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grigori77 · 4 years

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2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)

20. FROZEN 2 – so, another year, then, and once again Disney doesn’t QUITE manage to net the animated feature top spot on my list, but it’s not for lack of trying – this long-awaited sequel to the studio’s runaway hit musical fantasy adventure is just what we’ve come to love from the House of Mouse, but more importantly it’s a most worthy sequel, easily on a par with the much beloved origin. Not much of a surprise given the welcome return of all the key people, from directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee (who also once again wrote the screenplay) to composer Christophe Beck and songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, as well as all the key players in the cast. It’s business as usual in the kingdom of Arendelle, where all is seemingly peaceful and tranquil, but Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) is restless, haunted by a distant voice that only she can hear, calling to her from a mysterious past she just can’t place … and then she accidentally awakens the four elemental spirits, sending her homeland into mystical turmoil, prompting her to embark on a desperate search for answers with her sister Princess Anna (Kristen Bell), ice harvester Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his faithful reindeer companion Sven, and, of course, living snowman Olaf (Josh Gad). Their quest leads them into the Enchanted Forest of Northuldra, a neighbouring kingdom, ruled by simple, elemental magic, that has remained cut off from Arendelle for decades, where they discover dark, hidden truths about their own family’s past and must make peace with the spirits if they’re to save their home and their people. So, typical Disney family fantasy fare, then, right? Well, Frozen 2 certainly dots all the Is and crosses all the Ts, but, like the original, this is no jaded blockbuster money spinner, packed with the same kind of resonant power, skilful inventiveness and pure, show-stopping WOW-factor as its predecessor, but more importantly this is a sequel that effectively carves out a fresh identity for itself, brilliantly taking the world and characters in interesting new directions to create something fresh, rewarding and worthwhile on its own merit. The returning cast are all as strong as ever, Menzel and Bell in particular ably powering the story, while it’s nice to see both Groff and Gad getting something new to do with their own characters too, even nabbing their own major musical numbers; there’s also a welcome slew of fresh new faces to this world, particular Sterling K. Brown (This is Us, Black Panther, The Predator) as lost Anrendelle soldier Mattias and former Brat Pack star Martha Plimpton as Yelena, leader of the lost tribe of Northuldra. Once again this is Disney escapism at its very best, a heart-warming, soul-nourishing powerhouse of winning humour, emotional power and child-like wonder, but like the first film the biggest selling point is, of course, that KILLER soundtrack, with every song here a total hit, not one dud among them, and there are even ear-worms here to put Let It Go to shame – Into the Unknown was touted as the major hit, and it is impressive, but I was particularly affected by Groff’s unashamedly full-bore rendition of Lost in the Woods, a bona fide classic rock power ballad crafted in the fashion of REO Speedwagon, while the undeniable highlight for me is the unstoppable Show Yourself, with Menzel once again proving that her incredible voice is a natural force all in itself. Altogether, then, this is an absolute feast for the eyes, the ears AND the soul, every inch the winner that its predecessor was and also EASILY one of Disney’s premier animated features for the decade. So it’s quite the runner-up, then …

19. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD – since his explosion onto the scene twenty-seven years ago with his runaway smash debut Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino has become one of the most important filmmakers of his generation, a true master of the cinematic art form who consistently delivers moving picture masterpieces that thrill, entertain, challenge and amuse audiences worldwide … at least those who can stomach his love of unswerving violence, naughty talk and morally bankrupt antiheroes and despicably brutal villains who are often little more than a shade different from one another. Time has moved on, though, and while he’s undoubtedly been one of the biggest influences on the way cinema has changed over the past quarter century, there are times now that it’s starting to feel like the scene is moving on in favour of younger, fresher blood with their own ideas. I think Tarantino can sense this himself, because he recently made a powerful statement – after he’s made his tenth film, he plans to retire. Given that OUATIH is his NINTH film, that deadline is already looming, and we unashamed FANS of his films are understandably aghast over this turn of events. Thankfully he remains as uncompromisingly awesome a writer-director as ever, delivering another gold standard five-star flick which is also most definitely his most PERSONAL work to date, quite simply down to the fact that it’s a film ABOUT film. Sure, it has a plot (of sorts, anyway), revolving around the slow decline of the career of former TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio), who languishes in increasing anonymity in Hollywood circa 1969 as his former western hero image is being slowly eroded by an increasingly hacky workload guest-starring on various syndicated shows as a succession of punching-bag heavies for the hero to wale on, while his only real friend is his one-time stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), a former WW2 hero with a decidedly tarnished reputation of his own; meanwhile new neighbours have moved in next door to further distract him – hot-as-shit young director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), riding high on the success of Rosemary’s Baby, and his new wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Certainly this all drives the film, along with real-life events involving one of the darkest crimes in modern American history, but a lot of the time the plot is largely coincidental – Quentin uses it as a springboard to wax lyrical about his very favourite subject and pay loving (if sometimes irreverently satirical) tribute to the very business he’s been indulging in with such great success since 1992. Sure, it’s also about “Helter Skelter” and the long shadow cast by Charles Manson and his band of murderous misfits, but this is largely incidental, as we’re treated to long, entertaining interludes as we follow Rick on a shoot as the bad guy in the pilot for the Lancer TV series, visit the notorious Spahn Ranch with Cliff as he’s unwittingly drawn into the lion’s den of the deadly Manson Family, join Robbie’s Tate as she watches “herself” in The Wrecking Crew, and enjoy a brilliant montage in which we follow Rick’s adventures in Spaghetti westerns (and Eurospy cinema) after he’s offered a chance to change his flagging fortunes, before the film finally builds to a seemingly inevitable, fateful conclusion that Tarantino then, in sneakily OTT Inglourious Basterds style, mischievously turns on its head with a devilish game of “What If”. The results are a thoroughly engrossing and endlessly entertaining romp through the seedier side of Hollywood and a brilliant warts-and-all examination of the craft’s inner workings that, interestingly, reveals as much about the Business today as it does about how it was way back in the Golden Age the film portrays, all while delivering bucket-loads of QT’s trademark cool, swagger, idiosyncratic genius and to-die-for dialogue and character-work, and, of course, a typically exceptional all-star cast firing on all cylinders. Dicaprio and Pitt are both spectacular (Brad is endearingly taciturn, playing it wonderfully close to the vest throughout, while Leo is simply ON FIRE, delivering a mercurial performance EASILY on a par with his work on Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street – could this be good enough to snag him a second Oscar?), while Robbie consistently endears us to Tate as she EFFORTLESSLY brings the fallen star back to life, and there’s an incredible string of amazing supporting turns from established talent and up-and-comers alike, from Kurt Russell, Al Pacino and a very spiky Bruce Dern to Mike Moh (in a FLAWLESS take on Bruce Lee), Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler and in particular Julia Butters as precocious child star Trudi Fraser. Packed with winning references, homages, pastiches and ingenious little in-jokes, handled with UTMOST respect for the true life subjects at all times and shot all the way through with his characteristic flair and quirky, deliciously dark sense of humour, this is cinema very much of the Old School, and EVERY INCH a Tarantino flick. With only one more film to go the implied end of his career seems much too close, but if he delivers one more like this he’ll leave behind a legacy that ANY filmmaker would be proud of.

18. CRAWL – summer 2019’s runner-up horror offering marks a rousing return to form for a genre talent who’s FINALLY delivered on the impressive promise of his early work – Alexandre Aja made a startling debut with Switchblade Romance, which led to his big break helming the cracking remake of slasher stalwart The Hills Have Eyes, but then he went SPECTACULARLY off the rails when he made the truly abysmal Piranha 3D, which I wholeheartedly regard as one of THE VERY WORST FILMS EVER MADE IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. He took a big step back in the right direction with the admittedly flawed but ultimately enjoyable and evocative Horns (based on the novel by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill), but it’s with this stripped back, super-tight man-against-nature survival horror that the Aja of old has TRULY returned to us. IN SPADES. Seriously, I personally think this is his best film to date – there’s no fat on it at all, going from a simple set-up STRAIGHT into a precision-crafted exercise in sustained tension that relentlessly grips right up to the end credits. The film is largely just a two-hander – Maze Runner star Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a Florida college student and star swimmer who ventures into the heart of a Category 5 hurricane to make sure her estranged father, Dave (Saving Private Ryan’s Barry Pepper), is okay after he drops off the grid. Finding their old family home in a state of disrepair and slowly flooding, she does a last minute check of the crawl-space underneath, only to discover her father badly wounded and a couple of hungry alligators stalking the dark, cramped, claustrophobic confines. With the flood waters rising and communications cut off, Haley and Dave must use every reserve of strength, ingenuity and survival instinct to keep each other alive in the face of increasingly daunting odds … even with a premise this simple, there was plenty of potential for this to become an overblown, clunky mess in the wrong hands (a la Snakes On a Plane), so it’s a genuinely great thing that Aja really is back at the height of his powers, milking every fraught and suspenseful set-piece to its last drop of exquisite piano-wire tension and putting his actors through hell without a reprieve in sight. Thankfully it’s not JUST about scares and atmosphere – there’s a genuinely strong family drama at the heart of the story that helps us invest in these two, Scodelario delivering a phenomenally complex performance as she peels back Haley’s layers, from stubborn pedant, through vulnerable child of divorce, to ironclad born survivor, while reconnecting with her emotionally raw, repentantly open father, played with genuine naked intensity in a career best turn from Pepper. Their chemistry is INCREDIBLY strong, making every scene a joy even as it works your nerves and tugs on your heartstrings, and as a result you DESPERATELY want to see them make it out in one piece. Not that Aja makes it easy for them – the gators are an impressively palpable threat, proper scary beasties even if they are largely (admittedly impressively executed) digital effects, while the storm is almost a third character in itself, becoming as much of an elemental nemesis as its scaly co-stars. Blessedly brief (just 87 minutes!) and with every second wrung out for maximum impact, this is survival horror at its most brutally, simplistically effective, a deliciously vicious, primal chill-ride that thoroughly rewards from start to finish. Welcome back, Mr Aja. We’ve missed you.

