeno exclaimed and this time you couldn’t hold in the little giggle that slipped past your lips, noticing that your boyfriend’s lips twitched into a little grin as well. The more Jeno saw you struggle between classes, essays and study sessions, the more sure he had become about his whole decision to not do the whole university thing. Just when your friend wanted to ask the next question, a loud voice interrupted: “Jeno, I am not paying you for flirting with customers! Get back to work!” Rolling his eyes at his boss, Jeno shot the two of you an apologetic look before quickly walking to the register where his boss was waiting.

“God, even his name sounds good,” Mimi groaned, returning to her former position, sprawled out over the table. “You sound like you’re in love with him,” you giggled, “You don’t even know him.” “Listen. This is love at first sight. Do you not watch romance movies?” You did in fact. Even though Jeno would complain throughout the whole first 30 minutes of the movie until he’d either accept his fate in favor of cuddling and letting you pet his hair or actually get invested in the movie as well, cursing the characters for being so stupid and not talking out their problems. “I do, dummy,” you rolled your eyes, taking a sip from your milkshake that didn’t disappoint after Jeno had praised it so much, “But don’t you need to get to know a person before you can love them?”

“You’re the one with a boyfriend,” she mumbled, collecting herself from the table to take a sip of her drink as well, “Tell me about him.” “My boyfriend?” “Yeah, you never speak much about him and don’t let us meet him either. Convince me he’s not made up.” “Well we know each other since childhood,” you shared, feeling heat creep up your cheeks and neck, knowing how cliche your story sounded, “He lived in the house next to ours so we played a lot as children but then my family had to move away when I was in like elementary school or something because of my dad’s work but eventually we moved back for my last year of highschool.” “Oh wow, that must have sucked to leave all your friends behind twice.” Sighing, you ran your hands through your hair. “It wasn’t easy to just leave everything behind, but I managed. We moved back into our old house and he was also still living in the house next to us with his family. His mom made him take me to school every day and we shared a lot of classes and then it just went from there,” you smiled, blatantly leaving out the part where you had to basically force Jeno to speak and open up to you at nights on his rooftop beneath the moon and the stars. That was a private matter you didn’t want to share without his consent.

“That is so wholesome,” Mimi cheered, “What’s he like?” “Different?” You tried to explain, swirling your straw in your milkshake, “Like different than you’d expect him to be. When you see us together, you’d probably say we don’t match.” “Ooooh,” she nodded, her eyes wide, “So you’re like opposites?” “You could say that,” you smiled, “But when you get to know us, we’re not that different.” Before she could ask more questions, Jeno interrupted you again, hands full of your plates. “And that’s your food girls. Please enjoy,” he smiled, placing the plates down, “If you need anything else, I’ll be around.” “Actually,” Mimi began and you had to hold yourself back from interrupting her, “I was wondering when your shift is ending.” “My shift?” Jeno repeated, his eyes shortly drifting over to you. “Yeah,” she smiled, waiting for his answer. “I’m off in a bit,” he said slowly after checking the time on the neon clock hanging over the counter. “So you’re free after we’re done with our food?” She pressed on. “Probably?” “Would you like to hang out after? We still have some time until our next classes start. “Hang out. With you two,” he repeated, still dumbstruck by her boldness. “I mean you don’t have to if you really don’t want or have something to do,” she shrugged but you knew that look in her eyes. She was determined to have him hang out with you. “I was just going to go get groceries and go home,” Jeno shared, “Listen, I gotta go back to work or my boss will literally fire me because he already hates me.” With an apologetic smile, he quickly walked down to another table where a couple was seemingly done with their meal.

“You’re so shameless,” you accused your friend, finally digging into your meal. “Listen. I see a hot boy and need to talk to him, it’s as easy as that,” Mimi giggled, taking a bite from her burger. “Now tell me more about that boyfriend of yours.”

Once you were finished with your meal, Jeno already wasn’t there anymore to take your bill, instead, a cute girl with a big puffy skirt handed your friend the bill. “But half the stuff is missing,” Mimi asked, “I’m paying for both of us.” “Oh, my colleague took care of one of the meals,” the waiter smiled, “He must like one of you.” “I told you my flirting was worth it,” your friend smiled, handing over the money. You really didn’t have it in you to tell her that Jeno most likely covered for your half of the meal when she seemed so genuinely happy about it, so you swallowed the words back down even if it was going to come out sooner or later when you’d finally get Jeno to meet your friends.

Apparently, the universe wanted it to be sooner because as soon as you stepped back out of the diner and into the sun, a boy clad in all black caught your attention. He was leaning against the little railing around the diner, a cigarette between his lean fingers. “Hey,” you nudged your friend, nodding towards Jeno. “Huh?” “It’s the waiter,” you explained, looking over at him. By now it looked like he was trying his hardest to hold back his grin while taking another drag. Shocking people with his looks still was one of his favorite things to do if they only knew him from one of his jobs where he had to wear a uniform. “No way,” Mimi whispered, “He looks like a completely different guy.” “You’re not in love anymore now?” “He’s just so…” “Different?” You helped her out, rolling your eyes. Why could no one see past the dark clothes, chains and the cigarette and made the effort to actually get to know Jeno? “I don’t think he’s my type.” “You’re ridiculous,” you snorted, leaving her behind to walk over to Jeno.

“Hey bubblegum,” he smiled, curling an arm around your waist like it was second nature already, “Fancy seeing you here.” “You didn’t tell me that was the diner you applied to,” you pouted, scrunching your nose at the smell of smoke. “I didn’t know it was close to your campus,” he shrugged it off and stubbed out the remainder of his cigarette after taking a last drag, making an effort to blow the smoke away from you, “Your friend tried really hard to flirt with me.” “She’s an idiot,” you rolled your eyes, looping your arms around his torso to hug him close, “I missed you.” “I made you breakfast literally this morning,” he laughed but pulled you closer to him anyways. “If you work this close you could have come to visit.” “Bubblegum…” Jeno sighed, tucking a wild strand of hair back into place. “My friends think I’ve made up my boyfriend,” you pouted. “You want to show your friend back there how real I am? I think her eyes are already very close to falling out of her head.” “What’s going on in that head of yours Jeno Lee?” “Let me show you,” he grinned, cupping your face with one of his hands before pressing his lips to yours in a languid kiss, the taste of smoke on his breath familiar by now. “You really need to quit,” you grumbled against his lips. “I know,” he sighed but kissed you again anyways, “Wasn’t expecting to see you this soon.” “So you smoke in secret?” “Stop arguing when I’m trying to kiss you,” he grumbled, playfully biting your bottom lip. “Stop kissing me when I’m trying to safe your lungs,” you pouted, slapping his chest for emphasis but didn’t protest and insted kissed you again, languid and deep.

“Are you two done making out now?” Mimi suddenly interrupted you, making your face heat up as you took a step back from Jeno who was having nothing of that and pulled you back against his side by your waist. “Yeah, all done,” he grinned, holding one of his hands out for your friend to shake, “I’m Jeno.” “I figured from your boss screaming at you,” she mumbled but shook his hand anyways, giving him her name as well, “You made me look like a fool. Like you could have told me you were the infamous boyfriend refusing to meet us.” “It’s not like I was refusing.” “You totally were,” you butted in, pinching his side. “Listen it doesn’t sound as appealing to spend my evenings with a group of all girls as you think it does,” he defended himself, “And now you have a witness that I am in fact real.” “You’re not getting out of his now, Jeno Lee,” you grinned, lacing your fingers together. “And if I told you I had this really important thing to do?” He tried, throwing you his best puppy eyes. “We can go grocery shopping after my last class,” you rolled your eyes, “You’re walking back to campus with us now.” “Yes, ma’am,” he rolled his eyes, “Let me carry your bag.” “Oh god, you’ll make me feel so single,” Mimi groaned when you handed Jeno your backpack to carry. “You wanted this, I can leave any time,” your boyfriend shrugged, “Do you have like stones in your bag or something?” “It’s called books, you should try it,” you said, playfully sticking out your tongue. “Why am I even dating you?” Jeno just rolled his eyes. “Because you love me,” you smiled brightly. “Yeah, I kinda do,” he confessed, squeezing your hand.