17. SHAZAM! – there were actually THREE movies featuring Captain Marvel out in 2019, but this offering from the hit-and-miss DCEU cinematic franchise is a very different beast from his MCU-based namesake, and besides, THIS Cap long ago ditched said monicker for the far more catchy (albeit rather more oddball) title that graces Warner Bros’ last step back on the right track for their superhero Universe following the equally enjoyable Aquaman and franchise high-point Wonder Woman. Although he’s never actually referred to in the film by this name, Shazam (Chuck’s Eugene Levy) is the magically-powered alternate persona bestowed upon wayward fifteen year-old foster kid Billy Batson (Andi Mack’s Asher Angel) by an ancient wizard (Djimon Hounsou) seeking one pure soul to battle Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), a morally corrupt physicist who turns into a monstrous supervillain after becoming the vessel for the spiritual essences of the Seven Deadly Sins (yup, that thoroughly batshit setup is just the tip of the iceberg of bonkersness on offer in this movie). Yes, this IS set in the DC Extended Universe, Shazam sharing his world with Superman, Batman, the Flash et al, and there are numerous references (both overt and sly) to this fact throughout (especially in the cheeky animated closing title sequence), but it’s never laboured, and the film largely exists in its own comfortably enclosed narrative bubble, allowing us to focus on Billy, his alter ego and in particular his clunky (but oh so much fun) bonding experiences with his new foster family, headed by former foster kid couple Victor and Rosa Vazquez (The Walking Dead’s Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans) – the most enjoyably portions of the film, however, are when Billy explores the mechanics and limits of his newfound superpowers with his new foster brother Freddy Freeman (It Chapter 1’s Jack Dylan Glazer), a consistently hilarious riot of bad behaviour, wanton (often accidental) destruction and perfectly-observed character development, the blissful culmination of a gleefully anarchic sense of humour that, until recently, has been rather lacking in the DCEU but which is writ large in bright, wacky primary colours right through this film. Sure, there are darker moments, particularly when Sivana sets loose his fantastic icky brood of semi-corporeal monsters, and these scenes are handled with seasoned skill by director David F. Sandberg, who cut his teeth on ingenious little horror gem Lights Out (following up with Annabelle: Creation, but we don’t have to dwell on that), but for the most part the film is played for laughs, thrills and pure, unadulterated FUN, almost never taking itself too seriously, essentially intended to do for the DCEU what Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man did for the MCU, and a huge part of its resounding success must of course be attributed to the universally willing cast. Eugene Levy’s so ridiculously pumped-up he almost looks like a special effect all on his own, but he’s lost none of his razor-sharp comic ability, perfectly encapsulating a teenage boy in a grown man’s body, while his chemistry with genuine little comedic dynamo Glazer is simply exquisite, a flawless balance shared with Angel, who similarly excels at the humour but also delivers quality goods in some far more serious moments too, while the rest of Billy’s newfound family are all brilliant, particularly ridiculously adorable newcomer Faithe Herman as precocious little motor-mouth Darla; Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, adds significant class and gravitas to what could have been a cartoonish Gandalf spoof, and Mark Strong, as usual, gives great bad guy as Sivana, providing just the right amount of malevolent swagger and self-important smirk to proceedings without ever losing sight of the deeper darkness within. All round, this is EXACTLY the kind of expertly crafted superhero package we’ve come to appreciate in the genre, another definite shot in the arm for the DCEU that holds great hope for the future of the franchise, and some of the biggest fun I had at the cinema this past year. Granted, it’s still not a patch on the MCU, but the quality gap finally seems to be closing …

16. ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL – y’know, there was a time when James Cameron was quite a prolific director, who could be counted upon to provide THE big event pic of the blockbuster season. These days, we’re lucky to hear from him once a decade, and now we don’t even seem to be getting that – the dream project Cameron’s been trying to make since the end of the 90s, a big live action adaptation of one of my favourite mangas of all time, Gunnm (or Battle Angel Alita to use its more well-known sobriquet) by Yukito Kishiro, has FINALLY arrived, but it isn’t the big man behind the camera here since he’s still messing around with his intended FIVE MOVIE Avatar arc. That said, he made a damn good choice of proxy to bring his vision to fruition – Robert Rodriguez is, of course, a fellow master of action cinema, albeit one with a much more quirky style, and this adap is child’s play to him, the creator of the El Mariachi trilogy and co-director of Frank Miller’s Sin City effortlessly capturing the dark, edgy life-and-death danger and brutal wonder of Kishiro’s world in moving pictures. 300 years after the Earth was decimated in a massive war with URM (the United Republics of Mars) known as “the Fall”, only one bastion of civilization remains – Iron City, a sprawling, makeshift community of scavengers that lies in the shadow of the floating city of Zalem, home of Earth’s remaining aristocracy. Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) runs a clinic in Iron City customising and repairing the bodies of its cyborg citizens, from the mercenary “hunter killers” to the fast-living players of Motorball (a kind of supercharged mixture of Rollerball and Death Race), one day discovering the wrecked remains of a female ‘borg in the junkyard of scrap accumulated beneath Zalem. Finding her human brain is still alive, he gives her a new chassis and christens her Alita, raising her as best he can as she attempts to piece together her mysterious, missing past, only for them both to discover that the truth of her origins has the potential to tear their fragile little world apart forever. The Maze Runner trilogy’s Rosa Salazar is the heart and soul of the film as Alita (originally Gally in the comics), perfectly bringing her (literal) wide-eyed innocence and irrepressible spirit to life, as well as proving every inch the diminutive badass fans have been expecting – while her overly anime-styled look might have seemed a potentially jarring distraction in the trailers, Salazar’s mocap performance is SO strong you’ve forgotten all about it within the first five minutes, convinced she’s a real, flesh-and-metal character – and she’s well supported by an exceptional ensemble cast both new and well-established. Waltz is the most kind and sympathetic he’s been since Django Unchained, instilling Ido with a worldly warmth and gentility that makes him a perfect mentor/father-figure, while Spooksville star Keean Johnson makes a VERY impressive big screen breakthrough as Hugo, the streetwise young dreamer with a dark secret that Alita falls for in a big way, Jennifer Connelly is icily classy as Ido’s ex-wife Chiren, Mahershala Ali is enjoyably suave and mysterious as the film’s nominal villain, Vector, an influential but seriously shady local entrepreneur with a major hidden agenda, and a selection of actors shine through the CGI in various strong mocap performances, such as Deadpool’s Ed Skrein, Derek Mears, From Dusk Til Dawn’s Eiza Gonzalez and a thoroughly unrecognisable but typically awesome Jackie Earle Haley. As you’d expect from Rodriguez, the film delivers BIG TIME on the action front, unleashing a series of spectacular set-pieces that peak with Alita’s pulse-pounding Motorball debut, but there’s a pleasingly robust story under all the thrills and wow-factor, riffing on BIG THEMES and providing plenty of emotional power, especially in the heartbreaking character-driven climax – Cameron, meanwhile, has clearly maintained strict control over the project throughout, his eye and voice writ large across every scene as we’re thrust headfirst into a fully-immersive post-apocalyptic, rusty cyberpunk world as thoroughly fleshed-out as Avatar’s Pandora, but most importantly he’s still done exactly what he set out to do, paying the utmost respect to a cracking character as he brings her to vital, vivid life on the big screen. Don’t believe the detractors – this is a MAGNIFICENT piece of work that deserves all the recognition it can muster, perfectly set up for a sequel that I fear we may never get to see. Oh well, at least it’s renewed my flagging hopes for a return to Pandora …

15. AD ASTRA – last century, making a space exploration movie after 2001: A Space Odyssey was a pretty tall order. THIS century, looks like it’s trying to follow Chris Nolan’s Interstellar – love it or hate it, you can’t deny that particular epic space opera for the IMAX crowd is a REALLY tough act to follow. At first glance, then, writer-director James Gray (The Yards, We Own the Night) is an interesting choice to try, at least until you consider his last feature – he may be best known for understated, gritty little crime thrillers, but I was most impressed by 2016’s ambitious period biopic The Lost City of Z, which focused on the groundbreaking career of pioneering explorer Percy Fawcett, and couldn’t have been MORE about the indomitable spirit of discovery if it tried. His latest shares much of the same DNA, albeit presented in a VERY different package, as we’re introduced to a more expansive Solar System of the near future, in which humanity has begun to colonize our neighbouring worlds and is now pushing its reach beyond our own star’s light in order to discover what truly lies beyond the void of OUTER space. Brad Pitt stars as Major Roy McBride, a career astronaut whose whole life has been defined by growing up in the shadow of his father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a true pioneer who led an unprecedented expedition to the orbit of our furthest neighbour, Neptune, in order to search for signs of intelligent life beyond our solar system, only for the whole mission to go quiet for the past sixteen years. Then a mysterious, interplanetary power surge throws the Earth into chaos, and Roy must travel farther than he’s ever gone before in order to discover the truth behind the source of the pulse – his father’s own ill-fated Lima Project … this is a very different beast from Interstellar, a much more introspective, stately affair, revelling in its glacial pacing and emphasis on character motivation over plot, but it’s no less impressive from a visual, visceral standpoint – Gray and cinematographer Hoyt van Hoytema (who, interestingly, ALSO shot Interstellar, along with Nolan’s Dunkirk and his upcoming feature Tenet) certainly make space look truly EPIC, crafting astonishing visuals that deserve to be seen on the big screen (or at the very least on the best quality HDTV you can find). There’s also no denying the quality of the writing, Gray weaving an intricate story that reveals far greater depth and complexity than can be seen at first glance, while Roy’s palpable “thought-process” voiceover puts us right into the head of the character as we follow him across the endless void on a fateful journey into a cosmic Heart of Darkness. There is, indeed, a strong sense of Apocalypse Now to proceedings, with the younger McBride definitely following a similar path to Martin Sheen’s ill-fated captain as he travels “up-river” to find his Colonel Kurtz-esque father, and the performances certainly match the heft of the material – there’s an impressive collection of talent on offer in a series of top-quality supporting turns, Jones being just the icing on the cake in the company of Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, John Ortiz and Preacher’s Ruth Negga, but the undeniable driving force of the film is Pitt, his cool, laconic control hiding uncharted depths of emotional turmoil as he’s forced to call every choice into question. It’s EASILY one of the finest performances of his career to date, just one of the MANY great selling points in a film that definitely deserves to be remembered as one of the all-time sci-fi greats of the decade. An absolute masterpiece, then, but does it stand tall in comparison to Interstellar? I should say so …

14. BRIGHTBURN – torpedoing Crawl right out of the water in the summer, this refreshing, revisionist superhero movie takes one of the most classic mythologies in the genre and turns it on its head in true horror style. The basic premise is an absolute blinder – what if, when he crashed in small-town America as a baby, Superman had turned out to be a bad seed? Unsurprising, then, that it came from James Gunn, who here produces a screenplay by his brother and cousin Brian and Mark Gunn (best known for penning the likes of Journey 2: the Mysterious Island, but nobody’s perfect) and the directorial big break of his old mate David Yarovesky (whose only previous feature is obscure sci-fi horror The Hive) – Gunn is, of course, an old pro at taking classic comic book tropes and creating something completely new with them, having previously done so with HUGE success on cult indie black comedy Super and, in particular, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and his fingerprints are ALL OVER this one too. The Hunger Games’ Elizabeth Banks (who starred in Gunn’s own directorial debut Slither) and David Denman (The Office) are Tori and Kyle Breyer, a farming couple living in Brightburn, Kansas, who are trying for a baby when a mysterious pod falls from the sky onto their land, containing an infant boy. As you’d expect, they adopt him, determined to keep his origin a secret, and for the first twelve years of his life all seems perfectly fine – Brandon’s growing up into an intelligent, artistic child who loves his family. Then his powers manifest and he starts to change – not just physically (he’s impervious to harm, incredibly strong, has laser eyes and the ability to disrupt electronic devices … oh, and he can fly, too), but also in personality, as he becomes cold, distant, even cruel as he begins to demonstrate some seriously sociopathic tendencies. As his parents begin to fear what he’s becoming, things begin to spiral out of control and people start to disappear or turn up brutally murdered, and it becomes clear that Brandon might actually be something out of a nightmare … needless to say this is superhero cinema as full-on horror, Brandon’s proclivities leading to some proper nasty moments once he really starts to cut loose, and there’s no mistaking this future super for one of the good guys – he pulverises bones, shatters faces and melts skulls with nary a twitch, just the tiniest hint of a smile. It’s an astonishing performance from newcomer Jackson A. Dunn, who perfectly captures the nuanced subtleties as Brandon goes from happy child to lethal psychopath, clearly demonstrating that he’s gonna be an incredible talent in future; the two grown leads, meanwhile, are both excellent, Denman growing increasingly haunted and exasperated as he tries to prove his own son is a wrong ‘un, while Banks has rarely been better, perfectly embodying a mother desperately wanting to belief the best of her son no matter how compelling the evidence becomes, and there’s quality support from Breaking Bad’s Matt Jones and Search Party’s Meredith Hagner as Brandon’s aunt and uncle, Noah and Meredith, and Becky Wahlstrom as the mother of one of his school-friends, who seems to see him for what he really is right from the start. Dark, suspenseful and genuinely nasty, this is definitely not your typical superhero movie, often playing like Kick-Ass’ deeply twisted cousin, and there are times when it displays some of the same edgy, black-hearted sense of humour, too. In other words, it’s all very James Gunn. It’s one sweet piece of work, everyone involved showing real skill and devotion, and Yarovesky in particular proves he’ll definitely be one-to-watch in the future. There are already plans for a potential sequel, and given where this particular little superhero universe seems to be heading I think it could be something pretty special, so fair to say I can’t wait.

13. STAR WARS EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER – wow, this one’s proven particularly divisive, hasn’t it? And I thought The Last Jedi caused a stir … say what you will about Rian Johnson’s previous entry in the juggernaut science fiction saga, while it certainly riled up the hardcore fanbase it was at least well-received by the critics, not to mention myself, who found it refreshing and absolutely ingenious after the crowd-pleasing simplicity of JJ Abrams’ admittedly still thoroughly brilliant The Force Awakens. After such radical experimentation, Abrams’ return to the director’s chair can’t help feeling a bit like desperate backpedalling in order to sooth a whole lot of seriously ruffled feathers, and I’ll admit that, on initial viewing, I couldn’t help feeling just a touch cheated given what might have been if similarly offbeat, experimentally-minded filmmaker Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World) had stayed on board to helm the picture. Then I got home, thought about it for a bit and it started to grow on me, before a second viewing helped me to reconcile all everything that bugged me first time around, seemingly the same things that have, perversely, ruffled so many more feathers THIS TIME. This doesn’t feel like a retcon job, no matter what some might think – new developments in the story that might feel like whitewash actually do make sense once you think about them, and the major twists actually work when viewed within the larger, overarching storyline. Not that I’m willing to go into any kind of detail here, mind you – this is a spoiler-free zone, thank you very much. Suffice to say, the honour of the saga has in no way been besmirched by Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio (sure, he worked on Batman V Superman and Justice League, but he also wrote Argo), the final film ultimately standing up very well indeed alongside its trilogy contemporaries, and still MILES ABOVE anything we got in George Lucas’ decidedly second-rate prequels. The dangling plot strands from The Last Jedi certainly get tied up with great satisfaction, particularly the decidedly loaded drama of new Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley) and troubled First Order Supreme Leader Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver), while the seemingly controversial choice of reintroducing Ian McDiarmid’s fantastically monstrous Emperor Palpatine as the ultimate big bad ultimately works out spectacularly well, a far cry from any perceived botched fan-service. Everyone involved was clearly working at the height of their powers – Ridley and Driver are EXCEPTIONAL, both up-and-coming young leads truly growing into the their roles, while co-stars John Boyega and Oscar Isaac land a pleasingly meaty chunk of the story to finally get to really explore that fantastic chemistry they teased on The Last Jedi, and Carrie Fisher gets a truly MAGNIFICENT send off in the role that defined her as the incomparable General Leia Organa (one which it’s still heartbreaking she never quite got to complete); other old faces, meanwhile, return in fun ways, from Anthony Daniels’ C-3PO FINALLY getting to play a PROPER role in the action again to a brilliant supporting flourish from the mighty Billy Dee Williams as the Galaxy-Far-Far-Away’s own King of Cool, Lando Calrissian, while there’s a wealth of strong new faces here too, such as Lady Macbeth’s Naomie Ackie as rookie rebel Jannah, Richard E. Grant as suitably slimy former-Imperial First Order bigshot Allegiant General Pryde, The Americans’ Keri Russell as tough smuggler Zorii Bliss and Lord of the Rings star Dominic Monaghan as Resistance tech Beaumont Kin. As fans have come to expect, Abrams certainly doesn’t skim on the spectacle, delivering bombastic thrill-ride set-pieces that yet again set the benchmark for the year’s action stakes (particularly in the blistering mid-picture showdown between Rey and Kylo among the wave-lashed remains of Return of the Jedi’s blasted Death Star) and awe-inspiring visuals that truly boggle the mind with their sheer beauty and complexity, but he also injects plenty of the raw emotion, inspired character work, knowing humour and pure, unadulterated geeky FUN he’s so well known for. In conclusion, then, this is MILES AWAY from the clunky, compromised mess it’s been labelled as in some quarters, ultimately still very much in keeping with the high standards set by its trilogy predecessors and EVERY INCH a proper, full-blooded Star Wars movie. Ultimately, Rogue One remains THE BEST of the big screen run since Lucas’ Original Trilogy, but this one still emerges as a Force to be reckoned with …

12. JOKER – no-one was more wary than me when it was first announced that DC and Warner Bros. were going to make a standalone, live-action movie centred entirely around Batman’s ultimate nemesis, the Joker, especially with it coming hot on the heels of Jared Leto’s thoroughly polarizing portrayal in Suicide Squad. More so once it was made clear that this WOULD NOT be part of the studio’s overarching DC Extended Universe cinematic franchise, which was FINALLY starting to find its feet – then what’s the point? I found myself asking. I should have just sat back and gone with it, especially since the finished product would have made me eat a big slice of humble pie had I not already been won over once the trailers started making the rounds. This is something new, different and completely original in the DC cinematic pantheon, even if it does draw major inspiration from Alan Moore’s game-changing DC comics mini-series The Killing Joke – a complete standalone origin story for one of our most enduring villains, re-imagined as a blistering, bruising psychological thriller examining what can happen to a man when he’s pushed far beyond the brink by terrible circumstance, societal neglect and crippling mental illness. Joaquin Phoenix delivers the performance of his career as Arthur Fleck, a down-at-heel clown-for-hire struggling to launch a career as a stand-up-comic (badly hampered by the fact that he’s just not funny) while suffering from an acute dissociative condition and terrible attacks of pathological laughter at moments of heightened stress – the actor lost 52 pounds of weight to become a horrifically emaciated scarecrow painfully reminiscent of Christian Bale’s similar preparation for his acclaimed turn in The Machinist, and frequently contorts himself into seemingly impossible positions that prominently accentuate the fact. Fleck is a truly pathetic creature, thoroughly put-upon by a pitiless society that couldn’t care less about him, driven by inner demons and increasingly compelling dark thoughts to act out in increasingly desperate, destructive ways that ultimately lead him to cross lines he just can’t come back from, and Phoenix gives his all in every scene, utterly mesmerising even when his character commits some truly heinous acts. Certainly he dominates the film, but then there are plenty of winning supporting turns from a universally excellent cast to bolster him along, from Zazie Beetz as an impoverished young mother Arthur bonds with and Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under, American Horror Story) as Arthur’s decidedly fragile mother Penny to Brett Cullen (The Thorn Birds, Lost) as a surprisingly unsympathetic Thomas Wayne (the philanthropic father of future Batman Bruce Wayne), while Robert De Niro himself casts a very long shadow indeed as Murray Franklin, a successful comedian and talk show host that Arthur idolizes, a character intentionally referential to his role in The King of Comedy. Indeed, Martin Scorsese’s influence is writ large throughout the entire film, reinforced by the choice to set the film in a 1981-set Gotham City which feels very much like the crumbling New York of Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. This is a dark, edgy, grim and unflinchingly BRUTAL film, frequently difficult to watch as Arthur is driven further into a blazing psychological hell by his increasingly stricken life, but addictively, devastatingly compelling all the same, impossible to turn away from even in the truly DEVASTATING final act. Initially director Todd Phillips seemed like a decidedly odd choice for the project, hailing as he does from a predominantly comedy-based filmmaking background (most notably Due Date and The Hangover trilogy), but he’s actually a perfect fit here, finding a strangely twisted beauty in many of his compositions and a kind of almost uplifting transcendence in his subject’s darkest moments, while his screenwriting collaboration with Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter) means that the script is as rich as it can be, almost overflowing with brilliant ideas and rife with biting social commentary which is even more relevant today than in the period in which it’s set. Intense, gripping, powerful and utterly devastating, this truly is one of the best films of 2019. If this was a purely critical Top 30 this would have placed in the Top 5, guaranteed …

11. FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS HOBBS & SHAW – summer 2019’s most OTT movie was some of THE MOST FUN I had at the cinema all year, a genuinely batshit crazy, pure bonkers rollercoaster ride of a film I just couldn’t get enough of, the perfect sum of all its baffling parts. The Fast & Furious franchise has always revelled in its extremes, subtle as a brick and very much playing to the blockbuster, popcorn movie crowd right from the start, but it wasn’t until Fate of the Furious (yup, the ridiculous title says it all) that it really started to play to the inherent ridiculousness of its overall setup, paving the way for this first crack at a new spin-off series sans-Vin Diesel. Needless to say this one fully embraces the ludicrousness, with director David Leitch the perfect choice to shepherd it into the future, having previously mastered OTT action through John Wick and Atomic Blonde before helming manic screwball comedy Deadpool 2, which certainly is the strongest comparison point here – Hobbs & Shaw is every bit as loud, violent, chaotic and thoroughly irreverent, definitely playing up the inherent comic potential at the core of the material as he cranks up the humour. Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham take centre stage as, respectively, DSS agent Luke Hobbs and former SAS black operative Deckard Shaw, the ultimate action movie odd couple once again forced to work together to foil the bad guy and save the world from a potentially cataclysmic disaster. Specifically Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), a self-proclaimed “black superman” enhanced with cybernetic implants and genetic manipulation to turn him into the ultimate warrior, who plans to use a lethal designer supervirus to eradicate half of humanity (as supervillains tend to do), but there’s one small flaw in his plan – the virus has been stolen by Hattie Shaw (Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Vanessa Kirby), a rogue MI6 agent who also happens to be Deckard’s sister. Got all that? Yup, the movie really is as mad as it sounds, but that’s part of the charm – there’s an enormous amount of fun to be had in just giving in and going along with the madness as Hobbs and the two Shaws bounce from one overblown, ludicrously destructive set-piece to the next, kicking plenty of arse along the way when they’re not jumping out of tall buildings or driving fast cars at ludicrous speeds in heavy traffic, and when they’re not doing that they’re bickering with enthusiasm, each exchange crackling with exquisite hate-hate chemistry and liberally laced with hilarious dialogue delivered with gleeful, fervent venom (turns out there’s few things so enjoyable as watching Johnson and Statham verbally rip each other a new one), and the two action cinema heavyweights have never been better than they are here, each bringing the very best performances of their respective careers out of each other as they vacillate, while Kirby holds her own with consummate skill that goes to show she’s got a bright future of her own. As for Idris Elba, the one-time potential future Bond deserves to be remembered as one of the all-time great screen villains ever, investing Brixton with the perfect combination of arrogant swagger and lethal menace to steal every scene he’s in while simultaneously proving he can be just as big a badass in the action stakes; Leitch also scatters a selection of familiar faces from his previous movies throughout a solid supporting cast which also includes the likes of Fear the Walking Dead’s Cliff Curtis, From Dusk Till Dawn’s Eiza Gonzalez and Helen Mirren (who returns as Deckard and Hattie’s mum Queenie Shaw), while there’s more than one genuinely brilliant surprise cameo to enjoy. As we’ve come to expect, the action sequences are MASSIVE, powered by nitrous oxide and high octane as property is demolished and vehicles are driven with reckless abandon when our protagonists aren’t engaged in bruising, bone-crunching fights choreographed with all the flawless skill you’d expect from a director who used to be a professional stuntman, but this time round the biggest fun comes from the downtime, as the aforementioned banter becomes king. It’s an interesting makeover for the franchise, going from heavyweight action stalwart to comedy gold, and it’s a direction I hope they’ll maintain for the inevitable follow-up – barring Fast Five, this is THE BEST Fast & Furious to date, and a strong indicator of how it should go to keep conquering multiplexes in future. Sign me up for more, please.

#frozen 2 #Once Upon A Time In Hollywood #crawl #crawl movie #Shazam!#Alita Battle Angel #ad astra #Brightburn #star wars the rise of skywalker #joker #joker movie #hobbs and shaw #2019 in movies

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yoongisgoawaydoormat · 5 years

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Is yoongi your fave in bts? I just today stumbled over a video of bts and watched and now 100 videos later i really think i kinda like them and especially Yoongi. He is such a sweetheart. so as a fellow 1d stan now into bts i wanted to know if louis was your fave and if yoongi is in bts? Cause i find it quite interesting to know^^'

ok so i have some esoteric ramblings that go far beyond the yes or no question you asked me here lmao... i guess im just feeling very “in this essay i will-” rn because of how much i truly adore both of them. also this basically turned into a personal diary entry but also simultaneously a cultural studies essay on how we make meaning in celebrities so like..... 🤷🏼‍♀️

@gettingaphdinmomo can u believe this anon let me merge 1d and bts? im indebted to them tbh

so yeah yoongi is my bias in bts and louis was always my fave in 1d! (well zayn too but z isn’t a member of 1d - tho i think he relates to some of the points im going to make here as well) and coincidentally i’ve actually been doing like... some self-psychoanalysis recently just reflecting on what my affection for louis and yoongi says about me, says about them, etc... just been thinkin’ ya know?

and i just feel like yoongi and louis are 2 sides of the same coin and it’s a coin that i distinctly Relate to and i’ll explain why. both yoongi and louis have very distinct caricature-type reputations on the surface. both vis-a-vis their role in their respective groups and in relation to the personalities that we see/they show us.

and what i mean by that is that louis is known as loud, brash, exuberant (formerly camp and flamboyant as well, though im not even gonna try to get Into A Discussion of That rn); to most people that do not take the time to go far beyond the surface, that’s kind of louis’ whole deal, right? (again this isn’t a discussion of public opinion of louis and doesn’t account for how his various stories/stunts/‘relationships’ would impact people’s view of him)... yoongi is sort of in the same boat but on the opposite end of the spectrum if that makes sense? he’s the tsundere member. he’s seen as cold, distant, has dry humor, doesn’t like to show affection, etc. that’s what the caricature of min yoongi is.

but everyone who is a fan of either of them knows that neither of those caricatures are wholly accurate and that the caricatures belie an emotional depth and intelligence that both of them very clearly possess.

we can never know even a fraction of public figures’ personalities, but to the small extent that we do get glimpses, yoongi and louis are both individuals who clearly care very deeply about others. they are attentive to the emotions of those around them and they are supportive and nurturing in their own ways. but at the same time neither of them are overtly touchy-feely about it if that makes sense? their empathy is exhibited subtly but it runs deep. their demonstrations of caring and compassion are nuanced behind layers of something else.

for louis, i think there’s always a bit of humor layered on top of his emotional displays (i.e. giving liam a hard time about being a ‘lad’). and i see myself in that. i use humor as a defense mechanism and couch everything serious in my life in a joke, for better or worse. again, im not saying that that’s what louis is or does in real life, i’ll never know nor would i presume to, but i am saying that i see something of myself reflected in Louis Tomlinson™ and among a million other reasons to love him i think that is one of the reasons i’ve always been drawn to him. he’s so compassionate and caring but you have to make sure you’re not distracted by his bright loudness to miss it. in addition to seeing myself reflected in louis, i also admire so much about him that i am not but aspire to be more like. i wish i could be more extroverted like him and i wish i could be a bright presence for the people around me like i know he is. so with louis i see myself and i see traits that inspire me to go outside my comfort zone and push my own boundaries.

for yoongi, the soft sweet infp that he is, i think his emotional displays are equally as subtle and layered behind a bit of stoicism and a bit of introversion and a bit of being very carefully selective about who he lets in. his displays of affection and caring are alway there but are not done to be viewed and given great attention (i.e. his hand holding). i don’t think yoongi much likes being the center of attention and would much rather have his members be that (lol @ jimin) but at the same time he has moments where his energy just bursts forth. these are moments where he’s clearly so comfortable with his surroundings and the people he’s with that he feels no need to be measured or restrained. again, this is all my interpretation of what i see and is thus filtered and distilled so many times that i’d never presume to state all of this as some factual evaluation of yoongi’s personality, but also again, i see myself in these observations and interpretations of yoongi. i find it very difficult to express my emotions (see the above point about couching everything in humor) but they are there and they are felt deeply and they show themselves in subtler ways. i find it difficult to display affection with even my closest friends and family but am also just a touch-starved bitch looking to hold someone’s hand like yoongi is always doing. i too sometimes begin to feel comfortable enough with those around me that my passion and excitement just bursts forth all at once, but only sometimes, otherwise im hyper conscious of myself and tend to self-police if i have not reached such a comfort level. i see a lot of that in Min Yoongi™. but like with louis i also see a lot in yoongi that i strive to be more like. i struggle with the weight of my own expectations for myself and i internalize A Lot, as yoongi seems to, but yoongi also demonstrates such a clarity of self when it comes to these things. i think he Knows himself quite well, which is something i’d like to be better at. i think his self awareness (something i think namjoon also has in spades) and his work ethic are admirable and inspire me greatly. he just seems so Lucid Perceptive and Insightful about his situation, and that encourages me to be more honest with myself about my own situation.

and like maybe this is all just a diatribe that could be applied by anyone to their fave celeb? there’s levels to abstraction to every celebrity and there’s always interpolation/projection our own traits, neuroses, insecurities, desires, etc. onto how we view our favorite celebs... but idk there seems to be something slightly different with celebs like yoongi and louis (and zayn and namjoon actually now that i think about it).