“No need to make me feel even more single,” Mimi groaned again, “Do you have any hot friends to introduce me to, Jeno?” “I don’t think they’re your style,” he shrugged it off, motioning at his attire of ripped black jeans and dark shirt. “So you do have some hot friends that are also single?” “You almost fainted when you saw me, I don’t think you could handle them.” “Don’t judge a book by its cover, babe,” you smiled, leaning into his body. “Sure, bubblegum,” he gently smiled back.

Because if you had judged him by his cover, you’d never be as happy as you were right now.

#jeno #lee jeno #nct #nct dream #kafenetwork #jeno fluff #nct fluff #nct dream fluff #jeno scenarios #jeno imagines #jeno fic #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct dream imagines #nct dream scenarios #nct dream fic

[lunaekalenda]

hi! i have a request about jean and reader that are internet friends who have never seen each other in a real life. they just chat somewhere using nicknames. one day they accidentally meet irl and jean invites reader on a date. later they text each other about this date and both feel jealous. they are just sooo confused, cause they like someone irl, then why they don't want their internet friend to find a s/o? and happy ending, please? i hope that you take good care of yourself, love u <3

omg sure! i just got heavily inspired about this, i hope you like it!! take care of yourself too, anon ! <3

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jean x reader

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jkst is online

jkst is typing...

jkst: hi

Your phone rings at this last notification. You take your phone. The world-wide used avatar chat app sound comes with another message.

jkst: that sounded awkward lol

You unlock your phone and enter the chat, reading the two new messages. You type fast, a smile on your lips.

outofcoolnames: hey, Kir.

He told you his name was Kir. The first day you met, you received a little document with all the chat rules, in where you can't share your name, your city or pictures of you. It has to be safe for everyone. On the other side of the chat, Jean chuckles. He always does when he reads your username.

outofcoolnames: yeah like it sounded as if we were having a normal conversation.

outofcoolnames: what are you doing awake so early? it isn't noon yet lol go back to sleep.

Kir never, never messaged you before noon, and he always tells you he has been sleeping, so finding his message at 10 on the morning while you're working surprised you a lot. Fortunately, there isn't a lot of people on the book shop, so you can answer him calmly.

jkst: oh, you think you're funny? us adults have to wake up early for adult things. you'll never understand, child.

You don't know exactly his age, even when it is legal to share it on the chat, but you know he's on his early twenties. You raise a brow quietly. You tip fast while a couple enters the bookshop, with a little girl on their hands.

outofcoolnames: sure, geezer. now, if you let me, i have to work because i'm an adult.

You put your phone on your pocket, getting closer to the family. "How can I help you?"

The little girl tells you that she wants a "huge, no, enormous book about fairies with some dragons and a huge festival?"

You need almost an hour to let the girl decide between all the books you showed her. She finally decided for a illustrated book full of classic tales. You give it to her mother and, thanking the family, you open the door for them. When you close, looking at all the books you have to put back in the shelves, you hear an unpleasant sound followed by a deep moan. When you look at the crystal door, you can see a tall boy rubbing his forehead, his other hand on the door. You realize you hit him.

“Oh no, sorry, sorry.” you say, opening the door. He takes his honey eyes to you, his forehead a little red and his big hand rubbing the place where he got hurt. “Come in, please.” you say. You think you have a pomade inside.

“Yes, that was what I was trying to do, actually.” he jokes. You blush, you hit him and he’s literally joking about it. 

“Please sit here.” You show him a little sofa you have for kids to read. He’s not sure his knees will enter on the little couch, so he says he doesn’t need to sit. You run to the back of the store, taking a pomade from the bathroom. “Here, put this. It should avoid a bump.” He thanks it and puts a little on his forehead. You look at him while he does it. 

He has to take his light brown fringe out of his face to rub the pomade on his forehead. His hands are big, with bony and really long fingers that end on good-cared nails. His eyes are honey like color, and he has a mullet on the back of his head. He ends applying the pomade and takes his hand back down. He offers you the other.

“Jean Kirstein. Just in case you want to pay me a coffee.” You blush. After all, you hit him. Maybe you should invite him to drink something. Your half morning break starts now, so you take his hand.

“Y/N. And, casually, I have a break now. Where do you want to take a cup?”

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Jean opened the door this time and that made you laugh. He closed behind him and searches a free table with his tall body. He walks towards one.

“Sorry, I opened it, I still have war flashbacks.” You laugh and you both ask for your drinks. “So, Y/N, you should look more at doors.” you laugh.

“I know, I know. My bad, sorry.” you say. He shows a big smile.

He’s attractive, you can’t deny it. From his marked jaw to his smooth clavicle, seen through the open buttons of his shirt. Also, he has a really cute smile. He looks around, to all the people in the café. He smiles at you.

“So, you work on a book shop?”

Jean and you keep talking while you drink your coffees. He tells you he has been working on some art pieces lately. As you could suppose, he’s a painter. 

“I wish I could live just by painting. I work on an office all afternoons.” He says. The smile on his face fades a bit when he talks about the office. You listen to him quietly, his face quietly changing when you ask him more about his paintings. The break passes fast and he decideds to give you his number.

"You know. That way you don't need to hit me on the face with a door." you laugh and blush again. Is he going to forget it?

"Please, don't tell anyone..." you ask. He nods and leaves, a huge smile on his face. You feel butterflies.

Does liking someone feel like this?

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jkst: sorry, i disappeared today. i had a date.

You let the towel fall from your head while you read the message, the other towel around your body.

outofcoolnames: oh wow, a date.

You felt uncomfortable. Kir had a date. But well, you don’t know him. He has to search someone to date, after all.

jkst: jealous? :P

outofcoolnames: nah. i also got one.

Now is Jean the one looking at his phone with frown brows. He has no shirt on and he’s lying on his bed. He sits to read that message twice. You look at the paper with Jean's telephone number. Should you call him today? maybe tomorrow? or maybe send a message to let him know your number.

outofcoolnames: i think that silence means you’re jealous :D

Jean doesn’t know why, but he is. Damn, of course he is. He shouldn’t because you’re just internet friends, you didn’t saw each other. He doesn’t know how you look, what personality you have or if you’re even on the same country as him! 

jkst is typing...

jkst is online

jkst is typing...

jkst is online

jkst - last connection, now

You look at it. Has he just left? The hell? What is wrong with this guy? You let out a sigh and change to the other app. You introduce Jean's number and search him on the list, your lip between your teeth. You find him. His profile picture is a cute selfie of himself and a little cat. You message him.

y/n: hey, i'm y/n. this is my number if you want to adress it.

His answer comes in seconds.

Jean: oh, the door friend. cool, adding you.

That way of jocking, that way of tyiping. Why does it remember you to Kir? You shake your head. It doesn't. It's just that Kir left unexpectedly.

y/n: yeah i'm sorry, i hit you with the door. should we see each other another time?

Jean: sure. why not tomorrow? when's your break?

Wow, tomorrow. The guy is fast as hell. You check the other app, but Kir isn't online. You send him a quick message.

outofcoolnames: hi?

Again, no response, no connection. You go back to the other chat quickly. You answer that your break is tomorrow at 11:30, as it was today.

Jean: i'll make the effort to wake up that early. see you tomorrow.

y/n: bye :D

You go to sleep, but you check the other app a couple times.

On the next street, lying on his bed, Jean checks it too.

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"Good morning, y/n" he says when you enter the café. You search Jean. He's playing with his phone, moving it between his hands. You take a seat in front of him. You put yours on the table, side up. He does the same and you order some coffee. As the other day, you talk casually about a lot of things.

"Jean!" you hear a boy calling him. Jean looks around and finds the owner of the voice. He's a tall man, with a bun. Holding his hand, a black-haired girl smiles at Jean.

"Wow, Eren and Mikasa, the happy married couple!" Jean looks at you. "Could you excuse me for a moment? I promise I'll be back as fast as I can." He winks at you and gets up. You take your phone from near his. You enter the app. Kir has entered before, but he didn't answer you. You sigh and type.

outofcoolnames: look, kir, i... i was joking. i really like this guy and i think he also likes me but... when i'm here... i think about you. it is dumb because i don't know you. but i do. please, come back.

When you hit the send button, Jean's phone illuminates and sounds. The same sound your app has.

Wait a damn minute. Why did his app sound when you sent the message?

It has to be a coincidence. You debate between trying again and leaving it, but one more message isn't going to be a catastrophe. You tip again.

outofcoolnames: kir?

Again, his phone illuminates and sounds. Does that mean he is Kir?

You look behind you. Jean keeps talking with the couple. He said his last name before, it was something with a K, right? K, K, K....

Kirstein. Kirstein, right? He's not called Kir. It is a part of his surname. You enter fast his user. jkst. Jean Kirstein. Jean Fucking Kirstein. You look at him again. That's why his way of texting reminds you of him. That's why you think of Kir when Jean talks. Because it's the same person.

You like Kir. You like Jean. You like the two versions of the same person. Jean comes back quickly and he sits. He takes his phone. "Oh, did it sound?" he asks. But you can only look at him. You look at his hazel eyes. The eyes you wanted to see for so long, the lips you wanted to meet. They are all there. Kir is there.

"Do you use... ChatApp?" you ask, with quite voice. Jean smiles, blushed.

"I... I do.. I've met a person there. We chat often. Their username is really cool."

"The username is literally outofcoolnames." you reply.

"Yeah, but it gives like... What?" he looks at his phone. "Did you read my messages?"

You take your phone from under the table, the chat with jkst opened.

"No. I wrote them."

Jean looks at your phone. That's his ChatApp account. That's your ChatApp account. That is your chat. His head was a mess. He liked two people. But you're both of them? Is this fortune?

"You... You don't know how much I wanted to meet you." he sighs. He admires every single detail of your face. They all are like in your descriptions. He has been so blind.

"I also wanted to meet you. But Jean appeared before Kir. I liked Kir, but I assumed he had his partner, and you looked really interested..." you whisper.

"Do you believe in destiny?" he asks. He takes his phone to the table again. You shake your head. "Then, how do you explain that I fell in love with the same person twice?" he says. "Not once. Twice. With your personality through a screen, and with you all in your book store. This are signals. We belong together." you look at him. That's Jean, but he's also Kir. Your Kir.

The boy that made you feel so much through a simple screen. The one that is smiling at you now. Looking at you with sweet and hazel eyes. He uninstalls the app in front of your asking eyes.

"We don't need this anymore. Now we are face to face. And I hope it is for a long time."

#aot fluff #aot x reader #snk x reader #snk fluff #snk fic #aot fic #aot scenario #aot fanfiction #snk headcanons #jean attack on titan #jean snk #jean aot #jean shingeki no kyojin #jean kirschtein x reader #jean kirstein #jean x you #jean x y/n #jean x reader #jean kirschtien #jean fluff

[redxblueihateloveyou]

Omg thank you so much for your posts about rinharu!! :"")) I was one of those people who were like "why are rinharu fighting again?? Did kyoani purposely seperate them /again/ just for the sake of drama ?? (And so that they have more oppurtunities to showcase other ships??)" I was really irked at first cuz i thought the first part of TFS is finally going to be a movie about rinharu being a powercouple, but! After reading your posts i realised that haru never really moved on from rin leaving, even in S3 the reason why hiyori's words affected him was because he thought he caused rin to leave (and by extension ikuya, but lbr haru wasn't as frustrated with ikuya nearly as much as he was with rin right) so i'm just here to say.. thank you so much for opening my eyes!!! Now i'm really looking forward to the second part!!

Awww no problem <3 tbh I've always said that free is one of those that has so many nuances left bts that it's sometimes confusing for those who aren't as invested I think. Like there's so many important things that are left out and are in additional materials, that some has no idea what's going on at times. Like back in the days when some interpreted s2 in the opposite way bc of that one thing. My point is that not everyone is even watches stuff like recaps for example (where there are in fact new easter eggs and so many important things like Rin's dad death aftermath etc), and even less read novels and checked side stories and dramas.

For example, in books this Haru's issue about him thinking he's cursed and hurts everyone with his swimming is a huge thing, when Asahi "lost his ability to swim" after seeing Haru's free. But in SD it wasn't adressed at all tbh.

And what Haru feels for Rin is such tornado of emotions, that surprised even me with all the descriptions, bc like it's real bad. Like that part I posted from the chapter when Rin leaves is at least understandable, since he leaves. But the way he reacts to him in general even when he just appears in his sight is always described as if someone tortures him for real lol. And he's always like "pls someone save me, I don't know how to deal with this, bc I've never felt such emotions before".

So basically, like yeah, he's as it is has this thing, when he thinks of himself as some bad omen, so he's very sensitive about it, but since everything Rin-related feels x100000000 for him, its just... well, it hurt for a very long time and sadly was just overlooked by a certain someone, so here we are.

I think we all at first believed that bc Rin's so shocked and in disbelief that Haru could even think that it was his fault in some way:

that maybe they talked about it bts or smth like after the relay. But it seems like Rin either forgot or most likely I think he maybe thought that Haru understood without words? I'm just real sad still that Haru didn't get to hear this speech:

I mean, they made it look by the end of s1 that it was about relay, which partially yeah, but for Rin it was really about Haru. You see what he said.. he said that that 1x02 race with Haru alone.. what made him want to swim again. This whole speech was not only about the fact that Haru wasn't at fault that he quit swimming in the first place, but about the fact that Haru is his lucky charm, that makes everything better. AND WE DIDN'T EVEN GET TO HEAR THAT. So like for Haru it's to this day like "after I messed him up, Rin was saved with the power of friendship and a relay". But he was saved by Haru really. Bc according to s3 info, it was basically just about Haru being on the relay team. I don't try to demean their friendships or anything, but its just what it is.

And as I've said before in one post it's just fascinating that to this day Rin for example thinks that s1 shananigans were just about him and just his problem:

Haru thought it was about them and their problem:

So like my point here is I also up to the end of s2 thought that maybe Rei or Rin told that to him, bc we seemed to move on to another problems, until in Kizuna we were shown that he still dreams about that scene of Rin leaving. s3 Hiyori just exposed the wound really.