like let’s contrast it with other 1d and bts members: jin and hobi have carefully constructed the way they want to be seen and they don’t let people see much beyond that (and they’re So Valid for that). i actually think niall is quite a lot like this as well. the caricature is the whole picture that we get if that makes sense (though of course not even a fraction of the whole person which we are not nor should we be privy to) but its still a human picture, its still rooted in a sense and a feeling of authenticity; it just has its boundaries and is clear about those boundaries. thus the consumer public gets a discrete, self-contained persona whose likeability isn’t necessarily dependent on the consumer’s ability to relate or see themselves in the persona but rather is simply likeable!

then you have liam and jungkook who i see as quite similar in some ways for some reason (which im sure is gonna get me yelled at lmao). i dont mean that i think they’re similar people just that i think both of them are quite earnest and what you see is what you get with them. i don’t think either of them have it in them to pull a jin/hobi/harry (see below) and construct/be viligent about the boundaries of their persona. i think tae and jimin are mostly like this as well. they’re all just kind of unapologetically themselves (liam particularly after 1d ended, tho i know that, ironically, many feel he’s a bit of a poser nowadays)? i see these types of figures as similar to the type above just with less stable boundaries/less concern for those boundaries.

then you have harry whose caricature is constructed to be larger than life, to be almost non-human in its Celeb-ification. Harry Styles™ is not meant to allow for reflection of yourself in it. the consumer is not supposed to find parts of themselves relating to Harry Styles™, that defeats the purposes of the larger than lifeness of Harry Styles™. (i know this sounds bad and don’t get me wrong i do hate harry lol but i also don’t think this is an inherently Bad way to be a celebrity. it’s the david bowie, lady gaga [pre-joanne] school of celebrity and its fine, i just think it should be recognized for what it is and i think its very different from how bts and the other members of 1d operate [though i recognize that some people would view zayn in this light]).

personally i think yoongi and louis (and zayn and namjoon, to account for everyone in this analysis here) don’t fit into the above categories. clearly i dont think any of these four are in the Harry Styles™-type camp (duh). but i also don’t think they fit into the authentic-but-carefully-boundaried jin/hobi/niall camp nor the what-you-see-is-what-you-get liam/maknae line camp. i think these 4 occupy a limbo space between the two ‘categories.’

anyways, the long and the short of it is that we all make our own meaning in celebrities. for me, i find myself drawn to yoongi and louis because i see traits of my own reflected back at the same time and in the same person that i see aspirational traits. im inspired and im comforted by this duality that yoongi and louis provide for me. i love all the members of 1d and bts (except harry lolz) but yoongi and louis (and zayn and namjoon, who i’d say is my 2nd bias in bts if that wasn’t already clear) hold special places in my heart because of how they occupy my sort of nebulous fourth category of celebhood.

anyways, i’m pretty sure no one is still reading this, which i do Not blame you for, but that’s my two cents! i love min yoongi and louis tomlinson, whats new!!!!!!!!!

#bts #1d #louis #yoongi #zayn #namjoon #Anonymous

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borisbubbles · 6 years

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EUROVISION 2018 #5 & #4

05. SWITZERLAND ZiBBZ - “Stones” 32nd place

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~*Wild Jokah On A Gole Froam*~

Yanking away the top NQ slot in this year’s ranking is, of course, everybody’s favourite Sibling alliance, ZiBZZ!!

As you know, I looooooooove mental health awareness songs, and I particularly love those with approaches that work (*cough* NOT “Goodbye” *cough*). While most of these songs are doused in motherly, cloddlesome tones, “Stones” doesn’t beat around the bush and argues that one must confront their fears HEAD-ON.

To transliterate the (ridic, amusing) lyrics into Common English:

“People have always been shitbags and have treated others like crap for aeons and there’s nothing I can do about it because people won’t fucking change.. SO fucking WHAT? Why would let those assholes affect my present and future the same way they’ve influenced my past? Fuck that noise. It’s time to let the inner demons rest, grow as a person AND help others get out of the deep end while doing so.”.

Holy fuck what an epic Truth BOMB, I can relate to all of that scalding hot tea. The best way to get around depression, anger and frustration *is* to 1) remove you from the toxic environment 2) find kindred spirits and support each other 3) find the courage to leave your past behind and build a future for yourself. Mental health is a BATTLEFIELD that HITS YOU with its best shots (did I just ref Pat Benatar twice? 🤭) while you’re struggling and “Stones” acklowedges this reality so hard. About fucking time someone lit the flares of ferocity to stand up against BULLYING and HATE. ALL HAIL COCO the ZiBB, FIRST OF HER NAME, THE UNDUN, MOTHER OF FLARES, KHALEESI OF THE DOWNTRODDEN, NON-THROWER OF STONES, BREAKER OF TABOOS, QUEEN OF THE HURT, TORMENTED AND BROWBEATEN.

Ain’t the only one who don’t wanna throw stooooooooooones

But of course, message alone isn’t enough to get such a high ranking, but fortunately ZiBBZ delivered musically as well. “Stones” has the perfect type of melody for Eurovision: catchy, repetitive and accessible, but never boring or tiresome because the arrangement was spot.fucking.on. The horns and tuba’s give the music so much gravitas, the backing AHEMs are excellent and CoCo’s five-packs-a-day type of gravelly voice adds so much realness to the song. "Stones” as a whole is jarring and complex and succeeds at elliciting the emotional response it aims for. This is my favourite song of the 42, by no small margin.

And then there’s the staging, which... I have mixed feelings about, not gonnal ie. It saddens me that even at this high a rank I must again resort to critique. I mean, the ACT was great. That motherfuckin’ flare is one of the few goosebump moments I got from this year, Coco is Minerva in a hipster body, Stee is a lovable goof, but... you have this amazing, dynamic song that is capable BLOWING EVERYONE AWAY and it kinda... doesn’t?

I would say that “Stones” was mostly hampered by its camerawork, which was mostly AWFUL. Which idiot [Hans Pancake 🙄] is responsible for framing such a powerful, uptempo song with slow, drawn-out shots?

I mean, shots such as this one:

(why didn’t they just focus on Stee??? or the audience?)

and that one:

(You can clearly see Coco throwing away a drumstick at the start of the preformance... Why the faraway shots?? Why no close-ups when she’s drumming happening???? NO ONE CARED ABOUT SANNA’S LIGHT CAGE SO WHY WOULD THEY START CARING NOW??? (seriously, fuck you Hans Culpepper))

This is the reason why “Stones” failed to ensnare the audience’s attention. Wrong people with the right to stage and ZiBBZ can’t do anything about it. I chose to not take it into account when I decided on their final ranking, but it’s sooooo frustrating to see Switzerland FINALLY strike the motherload and fall flat because of some moronic cinematographic decisions. Now watch Switz pick something mediocre and be overrated by the Basics/NQ once again (lol I say this without having listened to the Swiss songs, but can you blame me?). Oh well, ZiBBZ have since moved on to better things -

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- and so should we :). Still praying they pull a Poli in five years or so. THE WORLD NEEDS IT

04. SLOVENIA Lea Sirk - “Hvala, ne!” 22nd place

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Damn’ this is such a tough decision. Cutting entries loose at this point really hurts y’all.

So as you know, I really, REALLY fucking love Lea Sirk and even said that, in the unlikely event that she qualified, she’d WIN the ranking. However, while I am probably obliged by contract to grant her the first place, I can honestly say that... I like my top three more? Lea could have easily won this ranking, had my opinions on Elina, DoReDos and Ieva stayed the same; but they didn’t (they went up obvi), so here we are. The above paragraph is just a disclaimer to explain why Slovenia don’t rank higher than they do, because holy fuck this "Hvala, ne!” was awesoooooooooome. Anti-establishmentarian trap-pop that was a shock qualifier and made a flashy gimmick work TWICE <3 There’s a reason why the Good Gays Fanbase (do I include myself in that? hmmm 🤔) have nicknamed it “Hvala Slay!”.

But first, (-- Julie Chen-Moonves) let’s discuss the PHENOMENON that is Lea Sirk. My love for her predates this contest by several years, from the time when I only knew her as the botty cyborg sidekick to the heiress of the Ravenclaw Empire herself, Tinkara Kovac.

“KEN U BEE-LIEF ET???”

who happens to be *my* fave of Outstanding Eurovision Year 2014 (Yes, over Conchita, go cry) and is a contender for fave entry of the decade. The Summer of 2014 was a fantastic experience, partly thanks to Lea and I will forever cherish her for that reason. So when this beautiful dubstep fae was selected to rep Slovenia, now sporting a lilac killer braid, a trashbag jumpsuit and a cabal of slut-dropping dance devas of destruction... like *instantly* fanning my proverbial clit right there. It only got better during Lea’s pre-show content, proving her not only cool chick onstage, but off the stage as well. Having a teenage girl crush on Waylon <3 (Confessing this IN FRONT OF A LIVE AUDIENCE WHICH INCLUDED BOTH WAYLON AND HER HUSBAND lmao bless <3). Impersonating Salvador on some Slovene version of the Soundmix Show <3 There’s no way Lea couldn’t deliver in Lisbon.

And “deliver” is underselling what Lea did, holy fucking hell that live was EVERYTHING. It’s hard to even name what the brightest shining star of their performance was, since Slovenia brought an entire fucking galaxy of them. I’d say the best thing was probably the choreography, which managed to be spellbinding, professional and hilarious all at once. Lea and her dancers-in-crime put on an amazing, electrifying show, aided by dynamic camerawork and lighting (Take note, Hans Pancake 🙄).

My personal fave thing about “Hvala ne!” however was that it QUALIFIED BY A COMFORTABLE MARGIN AND WOULD HAVE UNDER ANY POINTS SYSTEM <345871 I love a deserving shock qualifier (see: Albania), but when it happens to a preshow fave of mine that I considered all but doomed (and a contender for last in the semi). . . There are no superlatives in my glossary that can describe the state of elation I felt when Lea was announced as a finalist. Netta might as well cede her trophy because the Eurogaes were the actual winners of this year 💗🧡💛💚💙💜 “Hvala, ne!” more like “HVALA motherfucking SLAYS HATERS” amirite???