But also once again see what he said there, it's not just about that one time he keeps reliving, aka his first come back, its really just about each time Rin was leaving. Like the very first one already was bad, the second was the worst, bc he thought he hurt him and thought that bc of him he quit swimming, others are just painful bc by then it was already another kind of feeling. I mean, I do think that this first Rin's return to Australia thing needs to be cleared up since it's obviously still haunting him. But again it's just part of this. Haru after the Australian trip and "I've always admired you" and "without you I have nothing to aim for" and after TYM goodbye when Rin told him that he doesn't need a surprise party and that just swimming with Haru before leaving is the greastest surprise for him, he knows already about the way Rin feels about swimming with him... I think the reason why everyone is freaking out here is that bc the way it's executed it's just really about him constantly missing him and "why am I always have to longingly watch you leave, while you seem fine." If he was in a free race, but wasn't on a relay team, he'd get the same reaction. Its just all seasons combined that brought us here. We already in 3x01 without Hiyori knew that he wasn't handling Rin being far away again good. So tbh it's logical even without any explanation really. I mean, Rin does indeed leave and come back as he pleases and does what he wants without holding back or sometimes thinking about consequences. There's no lie here.

It's like since the beginning for Rin it was like "I found the gorgeous guy I adore and I want to swim with, I'll transfer schools just to nag him into swimming with me, it's not like he's gonna care if I leave after that." (he literally in the book didn't think it was a big deal)

For Haru it was like "I lived just fine, but this guy stormed into my life, made me want things I didn't think I'd ever want, got me addicted to him and then dropped me like a hot potato".

Rin's just very passionate about life and things he wants, like Haru for example, but he's really also very unobservant and very clueless at times.

But like just bc he doesn't know about Haru's existential crisis and all the pain he's truly in when he's leaving, doesn't change the fact that he at times didn't even treat him as a simple friend (because they can't be just friends I KNOW), but still things like "you could've called" "well sorry, I guess I'm just not good at it" are probably hurtful, considering the fact that you are good at it with everyone else tho, Rin sweetie. Like thanks for avoiding us the most and holding back and visiting us the last each time, we feel real special. Haru is like the opposite, he doesn't call anyone for example, but he can call Rin in the middle of the night if needed, he always does for Rin smth that's completely out of his comfort zone.

It's like some say "Rin didn't know he wanted him to call" or "he didn't know Haru felt guilty". He did know he wanted him to call and he didn't know Haru felt guilty and stopped swimming competitively when he stopped swimming, but then Rei told him and Natsuya in 3x03 reminded him about this too. Its just the fact that he doesn't want to add 1+1 and thinks "well, there's no way I can affect Haru like that right?", "he can't be that upset about Rin Matsuoka, right?". While facts are he IS literally the only one who affects Haru in such huge way. It's like everyone else can just pass him by and it's nothing, but he walks by and it's a whole "asdfghgfdsa why my body is on fire, its just Rin who's just standing there".

And I'm also buffled by this thing that some people really say stuff like "where did this come from, they were perfectly fine" etc, as if they ever had normal "friendship" relationship. I'm like when did they ever behave themselves okay? In 3x03 Rin is dying to call Haru, but can't do it, while he's constantly texting everyone including Nagisa. First thing he says in the airport when he comes back is "I'm home, Haru" to air, but then goes to hang out with Makoto and Sousuke, desperately looking for an excuse to see the one whom he from the beginning, as it was shown wanted to see the most, but in his opinion can’t without a reason. It's only when Makoto tells him that Haru was upset about Albert he quickly rans off out of there bc "hooray, I have an excuse to see my bae”. Like we know from the airport scene that he wanted to see Haru the most. If they're so as people say were doing great, than how do you exlain all of their s2 and s3 behavior for real? It's like as if in TYM Haru didn't lose his shit from some gossip about persimmons. I mean, they never settled anything really. And Haru is constantly scared of Rin leaving again since forever.

So it's complicated, but yes, we're super excited for p2, bc asdfghjhgfds.

#answered #anonymous #rinharu #harurin #free! the final stroke #free! #rin matsuoka #nanase haruka

[reel-fear]

bumblebee is used as the kid appeal character in practically every continuity. not only does he have a close friendship with at least one of the human companions (in media that has human companions), he's also written as the youngest of the main group of autobots in order to be more relatable to children. i'm not quite sure where you got the part about him canonically being an adult. if you're gonna say something about him being thousands of years old or whatever, that can't really be used here. cybertronians have way longer lifespans than humans, so they're not gonna go from minor to adult at 18 years old like humans. there's also what you said about bulkhead. having advanced knowledge of one particular thing doesn't necessarily mean a character HAS to be an adult. they definitely can be, but that's not absolute confirmation. after all, raf in transformers prime was a computer whiz and an expert hacker. most kids his age wouldn't know much about any of that, so does that make him an adult? also, like... where was the harassment lol. where did they insult you. they weren't even comparing you specifically to l*lis, they were just saying that the argument people use to justify bl*tzbee is the same one people use to justify l*lis. if people are like, legitimately harassing you, insulting you, threatening you over this, that's their fault for thinking it was ok to do, not littlemisstfp's fault.

they dropped my @ several times, publicly shat on me and gave me no chance to even reply. THEY EVEN ADRESSED IT WOULD'VE BEEN EASY TO NOT PUBLICLY MAKE THAT POST AND TALK TO ME PRIVATELY. It was an impulsive disgustingly awful move to make and yes they did compare me to ppl who like l*lis just by bringing it up.

Anyways if ur gonna tell me tfa bee is a child who has a job nearly got into the military, got stabbed on screen, was shown heavily drinking on screen [which the crew was totally okay with] and got seduced on screen. Well then to put simply the tfa production crew should be absolutely totally fucking ashamed of themselves for never addressing that ever or having anyone express concern over it in the show and tfa is a disgusting show that allowed that shit to happen. We should bring this up to the main writer on twitter and also ask why the main artists drew a pretender bee that looks like this as opposed to the other one that resembles a child that canon already said isnt canon

also if u guys tell me I was defending blitzbee again Im gonna break something, its so clear u guys dont actually think tfa bees a child u just hate blitzbee and want a reason to hate it. Im not a blitzbee shipper it literally just stopped being a ship that upset me to even hear mentioned. This about Littlemisstfp using fandom drama to be a piece of shit to me and the way u guys infantilize Bulkhead and Bee for the simple thing of having symptoms of adhd/autism and no canon evidence to back up the claim they are children when all the evidence clearly shows if they were children TFA Among other things: Never chose to address cybertron having child soldiers while exposing the other ways the autobots were corrupt so ig the crew just doesnt mind that?? Or didnt see it fit to put in the book that also exposed the autobots for literally using slaves?? Just wasnt a big priority??

showed an underaged character being seduced stabbed and getting heavily drunk and none of the characters question this so the entire tfa autobot crew is totally find with that.

put Prowl a clear adult as he fought in the same war so old its what gave ratchet ptsd pouncing on a blushing child. So I guess he's a canon creep and everyones okay with that.

Showed Bulkhead as some sort of super child genius?? Ig they kinda did that with Sari but at least they justified it Bulkhead can build one of the most important things on cybertron in just a few weeks he's like. Really Really knowledgable on this stuff he could make a huge living doing this. Nobody questions that like they questioned Sari on it though not even Ratchet?

Ratchet got angry they used omega supreme as a weapon bc the elite guard made him at an intellect too low to be able to think abt the actions he carried out. Almost like Ratchet was angry they were sending someone immature or young to war? I guess he only care abt it when its a huge mech tho bc he doesnt care abt Bee or Bulkhead being child soldiers so his character gets absolutely destroyed. He's willing to defy the government to save oil slick but not for literal children going to war?

edit: OH ANOTHER THING, Optimus at some point suggests that in a last stitch effort they could try to use Sari as a weapon. Ratchet strikes this down HARD. Once again Ratchet is totally against but also okay with child soldiers? And Optimus only cares abt children when they're organic n tiny ig-

Wasp is a child who went to jail and Ironhide got into the military, theres no questioning of this either. maybe the production crew just really hates children like they hate beachcomber.

SO no matter how u look at it, if bee was a child. Tfa would be a much different show. It would make the crew look AWFUL if this was the case and once again I have not seen any evidence for this that is actually well... Evidence? Meanwhile I've got even more points to make if u wanna fire at me buddy. I'll go at this all day.

#ramblez

[stillgirlfrommars]

you’ve got news

So, I already talked about this with @missmorwen​ and I know I don’t have the time to draw and make an actual comic out of it, BUT I cannot stop thinking about this SamSteve-post-engdame-fix-it story (with a dash of BuckyNat, ‘cause that’s just who I am) which is kinda crack and very rom-com (a bit you’ve got mail) inspired and doesn't make much sense, because... PLOT HOLES but * sigh * I kinda wanna share at least the idea so - bear with me:

So, instead of Nat dying, Steve sacrifices his Captain America powers on Vormir and comes back as Skinny!Steve and starts running a political blog called you’ve-got-news in secret, uncovering all kinds of shady business/corruption and becoming the bane of existence of every politician and greedy CEO - but it takes a while for his friends to figure out it's him who’s running that increasingly popular blog (which the new Captain America is actually a big fan of ;)). And the way that happens is as follows:

So, Steve almost died at the end of Endgame. The idiot (affectionate) of course still wanted to fight Thanos, but even with Thor’s Hammer, he took some serious, serious injuries which led to a tough talk with Sam, Nat and Bucky

Like I imagine, that while Steve would not have any regrets whatsoever about giving up his powers, he would still need some time to come to terms with the fact that he won’t be able to participate in the action like he used to. Even though, he actually wants and knows... it’s time to ... start something new, it’s still a process. So, there he is, trying to figure out who he is without the mantle of Captain America, re-defining the way he can and will fight against bullies in the future (cause there is no way he’s gonna stop that).

And to the surprise of everyone, Steve actually doesn’t press for participating in Avenger-style-fights anymore (he still does some of the practical mission planning and shit like that) but most importantly, he starts taking up new hobbies, like cooking or old hobbies like drawing - and he seems happier than he has in a long time, and yeah maybe it’s a bit too good to be true, if Sam starts thinking about it. But, hey, Steve finally seems to be happy so -

Meanwhile, Sam still becomes the new Captain America, and Steve is there while he is adjusting, finding himself in that role. He is there when Sam needs to talk things through, and yeah, it would still be a process like in tfatws series, but ... a little bit less alone, I guess. 

So, the new Captain America fights alongside Nat and Bucky - and it’s good, they work surprisingly well together, but also: those two are stuck right in the middle of a weird assassin!flirting situation (I’m imagening a lot of veeery intense staring at the other while cleaning their weapons or beating someone up, innuendos en masse, dark humour etc.). And frankly, it’s getting on Sam's nerves because they seem to be so oblivious about the whole damn thing. Neither of them is actually admitting to anything, no, they are too busy teasing him about the ‘crush’ he has developed on that mysterious dude who is running the famous political-youve-got-news-blog that gained momentum a while ago and is currently keeping all the corrupt politicians and CEOs on their toes.

So, yeah, Sam might have been caught a couple of times reading or reciting from that blog because - it has actually turned into a pretty efficient way of mobilising people to demonstrate for change and it did give him some tip-offs in regards to who the bad guy really was and yeah. But it’s not a crush... Sam just really likes reading the blog posts, okay. That dude seems pretty cool and they share the same moral code, so... whatever.

What Nat and Bucky and Steve don't know (and he’ll never tell them), is that Sam is actually kiiiiinda already frequently talking with the guy who runs the blog. Anonymously on both ends, of course (because for good reasons both of them are pretty careful about giving away information concerning their identities). And in a way that whole anonymity-thing makes it a lot easier to talk about stuff he finds harder to admit to the people who he knows directly. So, you could say, blog-guy has kinda become Sam's internet friend, but not his crush, no.

Honestly, the crush he is more concerned about (that he also isn't planning on telling anyone about any time soon, cause Bucky would just tease him and Nat would start scheming) is, well, it’s Steve. Because, damn, he likes their get-togethers a lot, the meals Steve's cooking are honestly to die for. They watch baseball together, they do museum-trips... And the way they can talk about (almost) everything... He just feels understood and... yeah, loved (maybe not in the way that he wishes for, but still) and it’s nice to see Steve so happy and okay, maybe it’s getting a bit out of control because Sam took Steve with him to visit Sarah and his nephews and Sarah kinda saw right through his act of ‘hey, this is my best friend’ and ‘what do you mean, I don’t have feelings- okay. Yeah maybe I do’ and told him in no uncertain terms to fucking do something about it and get his shit together.

The thing is, he’s got it bad. But Sam is also torn, because this is the best fucking friendship he's ever had and he does not want to jeopardise that. So, in the end he ends up talking about this with his Internet friend... about how he kinda has this huge crush on his best friend, and his Internet friend is like, ‘TELL ME ABOUT IT, big fucking same here UGH. And I feel like I’m being SO obvious about it all. It’s honestly embarrassing. My other best friend keeps teasing me ‘bout it and tells me to just go for it, but that guy still hasn’t managed to ask out the girl he’s interested in, so, what does he know, right?’. And Sam laughs - at least he’s not alone.

So the days go by (Sam’s pining only increases, Steve took him to a wine tasting the other night and he almost... in his drunk state... almost... but he didn’t) until one day, while blog-guy and Sam are chatting, all of the sudden the blog-guy is like, ‘Shit, I think someone's breaking into my apartment’ and then like, ‘Okay, yes they are’ - and Sam's like, ‘call 911′, and blog-guy writes back ‘mmh think I can handle them’ (and Sam’s like ‘WTF... I know way too many people with zero regards for their own well-being, myself included’)

But then blog-guy is not answering anymore, so Sam frantically calls up Nat who rushes to his flat and Sam says: ‘You need to find out where that IP adress is located ASAP - the dude with that famous blog is in danger.’

And Nat does that multitasking thing where she’s working on the problem while ribbing Sam about the fact that, apparently, Captain America's Internet bestie is that famous blog dude, and- 'Are you sure it’s not a crush?'

But after another minute, Nat sighs and is like, ‘I can't find the location, this thing is encrypted af, it’s impossible.’ Suddenly, she notices something about the setup of the encryption and-, ‘Hang on a second, it was me who set this up for someone back in 2011.′ And as she slips on her jacket, she says to Sam, ‘Come on. I know where we have to go!’

So they make their way to what turns out is Steve's (!!!!) apartment and find him in the middle of a fight against over half a dozen heavily armed people, and yeah - he’s actually doing pretty okay for himself ‘cause he outsmarted a couple of them, but also- they kind of outnumber him, so Nat and Sam get to work.

And Sam doesn't even have time to fully register what that means re:blog-guy until they have successfully defeated the bad guys. After that's done, Steve is like, ‘Thanks guys, but how the hell did you know I was in trouble? Nat... you didn’t bug my apartment, did you??’