Granted “Hvala, ne!” was the same in Lisbon as during the preshow, with only two marked exceptions. One was Lea had added a chorus in shabby Portuguese (”OBRIGADA NAO NAO!!!” <3) which was hilar, and the other was... the break!

Granted the semi break was kinda *blah* to me. “Zomg the music dies riiiiiiight before the bridge how coincidental”. Sure, Jan. Either way, I found it moderately funny, mostly because of the random extras that were clearly being paid by production to oversell it <3

But the best thing was that it WORKED and brought Lea to the finale where she performed a SECOND break and this one was downright epic. The audience actually sang along with her <3 <3 <3 <3 Two different instances of the same gimmick and making it work BOTH times <3 When will YOUR faves???

I suppose that, at the end of the day, “Hvala, ne!” was an experimental song that you either love or hate. Why anyone would ever hate this radiant nymph is beyond me, but whatever. My ranking, my rules, ya shallow fools. I *loved* this bizarre mix of K-Pop and Hip-Hop, sung in Slovene and Portuguese, (which is the most unique combination of languages ever featured in a Eurovision entry, I’m sure <3), with badass self-referential lyrics that SLAM DOWN musical conformity in a year that was all about rewarding it. In other words PRECISELY WHAT THIS CONTEST NEEDED. You know, there are plenty of countries out there that have never scored a top five in Eurovision and probably never will until they find their monster runaway winner (Lordi, Salvador). I *hope* the next one is from Slovenia. Raiven performing a song by Maraaya, with Lea and BQL as the back-up singers. Come on y’all, let’s make Eurovision Great Again. Hvala, slay, slay, slay, slay

RANKING SO FAR

04. Slovenia (Lea Sirk - “Hvala, ne!”)

05. Switzerland (ZiBBZ - “Stones”)

06. Germany (Michael Schulte - “You let me walk alone”)

07. Albania (Eugent Bushpepa - “Mall”)

08. France (Madame Monsieur - “Mercy”)

09. Hungary (AWS - “Viszlát nyár”)

10. Finland (Saara Aalto - “Monsters”)

11. Bulgaria (EQUINOX - “Bones”)

12. Denmark (Rasmussen - “Higher ground”)

13. Malta (Christabelle - “Taboo”)

14. Cyprus (Eleni Foureira - “Fuego”)

15. United Kingdom (SuRie - “Storm”)

16. Serbia (Balkanika - “Nova Deca”)

17. Portugal (Cláudia Pascoal - “O jardim”)

18. The Netherlands (Waylon - “Outlaw in ‘em”)

19. Ukraine (MÉLOVIN - “Under the ladder”)

20. Macedonia (Eye Cue - “Lost and Found”)

21. San Marino (Jessika ft. Jenifer Brening - “Who We Are”)

22. Sweden (Benjamin Ingrosso - “Dance You Off”)

23. Austria (Cesár Sampson - “Nobody but you”)

24. Latvia (Laura Rizzotto - “Funny girl”)

25. Azerbaijan (AISEL - “X my heart”)

26. Israel (Netta - “Toy”)

27. Norway (Alexander Rybak - “That’s how you write a song”)

28. Montenegro (Vanja Radovanovic - “Inje”)

29. Armenia (Sevak Khanagyan - “Qami”)

30. Poland (Gromee ft. Lukas Meijer - “Light me up”)

31. Greece (Yianna Terzi - “Oniro mou”)

32. Georgia (Iriao - “For you”)

33. Belgium (Sennek - “A matter of time”)

34. Italy (Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro - “Non mi avete fatto niente”)

35. Romania (The Humans - “Goodbye”)

36. Ireland (Ryan O'Shaughnessy - “Together”)

37. Croatia (Franka - “Crazy”)

38. Belarus (ALEKSEEV - “Forever”)

39. Russia (Julia Samoylova - “I Won’t Break”)

40. Spain (Amaia & Alfred - “Tu canción”)

41. Iceland (Ari Ólafsson - “Our choice”)

42. Australia (Jessica Mauboy - “We got love”)

43. Czech Republic (Mikolas Jozef - “Lie to me”)

#eurovision #Eurovision Song Contest #Eurovision 2018 #Switzerland #ZiBBZ #Stones #Slovenia #Lea Sirk #Hvala Ne!

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causinginvisibledamage · 6 years

Text

TRR Chapter 14: Hana’s mom can just go straight back to hell from whence she came

General thoughts:

All the Tangled references are appropriate this week because Hana is Rapunzel, Lorelai is Mother Gothel, and I’m throwing her over the balcony myself.

Ok a little dramatic but oh man. I AM PEEVED.

let’s try this again

Ok, so. This was a hard plot to resolve. Not even MC could talk the Lees out of being stubborn and listening to no one. So finally Hana found a way to take action and show her parents she could stand on her own to get past their fear and convince them she’s not doomed out here in the wilds.

And it ties back into the reoccurring thread of this book, which is that you can get farther with friendship and allies than you can by trying to stubbornly go things alone.

Biggest issue: Ima chalk it up to pacing: Hana’s victory and plot get swept past pretty quickly for a moment with your LI. :/

...Which, granted, was a really good moment! That diamond scene was fantastically done and definitely one of my faves. ♥

Alright, let’s get more into it! This post turned entirely into blahblahblah about Hana’s plot so jump in for that ride. For reference, my MC is Riley and she’s romancing Maxwell, and I’ll probably have more about that later.

if you know anything about me, two things I am ALL ABOUT are HEISTS and DEFENDING MY FRIENDS.

(In elementary school, I was quiet and painfully shy up until the point when someone tried to bully my friend within earshot, and then the school would have to call my mom because I didn't yet know how to channel those emotions into anything except STRANGLE. Maybe somebody should've taught me about heists! ...Wait no stealing is bad.)

Except when your friend's parents are being awful and unreasonable and not LISTENING

OH man. Just arranging these photos made me so angry again. These two are barely invited to my wedding. The back table with cold soup for them!!!

Lorelai might get most of my ire, but Xinghai isn’t coming off much better.

Last week I guessed from all his sad sprites that he would be the weak link here, that we’d have to win him over to convince him to grow a spine and convince his wife to back off!!! but that isn’t what happened and I am kinda glad they didn’t go that predictable.

But hooo man. These two have been having a one-way conversation with their daughter for her entire life, and now that she’s finally trying to speak back, they’re like Huh wow I guess words do nothing!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reminds me of that post about how “If you don’t respect me I won’t respect you” >>> “If you don’t respect my authority I won’t respect you as a human being”

The reveal that Hana’s dress is tied to her last good memories of her grandmother, and the BLATANT way Lorelai uses it to manipulate her is so damn cruel. Oh, sure, it was totally just coincidentally sitting on top of this pile~ my ass

I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOUR HAPPINESS. YOU WILL LIVE IN MY CASTLE WITH ME AND MAXWELL AND HAVE DANCE PARTIES AND BLANKET FORTS FOREVER.

So with that in mind, it sucks how being a good friend to Hana is so consistently paywalled :( I’m remembering back to the fondue scene in book 2 where she’s crying and everything, and if you don’t pay to invite the boys over, it’s kinda just like Oh man that’s rough buddy. :|

Basically, if you don’t pay for the dress heist, the conversation where you comfort Hana gets cut very short, and it isn’t even given the weighty music it gets in the diamond scene, which really helps set the tone. And then the tension has to share the stage with Lorelai possibly ruining your party.

I’ll be honest, if I had to choose between diamond scenes this week, it would have been the one with the LI, which is a great relationship-building one paired with sexitimes, and a good successor to the one two weeks ago where we finally get to talk about the future!

More on that later because HEIST TIME

We are nothing if not on brand here at Duchy Revanasi.

Off we go to recruit Maxwell or Olivia!

Olivia: You can say the punchline as many times as you want, Maxwell. It’s still not funny. Maxwell: Maybe I set it up wrong. I’ll start over from the top... MC: Sorry to interrupt! Olivia: Oh thank god.

jslkdj i love both of them

sorry Olivia, gotta see what shenanigans my fiancee can cook up.

b’awwwwwww.

Maxwell’s plan is to tell Lorelai they’re having a disco in the study!! A really really loud disco!!! Because “Riley said I could.”

Lorelai leaves immediately. Heheh.

as for Olivia, Our Lady of Drama, her tactic is uh. a little lacking in tact and I ended up being glad I went with Maxwell.

At least we got a little bit of... backhanded defensiveness from Lorelai. “not entirely to blame” :/

I live in support of Hana’s angry face, but Olivia please. Hana is having a time

Hana’s flirting tactic is straight to “take off your shirt” like damn girl

We find a sECRET pASSAGE (hooray!!!) to a really pretty sunset. :D

I really thought we were gonna take our LI back here later for a hot minute when MC was like “Hey I know a place!” but it ended up being the pretty balcony so I’m not complaining.

Thanks, I have great writers!

But god, this guts me. Hana never even had friends until she got here, she told MC that she was her first friend! Hana’s parents have been her only source of support for her entire life, of course she loves them and can’t picture her life without that, it’s all she’s had.

Hana’s dad says Hana isn’t equipped “for a life of independence” like MC was. Like, he’s obviously coming from a place of worry, but it’s blinding to him to how Hana is trying to fix that. She has been trying so hard to stand on her own two feet.

Her parents care, but they aren’t ready to listen to their daughter as a person. (respect vs respect again)

And damn, marrying someone like Neville would’ve been a disaster!!! Sure he’s rich, but he doesn’t exactly give off the impression he can make good decisions, so it would fall to Hana. Except with his arrogance and if Hana was as ideally subservient as her parents wanted her to be, she wouldn’t be able to.

ugh i need to take 10 showers just following this thread of thought.

sidenote, whomst the FUck let Neville onto my property. Gladys, get this punk trash outta here

...Rashad can stay. He's alright. And helps out Hana in the end so, hooray!

Oooo Hana is still into us T_T

That dress though! ♥ Usually i’m not into beadwork, but I adore the color, and how it makes MC look like a classy mermaid. I would love to wear that and swish around and feel how heavy it is.