And Nat tstsk and then she just laughs because this is priceless and OF CoURSE it is Steve who is behind that blog... (she's a bit mad at herself for not figuring it out sooner, and a bit sad that Steve didn't feel like he could tell her, and that he assumes she has is flat bugged but, also,... kinda impressed.) But then she looks at him with a warm smile on her face, shaking her head, saying, ‘No, I didn’t, Steve.’ Her gaze wanders back and forth between Steve and Sam and she humms- 'That actually makes so much sense oh my god.' So, she leaves them ‘to talk’ ;) and for Sam to explain everything’ - and then it’s just the two of them.

And Sam does explain everything and is like, 'So you're that Blog dude, erm...' He's scratching the back of his neck, cheeks flushed, 'Turns out, we've been talking for months over that blog of yours. I'm (insert-Sam’s-username-here).'- and Steve's eyes go wide and you can literally see him processing that information right then and there and he's sputtering out a light laugh, and he's like 'Hang on a second... I... umm, okay, I gotta ask. So, that best friend you've got a crush on...' Well, it’s now or never -'Is you, yeah..', Sam admits and starts, 'and....' They both laugh again and Steve nods and just says- 'yeah, it’s you, too.'

And then they kiss and yaaay, happy ending!!!

And then the epilogue would be about them having a nice dinner with Bucky and Nat a couple of months later, and the whole time, Sam and Steve are being very much in loveTM. The three guys are standing in the kitchen, while Natasha is in the bathroom and Bucky's making a funny quib about how sickeningly cute Sam and Steve are together - and Sam, well, Sam just raises his eyebrows and is like, 'You know what, you're not allowed to say anything bout that, you and Romanoff have been acting waaaaay worse over the last year. At least we got our shit together in the end, what's your excuse, you are obviously absolutely in love with her!', and of course Nat chooses that exact moment to enter the room, hand on Bucky's waist, dropping a kiss on his cheek and is like, 'What do you mean, we've been dating for 6 months?' And Steve laughs and Sam groans bc .... he loves his friends, he does, but clearly, CLEARLY they ALL have to work on their communication skills!

The End.

#samsteve #buckynat #endgame fix it #Sam Wilson #Steve Rogers #Skinny!Steve #I know it's stupid and cheesy but everything else in my life feels a bit too much at the moment so I needed something cute to think about #Seriously though if anyone wants to use this as a prompt to draw or write... please do

[sabugabr]

Why the Clone problem in Star Wars animated media is also a Mandalorian problem, and why we have to talk about it (PART 2)

Hi! I finally finished wrapping this up, so here’s part 2 of what has already become a mini article (you can find Part 1 here, if you like!)

And for this part, it won’t be as much as a critic as part 1 was, but instead I’d like to focus more on what I consider to be a wasted potential regarding the representation of the Clones in the Star Wars animated media, from the first season of The Clone Wars till now, and why I believe it to be an extension of the Mandalorian problem I discussed in part 1 —  the good old colonialism.

Sources used, as always, will be linked at the end of this post!

PART 2: THE CLONES

Cody will never know peace

So I’d like to state that I won’t focus as much on the blatantly whitewashing aspect, for I believe it to be very clear by now. If you aren’t familiar with it, I highly recommend you search around tumblr and the internet, there are a lot of interesting articles and posts about it that explain things very didactically and in detail. The only thing you need to know to get this started is that even at the first seasons of Clone Wars (when the troopers still had this somewhat darker skin complexion and all) they were still a whitewashed version of Temuera Morrison (Jango’s actor). And from then, as we all know, they only got whiter and whiter till we get where we are now, in rage.

Look at this very ambiguously non-white but still westernized men fiercely guarding their pin-up space poster

Now look at this still westernized but slightly (sarcasm) whiter men who for some reason now have different tanning levels among them (See how Rex now has a lighter skin tone? WHEN THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN KKKKKKK) Anyway you got the idea. So without further ado...

2.1 THE FANTASY METAPHOR

As I mentioned before in Part 1, one thing that has to be very clear if you want to follow my train of thought is that it’s impossible to consume something without attributing cultural meanings to it, or without making cultural associations. This things will naturally happen and it often can improve our connection to certain narratives, especially fantastic ones. Even if a story takes place in a fantastic/sci fi universe, with all fictional species and people and worlds and cultures, they never come from nowhere, and almost always they have some or a lot of basing in real people and cultures. And when done properly, this can help making these stories resonate in a very beautifull, meaningfull way. I actually believe this intrisic cultural associations are the things that make these stories work at all. As the brilliant american speculative/science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin says in the introduction (added in 1976) of her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, and that I was not able to chopp much because it’s absolutely genious and i’ll be leaving the link to the full text right here,

“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future — indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the ‘future,’ on the quantum level, cannot be predicted — but to describe reality, the present world.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.”

[...] “Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane —bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with  them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”

[...] “ In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find — if it's a good novel — that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this within words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. [...]  All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life — science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?” [1]

A metaphor for what indeed. I won’t be going into what Star Wars as a whole is a metaphor for, because I am certain that it varies from person to person, and everyone can and has the total right to take whatever they want from this story, and understand it as they see fit. That’s why it’s called the modern myth. And therefore, all I’ll be saying here is playinly my take not only on what I understand the Clones to be, but what I believe they could have meant.

2.2 SO, BOBA IS A CLONE

I don’t want to get too repetitive, but I wanted to adress it because even though I by no means intend to put Boba and the Clones in the same bag, there is one aspect about them that I find very similar and interesting, that is the persue of individuality. While the Clones have this very intrinsically connected to their narratives, in Boba’s case this appears more in his concept design. As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the things the CW staff had in mind while designing the mandalorians is that they wanted to make Boba seem unique and distinguishable from them, and honestly even in the original trilogy he stands out a lot. He is unique and memorable and that’s one of the things that draws us to him.

And as we all know, both Boba and Jango and the Clones are played by Temuera Morrison — and occasionally by the wonderful Bodie Taylor and Daniel Logan. And Temuera Morrison comes from the Maori people. And differently from the mandalorian case, where we were talking about a whole planet, in this situation we’re talking about portraying one single person, so there’s nowhere to go around his appearance and phenotypes, right? I mean, you are literally representing an actual individual, so there’s no way you could alter their looks, right?

(hahahaha wrong)

And besides that, I think that is in situations like that (when we are talking about individuals) that the actor’s perspective could really have a place to shine (just the same as how Lea was mostly written by Carrie Fisher). In this very heart-warming interview for The New York Times (which you can read full signing up for their 5-free-articles-per-month policy), Temuera Morrison talks a little bit about how he incorporated his cultural background to Boba Fett in The Mandalorian:

“I come from the Maori nation of New Zealand, the Indigenous people — we’re the Down Under Polynesians — and I wanted to bring that kind of spirit and energy, which we call wairua. I’ve been trained in my cultural dance, which we call the haka. I’ve also been trained in some of our weapons, so that’s how I was able to manipulate some of the weapons in my fight scenes and work with the gaffi stick, which my character has.” [2]

The Gaffi stick (or Gaderffii), btw, is the weapon used by the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, and according to oceanic art expert Bruno Claessens it’s design was inspired by wooden Fijian war clubs called totokia. [3]

And I think is very clear how this background can influence one’s performance and approach to a character, and majorly how much more alive this character will feel like. Beyond that, having an actor from your culture to play and add elements to a character will higly improve your sense of connection with them (besides all the impact of seeying yourself on screen, and seeying yourself portrayed with respect). It would only make sense if the cultural elements that the actor brought when giving life to a fictional individual would’ve been kept and even deepened while expanding this role. And if you’re familiar with Star Wars Legends you’ll probably rememeber that in Legends Jango would train and raise all Clone troopers in the Mandalorian culture, so that the Clones would sing traditional war chants before battles, be fluent in Mando’a (Mandalore’s language) and some would proudly take mandalorian names for themselves. So why didn’t Filoni Inc. take that into account when they went to delve into the clones in The Clone Wars?