Those poor dressmakers who spend an entire year preparing and then if the duchess just is like Actually nah.

:))) this made me laugh so hard. ISN’T IT. :[

She can’t take anything real from you. RUB IT IN HER FACE, HANA.

But oh man. Lorelai not only holding Hana’s love and her things hostage, but also playing to the press like Oh what a fancy new duchy you have, such a nice festival of hope, wouldn’t it be a shame if one of your best friends mothers CAUSED A BIG DAMN SCENE.

MC gives it the ole nyc try, but Xinghai is ready to hide behind his wife at a moment’s notice.

COOL MOTIVE STILL MURDER or in this case ‘cool motive still emotionally manipulating your daughter and forcing your wishes on her’

I AM TRYING SO HARD TO WORK WITH YOU HERE.

I think Lorelai’s bombshell for the press was the fake-out for someone getting murdered tonight. They went all out with the DRAMA MUSIC. Lorelai probably queued it herself, she clearly lives for the drama. GO AWAY. STOP RUINING THE MOMENT. People are trying to have wishes here >:(

[she’s talking about the chances of Xinghai making a business deal with Rashad on his own. sheesh, Lorelai’s not much more of a supportive wife than a mother, huh]

This image of Xinghai with the lantern breaks my heart a little. But I’m a sap. Damn discount George Takei, stand up for yourself and your daughter!

THIS, THOUGH. THIS SPEECH MAKES IT ALL WORTH IT. Your apologies are nice and all, but if you want to be a part of my life going forward? You can’t pull this shit again. That is exactly what she needed to say, and I’m glad she got to say it.

I tried a few different ways and all times came out of it with Lorelai’s approval. Curious if it is possible to fail? Also wonder if there were differences if you didn’t win Xinghai’s approval in the previous book.

ok i’m emotionally exhausted. the rest and Maxwell can wait for another post. i’m going to the gym or something

#the royal romance #hana lee #maxwell beaumont #trr #riley brooks #v plays choices #long post #sorry if you're on mobile

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lobotomiez · 6 years

Text

ok i was trying to avoid this but ive been tagged for it like 6 times i dont even remember everyone who tagged me

rules: answer these 85 statements about yourself, then tag 20 people.

last

1. drink water

2. phone call my friend eden bc joya and i went outside but she didnt have her swipe card to get back inside and i dont have access to their dorm so i called eden to come let us in but she didnt actually need to bc some ppl came by and opened the door

3. text message one of these 🙌🏻 to my class group’s chat abt our paper

4. song you listened to “my old ways” by dr. dog

5. time you cried WATCHING LOVE, SIMON

ever

6. dated someone twice? not even once

7. kissed someone and regretted it no ive only kissed 2 friends when we were drunk

8. been cheated on nope

9. lost someone special not,, really? ive lost ppl but i wouldnt call them special

10. been depressed lol

11. gotten drunk and thrown up yeeah only once tho i think?

fave colours

12. peach

13. forest green

14. probably lavender

in the last year have you…

15. made new friends uhh i think so?

16. fallen out of love nope

17. laughed until you cried yah

18. found out someone was talking about you nope

19. met someone who changed you i guess so

20. found out who your friends are yeah

21. kissed someone on your facebook friends list not in the last year

general

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know irl all...

23. do you have any pets my kitty!

24. do you want to change your name no

25. what did you do for your last birthday uh.. i think nothing.. one of my friends brought me an arizona and stopped by for like 5 mins.. at least i think that was my last birthday?

26. what time did you wake up today first alarm went off at 9:00 but i didnt get up until 9:36 or so and then was late to class but the professor was later so it didnt even matter

27. what were you doing at midnight last night probably sleeping

28. what is something you can’t wait for spRING BREAK IM GONNA GET A TATTOO IN SEATTLE AND HANG OUT W JOYA AND EDEN!!!!

30. what are you listening to right now ladada by dr. dog !

31. have you ever talked to a person named tom uhh my cousin’s name is thomas does that count?

32. something that’s getting on your nerves my finger wouldnt stop bleeding so i put a bit of tissue and tape on it and its kinda annoying in a more general sense my skin is annoying as hell these days its so dry on the lower half of my face but kinda oily on the top and im breaking out rly bad rn!! even tho im on an acne med!!

33. most visited website probably this hellhole

34. hair color boring brown

35. long or short hair short but im gonna grow it out to a bob length which is still short but long for me

36. do you have a crush on someone idk if its a crush but i think this guy in my music class is really cute his name is sam

37. what do you like about yourself uhhh not a lot my guy but i guess my music taste

38. want any piercings? i would love a bunch of ear piercings all over and maybe a lip piercing

39. blood type red

40. nicknames uhh none exactly one (1) person is allowed to call me tess and its None of u

41. relationship status single and unloveable

42. zodiac gemini

43. pronouns they/them or she/her irl

44. fave tv shows its always sunny in philadelphia, the office, psych, monk, i also rly like ap bio so far idk if its a fav yet but i enjoy it

45. tattoos soon!!!! it’ll be a hand holding a flower

46. right or left handed right but i can do stuff w my left too

47. ever had surgery uhh wisdom teeth

48. piercings norm ear piercing and septum

49. sport what the fuck is a sport

50. vacation i went to the netherlands and then germany in like 2013 that was really fun

51. trainers shoes? i almost exclusively wear boots namely my docs or converse or birks if its warm out

more general

52. eating nothing rn but i just had dinner which was a sad tasteless pad thai, broccoli, a slice of pizza, an eggroll, and some cereal (welcome to college)

53. drinking water

54. i’m about to watch probably something on youtube but i also need to look at the course schedule for next semester bc i have an advising meeting tmrw and i have no clue what i want to take

55. waiting for ?? spring break

56. want a slushee sounds so good rn

57. get married yeah probably

58. career a psychiatrist hopefully or something similar

which is better

59. hugs or kisses i love hugs but i also havent had a Real kiss so idk but also im weird abt mouth hygiene so there are very few ppl id be ok w kissing so anyway hugs i guess

60. lips or eyes uhhh both? nice lips are important if ur gonna be kissin em

61. shorter or taller i dont care actually

62. older or younger this question is creepy, cancelled

63. nice arms or stomach all arms are nice and all tummies are nice

64. hookup or relationship relationship

65. troublemaker or hesitant usually hesitant but i can be a troublemaker if im in the right mood

have you ever

66. kissed a stranger lol no

67. drank hard liquor helllll yeah

68. lost glasses dont wear them but never lost sunglasses or anything

69. turned someone down yeah

70. sex on first date lmao

71. broken someones heart i highly doubt it

72. had your heart broken nope

73. been arrested no

74. cried when someone died yeah,,,

75. fallen for a friend nno

do you believe in

76. yourself lmao

77. miracles no,, i believe some wild shit happens coincidentally??

78. love at first sight i mean u could be attracted to someone at first sight and then fall in love w them if u develop a relationship w them but its not love if u’ve never even talked to them

79. santa claus i wish

80. kiss on a first date ??? how does one “believe in” this it either happens or it doesnt

81. angels nah

other

82. best friend’s name emma + a lot of others i consider best friends

83. eye colour brown/hazel

84. fave movie oh shit,, maybe love, simon

85. fave actor hhh... charlie day??

i tag whoever wants to do this bc its rly fuckin long

#tag games

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trylonandperisphere · 7 years

Note

Hey would you mind recommending ur fav cophine fics?

You mean other than my own? Hahaha.

Oof. You probably don’t know this, but I have always hated being asked for “favourite” anything. I always feel these things are dependent on context, mood, memory (and my memory is notoriously poor)… all that jive. It’s why I never make “Top 10” lists. I realize I’ll have to weed out things I love for other things I love, leaving me a dull garden in the end.

So I can’t always remember good stories, what they were called or where I found them. I feel like novelconcepts had a lot more fics than I can find, and other writers have purposefully withdrawn their fics. However—O, Happy Day!—The Never Home Girl by thecirclesquare, one of my all time faves (despite us coincidentally both writing WWII cophine fics at the same time and subsequently making me feel inadequate,) has just been reposted after the author finished reworking it as an original piece!

Of course, I recommend almost everything by OBFrankenfics, but especially Going Up, which I wish on a star will someday be finished. I’d really like to see Kindred Spirits finished, too. It’s just one chapter to go, people!

So, here, in no sensical order, is a random selection that came to mind and I could find (I may find more later.) You should know that I’m a big Cophine slut, so this is almost all Cophine-centric. (Edit: I misread this as fave OB fics, so a few of these are NOT Cophine.) Also, Warning: I tend to like my fics long, which is fine, except that a lot of these fics are also unfinished—some still regularly in progress, some long dormant. It kind of makes me feel better about the few I still haven’t finished, and kind of makes me want to suggest a mob of torch-wielding readers (okay, fake, battery-powered torches) show up at the authors’ doors to urge them to carry on. Then again, it’s not like fan fic writers get fame or fortune for their work. So, proceed at risk of your own frustration, or find shorter pieces by the same writers, mayhap, but either way, please share a little thanks for what you enjoy.

Thank you for asking this question, because it gave me an opportunity to poke around and find some fics I hadn’t seen in a long time, make a nod to some newer ones that tickled my fancy, and remember some good reads that pulled me into the fandom, which I hope will continue despite the show’s end.