2.3 THE WHITE MINORITY

First of all I’d like to state that all this is 100% me conjecturing, and by no means at all I’m saying that this is what really happened. But while I was re-watching CW before The Bad Batch premiere, something came to my mind regarding the whitewashing of the Clones, and I’d like to leave that on the table.

So, you know this kind of recent movies and series that depicted like, fairies in this fictional world where fairies were very opressed, but there would be a lot of fairies played by white actors? Just like Bright and Carnival Row. If you’ve watched some of these and have some racial conscience, you’ll probably know where I’m going here. And the issue with it is that often this medias will portray real situations of racism and opression and prejudice, but all applied to white people. Like in Carnival Row, when going to work as a maid in a rich human house, our girl Cara Delevingne had to fight not to have her braids (which held a lot of significance in her culture) cut by her intolerant human mistress, because the braids were not “appropriate”. Got it? hahahaha what a joy

Look at her ethnic braids!!!

One of the reasons this happens might be to relieve a white audience of the burden of watching these stories and feeling what I like to call “white guilt”. Because, as we all know, white people were never very oppressed.  Historically speaking, white people have always been in privileged social positions, and in an exploitative relationship between two ethnic groups, white people very usually would be the exploiters  —  the opressors. So while watching situations (that every minority would know to be very real) of opression in fiction, if these situations were lived by a white actor, there would be no real-life associations, because we have no historical parameter to associate this situation with anything in real life — if you are white. Thus, there is less chance that, when consuming one of these narratives, whoever is watching will question the "truthfulness" of these situations (because it's not "real racism", see, "they're just fairies"). It's easier for a person to watch without having to step out of their comfort zone, or confront the reality of real people who actually go through things like that. There's even a chance that this might diminish empathy for these people.

Once again, not saying this is specifically the case of the Clones, majorly because one of the main feelings you have when watching CW is exactly empathy for the troopers (at least for me, honestly, the galaxy could explode, I just wanted those poor men to be happy for God’s sake). But I’ll talk more about it later.

The thing is, the whole thing with the Clones, if you think about it, it’s not pretty. If you step on little tiny bit outside the bubble of “fictional fantasy”, the concept is very outrageous. They are kept in conditions analogous to slavery, to say the least. To say the more, they were literally made in an on-demand lab to serve a purpose they are personally not a part of, for which they will neither receive any reward nor share any part of the gains. On the contrary, as we saw in The Bad Batch, as soon as the war was over and the clones were no longer useful as cannonballs, they were discarded. In the (wonderful) episode 6 of the third season of (the almost flawless) Rebels, “The Last Battle”, we're even personally introduced to the analogy that there really wasn't much difference in value between clones and droids, something that was pretty clear in Clone Wars but hadn't been said explicitly yet.

In fact, technically the Separatists can be considered to be more human than the Republic. But that's just my opinion.

So, you had this whole army of pretty much slaves. I know this is a heavy term, but these were people who were originally stripped of any sense of humanity or individuality, made literally to go to war and die in it, doing so purely in exchange for food and lodging, under the false pretense that they belonged to a glorious purpose (yes, Loki me taught that term, that was the only thing I absorbed from this series). Doing all this under extremely precarious conditions from which they had no chance of getting out, actually, getting out was tantamount to the death penalty. They were slaves. In milder terms, an oppressed minority. And again, I don't know if that was the case, but I can understand why Filoni Inc would be apprehensive about representing phenotically indigenous people in this situation. Especially since we in theory should see Anakin and Obi-Wan as the good guys.

(and here I’d like to leave a little disclaimer that I believe the whole Anakin-was-a-slave-once plot was HUGELY misused (and honestly just badly done) both in the prequels and in the animeted series  — maybe for the best, since he was, you know, white and all that, and I don’t know how the writers would have handled it, but ANYWAY — I believe this could have been further explored, particularly regarding his relationship with the Clones, and how it could have influenced his revolt against the Jedi, and manipulated to add to his anger and all that. I mean, we already HAD the fact that Anakin shared a deeper conection with his troopers than usual)

Yes, Rex, you have common trauma experiences to share. But anyway, backing to my track

As I was saying, we are to see them as good guys, and maybe that could’ve been tricky if we saw them hooping up on slavery practices. Like, idk, a “nice” sugar plantation owner? (I don’t know the correct word for it in english, but in portuguese they were called senhores de engenho) Like this guy from 12 Years a Slave?

You know, the slave owner who was “nice”. IDK, anyway  

No one will ever watch Clone Wars and make this association (I believe not, at least), of course not. But if we were to see how CW deepened the clone arcs, and see them as phenotypically indigenous, subjected to certain situations that occur in CW (yes, like Umbara), maybe some kind of association would’ve been easier to make.

I mean, come onnnn I can’t be the only one seeing it

You see, maybe not the whole 12 Years a Slave association one, but I don’t think it’s hard to see there was something there. And maybe this could’ve been even more evident if they looked non-white. Because historically, both black peoples and indigenous peoples went through processes of slavery, from which we as a society are still impacted today. And to slave a people, the first thing you have to do is strip them from their humanity. So it might be easier to see this situation and apply it to real life. And maybe that could lead to a whole lot of other questions regarding the Clones, the Republic, the Jedi, and even how chill Obi-Wan was about all this. We might come out of it, as lady Ursula Le Guin stated in the fragment above, a bit different from what we were before we watch it.

Maybe even unconsciously, Filoni Inc thought we would be more confortable watching if they just looked white (and because of colonialism and all that, but I’m adding thoughts here).

And of course I don’t like the idea of, idk, looking at Obi-Wan and thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch in 12 Years a Slave or something like that. Of course that, if the Clones were to play the same role as they did in the prequels, to obediently serve the Jedi and quietly die for them, that would have been bad, and hurtfull, and pejorative if added to all that I said here. But the thing is that Clone Wars, consciously or not, already solved that. At least to my point of view, they already managed to approach this situation in an incredible competent way, that is giving them agency.

2.4 AGENCY AND INDIVIDUALITY

So, one of the things I love most in Clone Wars is how it really feels like it’s about the Clones. Like, we have the bigger scene of Palpatine taking over, Ahsoka’s growth arc, Anakin’s turn to The Dark Side, the dawn of the Jedi and rise of the Empire and all that, but it also has this idk, vibe, of there’s actually something going on that no one in scene is talking about? And this something is the Clones. We have these episodes spread throughout the seasons, even out of chronological order, which when watched together tell a parallel story to the war, to everything I mentioned. Which is a story about individuals. Clone Wars manages to, in a (at least to me) very touching way, make the Clones be the heros. 

Can you really look me in the eye and say that Five’s story didn’t CRASH you like a full-speed train???? He may not have the same amount of screen-time as the protagonists, but his story is just as important as theirs (and to me, it might be the most meaningful one). Because he is the first to break free from the opression cicle all the Clones were trapped into. 

His story can be divided into 6 phases.

1 - First, the construction of his individuality, in other words, the reclaiming of his humanity. 

2 - Then the assimilation of understanding yourself as an individual of value, and then extending this to all his brothers, not as a unit, but as a set of individuals collectively having this same newly discovered value.

3 - This makes him realize that in the situation they find themselves in, they are not being recognized as such. This makes him question the reality of their situation.

4 - Freed from the illusion of his state, he seeks the truth about it.

5 - This then leads him to seek liberation not just for himself, but for all the Clones (it's basically Plato's Cave, and I'm not exaggerating here).

6 - And finally, precisely because he has assimilated his individuality and sought freedom for himself and his brothers, he is punished for it.

His story is all about agency. Agency, according to the Wikipedia page that is the first to appear if you type “agency” on Google, is that agency is “the abstract principle that autonomous beings, agents, are capable of acting by themselves” [4], and this abstract principle can be dissected in 7 segments:

Law - a person acting on behalf of another person

Religious -  "the privilege of choice... introduced by God"

Moral -  capacity for making moral judgments

Philosophical -  the capacity of an autonomous agent to act, relating to action theory in philosophy

Psychological -  the ability to recognize or attribute agency in humans and non-human animals

Sociological -  the ability of social actors to make independent choices, relating to action theory in sociology

Structural - ability of an individual to organize future situations and resource distribution

All of them apply here. And this is just the story of one Clone. We know there are many others throughout the series. 

Agency is what can make the world of a difference when you are telling a story about an opressed minority. Because opressed minorities do exist, and opression exists, and if you are insecure about consuming a fictional media about opressed minorities, see if they have agency might be a good place to start. So that’s why I think that everything I said before in 2.3 falls short. Because the solution already existed, and was indeed done. Honestly, making the non-agency representation of the Clones (the one we see in the prequels) to be the one played by Temuera Morrison, and then giving them agency in the version where they appear to be white, just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

And honestly, if they were to make the Clones look like Temuera Morrison, and by that mean, take more inspiration in the Māori culture, maybe they wouldn’t even have to change much of their representation besides their facial features. As I said in part 1, I am not by any means an expert in polynesian cultures, but there was something that really got me while I was researching about it. And is the facial tattoos. More precisely, the tā moko. 

2.5  TĀ MOKO

Once again I’ll be using the Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand as source, and you can find the articles used linked at the end of this post. 

Etymologically speaking,

“The term moko traditionally applied to male facial tattooing, while kauae referred to moko on the chins of women. There were other specific terms for tattooing on other parts of the body. Eventually ‘moko’ came to be used for Māori tattooing in general.” [5]

So moko is the correct name for the characteristic tattoos we often see when we look for Māori culture. 

These ones ^. Please also look this book up, it’s beautiful. It’s written by  Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist. She’s wonderful. 

According to the Tourism NewZealand website, 

“In Māori culture, it [moko] reflects the individual's whakapapa (ancestry) and personal history. In earlier times it was an important signifier of social rank, knowledge, skill and eligibility to marry.”

“Traditionally men received moko on their faces, buttocks and thighs. Māori face tattoos are the ultimate expression of Māori identity. Māori believe the head is the most sacred part of the body, so facial tattoos have special significance.”

[...] “The main lines in a Māori tattoo are called manawa, which is the Māori word for heart.” [6]

Therefore, in the Māori culture, there’s this incredibly deep meaning attributed to the (specific of their culture) tattooing of the face. The act of tattooing the body, any part of the body, is incredibly powerful in many cultures around the globe. The adornment of the body can have different meanings for these different cultures, but all of which I've come into contact with do mean a lot. It’s one of the oldest and most beautiful human expressions of individuality and identity. 

And in the Star Wars universe, the Clones are the group that has the deeper connection to, and the best narrative regarding, tattoos. In fact, besides Hera’s father, Cham Syndulla, the Clones are the only individuals to have tattooed skin, at least that I can recall of. And they do share a deep connection to it. 

For the Clones, the tattoos (added to hairstyles) are the most meaningful way in which they can express themselves. Is what makes them distinguishable from each other to other people. Tattoos are one of the things that represent them as individuals.

And I’m not BY ANY MEANS sayin that the Clones facial tattoos = Moko. That’s not my point. But that’s one of the things I meant when I said earlier about the wasted potential of the representation of the Clones (in my point of view). Because maybe if it were their intention to base the culture of the clones after the polynesian culture, maybe if it were their intention to make the Clones actually look like Temuera Morrison, this could have meant a whole deal. More than it’d appear looking to it from outside this culture. Maybe if there were actual polynesian people in the team that designed the Clones and wrote them (or at least indigenous people, something), who knows what we could’ve had. 

Even in Hunter’s design, I noticed that if you take for example this frame of Temuera from the movie River Queen (2005), where we can have a closer look at the design of his tā moko

Speaking purely plastically (because I don’t want to get into the movie itself, just using it as example because then I can use Temuera himself as a comparison), see the lines around the contours of his mouth? Now look at Hunter’s. 

I find it interesting that they choose to design this lines coming from around his nose like that. But at this point I am stretching A LOT into plastic and semiotics, so this comparison is just a little thing that got my attention. I know that his tattoo is a skull and etc etc, I’m just poiting this out. And it even makes me a little frustrated, because they could have taken so many interesting paths in the Bad Batch designs. But instead they choose to pay homage to Rambo. And I mean, I like Rambo, I think he’s cool and all that.

Look at him doing Filipino martial arts

But then, as we say in Brasil, they had the knife and the cheese in their hands (all they had to do was cut the cheese, but they didn’t). Istead, it seems like in order to make Hunter look like Rambo, they made him even whiter??? 

2.6 SO...

Look, I love The Clone Wars. I’m crazy about it. I love the Clones, I love their stories and plots. They are great characters and one of the greatest addings ever made in the Star Wars universe. They even have, in my opinion, the best soundtrack piece to feature in a Star Wars media since John Williams’ wonderful score. It just feels to me as if their narrative core is full of bagage, and meanings, and associations that were just wiped under the carpet when they suddenly became white. It just feels to me as if, once again, they were trying to erase the person behing the trooper mask, and the people they were to represent, and the history they should evoke.

I don’t know why they were whitewashed. Maybe it was just the old due racism and colonialism. Maybe it was meant for us to not question the Jedi, or our good guys, or the real morality of this fictional universe where we were immersed. But then, was it meant for what?

The Clones were a metaphor for what? 

(spoiler: the answer still contains colonialism)

Thank you so much for reading !!!! (and congratulations for getting this far, you are a true hero)

SOURCES USED IN THIS:

[1] Ursulla K. Le Guin, 'The Left Hand of Darkness', 14th ACE print run of June, 1977

[2] Dave Itzkoff, 'Being Boba Fett: Temuera Morrison Discusses ‘The Mandalorian’', The New York Times, published Dec. 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/arts/television/the-mandalorian-boba-fett-temuera-morrison.html (accessed 15 September 2021)

[3] Bruno Claessens, 'George Lucas' "Star Wars" and Oceanic art' , Archived from the original on December 5, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201205114353/http://brunoclaessens.com/2015/07/george-lucas-star-wars-and-oceanic-art/#.YEiJ-p37RhF (accessed 15 September 2021)

[4]  Wikipedia contributors, "Agency," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agency&oldid=1037924611 (accessed September 17, 2021)

[5] Rawinia Higgins, 'Tā moko – Māori tattooing - Origins of tā moko', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ta-moko-maori-tattooing/page-1 (accessed 17 September 2021)

[6] Tourism New Zealand, ‘The meaning of tā moko, traditional Māori tattoos’,  The Tourism New Zealand website, https://www.newzealand.com/us/feature/ta-moko-maori-tattoo/ (accessed 17 September 2021)

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