Open Windows, Tiny Neighborhoods & Boys of Summer (Have Gone) by novelconcepts

Born Offside by mintcar

The Never Home Girl & Love At First Science by thecirclesquare

03:24:21, A Beautiful Surrender & Pulse by jaybear1701

Severed Crossed Fingers by arabybizarre

The Colony by Cophinaphile

Transhumance & Here, Take a Shot by tumblweed

First Do No Harm, Cura te ipsum & Formation Processes by ladycanuck/Lazyzephyr

Train Under Water & Pure Radiance by mveloc

Yes, And & Back to Her, And I Go Back (To Us) by kind-of-always-late (intransient_adventure)

Village Secrets & Cosanova by ghostriverunicorn/HaughtBreaker, formerly OTP324B21/thatscomplex & I don’t know what else. (Definitely check out all their great ob fic at http://www.ghostriverunicorn.com/obfic/, and urge them to finish The Purgatory: Curse of the Tiny Terror on my behalf… but be nice about it!)

little truths by glazed

Five Eyes Across & The Bayonet Box by SonnetCXVI

dawn light, twilight, infinity by sharkfights (feartown)

Argot by yetanothereireannach

Holocene by crazylabscience

Stay Out Of It by thosefarplaces

America’s New Hope , my heart of gold & Childhood Friends AU (especially follow (what we once held dear)) by BeggarWhoRides

For the Love of Darwin & except in this form in which I am not nor are you by greywing (ctrlx)

Love Like Fools by assassinslover

Seizing Our Bodies by lesbian_geek_spiral

Obscure Word Drabble Collection by piggy09

A Question of Upbringing (AU) by oddgirlout

Every Me and Every You by LtTanyaBoone

Good Tidings We (Don’t) Bring & regift (my heart) by bs13

(If You’re) Going My Way by geekmonkeyramblings

Experimental Theology by Bitterblue

In Heat by Dangereux

The Third Coast by Fangirllikewhoa

take me away by PoeticallyIrritating

So, So, Break Off This Last Lingering Kiss by MlleClaudine

The hardest thing to fix (is you) by geoclaire

Master of Biological Science by pmonkey816

Before by Celine1618

Sexual Healing by elliottripp

Never Say Never by Delphines_puppy

#Anonymous #anons #orphan black #fan fiction #fan fic #q&as #questions #answers #good reads #writing #other people's writing #clone club #such talent #this fandom I swear #say howdy to the authors for me

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uniformbravo · 7 years

Text

aaaa @fixion tagged me in a thing for “10 songs you’re listening to a lot at the moment” (im just trusting u that that’s what it’s called) so im gonna do that!! bc i love talking abt myself + i have literally been waiting for an excuse to share my music Lmfao Thank

(ps @ frank read the tags hkdgjlksd)

(this might technically be is absolutely more than 10 songs but like shh?? just shh)

both osomatsu-san ops theyre so fucking good?? here they are OP1 and OP2 pls listen to them im mlove th -

literally the entire rest of the osomatsu-san soundtrack ok i kfkigk gn i kNOw thats like 80 songs bUT I JUST,,,,,,,,,, here’s a couple samples lkdfjkdg Track 38 and Track 7 are some faves but i promise the whole thing is good i die, heres a playlist ok if u need smth to put on in the bg i highly recommend it....,.,..,,, -

so many songs/covers by Eve?? i’ve been listening to a lot of eve lately ok i’ll give my top three: デーモンダンストーキョーあの娘シークレットシャルル it’s so hard to stick w/ just three tho seriously go listen to the rest ahhhhh (i love the art style in the music vids too?? like a lot??? so pay attention to that tbh) -

ピースサイン / Peace Sign - Kenshi Yonezu (bnha’s 2nd op) i got obsessed with this song & now i have like a million covers saved jesus christ save me (coincidentally, eve also did a cover of this one) -

砂の惑星 / Sand Planet - HACHI/ DUNE feat. Hatsune Miku i have a million covers of this one too lolllllll ((including eve’s)) check out this piano cover tho (it’s safe to assume that any time i find a song i like i’ve immediately gone searching for piano covers it’s in my blood) -

speaking of piano, anything by marasy8 is so good oh my god they’re literally incredible here’s one of my favorites by them i love putting their longer vids and streams on in the bg while i work on stuff (it’s always fun to randomly recognize some of the songs lol) -

this song was stuck in my head for like a week straight god her voice is soooo good (epilepsy warning for the vid tho) ((she also did an amazing cover of Imagination from haikyuu which still gives me goosebumps, that’s how i initially found her)) -

Sincerely, Me from Dear Evan Hansen LITERALLY how could i forget this until now i just had it on repeat for like 3 days straight???? it’s the catchiest fucking song i’ve ever heard in my life (nsfw warning) -

LambSoars: these guys are so cute omg they do a lot of covers so i have like all of their haikyuu stuff saved, my favorites are Mashi・Mashi and Heaven and Earth (honorable mention Peace Sign bc i already talked about that song earlier but i loooove this cover) -

You Say Run from the bnha s1 soundtrack uuuuugghhh what a phenomenal track like the whole ost is fun but this song is The Jam™

am i allowed to put a bonus section for piano stuff even though i already put piano stuff in the main “””10”””

this is the bonus “Im Trash And I Desperately Want To Share My Music With People” section

Q feat. Otomachi Una - i found this one a while ago which is why i didn’t put it in the 10 but im still rly into it ok -

literally every op/ed for little witch academia ok they’re all good they’re all perfect here’s a vid with all four of them go go go (i cannot believe it’s still up tbh) -

ok so this is an hour long mix of caravan palace songs so it’s more of a “put it on in the bg” kind of thing but i swear to fucking god. i fucking swear. i was just gonna put lone digger bc that’s my fucking jam always and forever but this mix starts with that song anyway so just have the whole goddamn thigng igmg fucking ((this post is beyond out of control but i physically cannot mention lone digger and not also bring up Lone Digger 100 (epilepsy warning), my very favorite mp100 amv that i have lovingly watched like 50000 times and i die literally every time ok gggby e)) -

the skill in this piano cover of osomatsu op2 is overwhelming i’ve never felt so intimidated in my life, just like. the thing where they play 2 overlapping melodies at once what the fuC k (also their cover of the other op Ugh) -

this would be another thing to put on in the bg bc it’s 30 min long but it’s a compilation of (mostly) piano covers of assorted tracks from the osomatsu ost, it is v nice and the pianist is super skilled (i especially love the last one because it’s Six Same Faces (ed1) which is one of those songs that i could never even begin to comprehend translating to piano but they fuckin did it and it sounds amazing) -

we’re back to peace sign again, this is my fave piano cover lol (love love love this pianist as always pls check out his other stuff) -

this piano cover of the one punch man op i cannot fucking believe (also the actual opm op jffucukgign just taKe it) -

ok ok ok fuCK FUKC i wasn’t gonna do it i ALMOST made it all the way through without doing this buT IM CAVING OK 99 BY MOB CHOIR THE MOB PSYCHO 100 OP GJSKDGFKGD i havent even been listening to it that much lately so there’s literally no excuse for me putting it here but it still goes hard as hell it’s still such a fucking timeless masterpiece im still complete garbage dumpster trash for this song and this show im crying jjusst take it, take it from my filthy fucking hands im gdj kjkgjdghkdjgskjdjflsd kjlak ljskdjg gk

ANYWAY I THINK IM GONNA STOP THERE LOL SORRY I HAVE LEGITIMATELY NO SELF-CONTROL IT’S EMBARRASSING.................. i listen to a lot of shit oK

also i get most/all of my music through youtube so i hope its ok that instead of song titles/artists it was this giant mess of rambling descriptions & video links ahhh

but yeah holy shit uhh tagging people. yes. dont worry abt it if u dont want to but @dolichomorph, @noonediesalone, @cry-beeby, @creepyjirachi, @cloversion, @docnoctem, @tender1999, @melleh17, @lancmclain, @thecavalrysqueer

also i havent been online lately so i have no idea who’s already done this so if u have then Whoops

if i didnt tag u specifically but u still wanna do this then just go for it i promise it’s fun, say i tagged u bc i did, this is me tagging u, an indirect ki s sfjkc

good nite

#can u tell....... im fucking ososmatsu trash rn...............#god i broke every single rule with this why did i link literally 30 videos BYE #retag later #blog specific #music rec #tag ref #@ frank (i hope u see this) this made me rly happy ty for tagging me??#i know im not a kpop but im glad we still follow each other despite our different interests #you're a lovely familiar presence on my dash & im always happy to see how ur doing #also im totally gonna listen to all the shit on ur list later when i have more time #(since i already wasted all afternoon/evening putting this giant shitfest together oh boy i am truly sorry that im like this)#anyway ya!! i still love u dw :*

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simptasia · 7 years

Note

Kateclaire for the ship ask if you feel like it? 😊

YOOOOOOO

How did they they meet?

plane crash… sorting out luggage… “restless, passionate”

Who developed romantic feelings first?

that’s… hard to quanitfy since i’m sure it happened during the show’s run

Who is their biggest “shipper?”

i can’t decide because i can picture all their friends being supportive, one way or another. i’m suggesting everybody ships them

When did they have their first kiss and under what circumstances?

after claire confessed, see below

Who confessed their feelings first?

at some point (after claire realises her own bisexuality and is as sure she can be that kate likes women, too), claire makes a very sweet and bashful confession about how she’s feeling stuff she’s not used to feeling, about kate, and is that okay? and she’s nervous and her voice is shaking, while claire is trying to make it clear that she’s admitting to herself now that she likes girls, specifically kate

and kate, who’s known she’s bi since she was a kid, is looking at claire with the patient fondness someone like that looks at a late-discoverer like claire. love in her eyes, a warm smile, and her heart beating like a jackhammer. she just lets claire talk, lets her get it all out, which ironically makes claire more nervous

eventually claire cuts herself off because she’s rambling too much now and decides the best thing to do right now is trust her instincts and she tiptoes up to kiss kate, softly, hesitantly at first. she’s still not sure, until kate deepens the kiss

What was their first official date?

……[shrugs]. i’ve literally never imagined them dating. every interaction i imagine for post-finale kate/claire takes place in their house or a hospital

How do they feel about double dates/group dates?

hmm… they’ve both double dated with des/penny and miles/richard (the other post-finale couple). possibility for a triple date, even!

What do they do in their down time?

(oh gee, it occurs to me, wouldn’t it be hard to settle into a mundane life after everything they’ve been through? kate already had issues with domestic)

ANYWAY

kate: she looks like she works out. she looks like she punches things. she’s also never had a job in her life i dunno what she’s gonna do with herself

claire: swims, reads, takes a lotta naps, draws!! she’s an artist!!

both: being fucking cute and shit

What was the first meeting of parents as an official couple like?

kate met claire’s mum via the whole leaving aaron with her thing. i think they’re get on all right. carole is one of the few good parents in lost.

diane is terrible and i don’t want her involved in anything (and neither does kate!)

What was their first fight over and how did they get past it?

after coming home, claire is not in an okay place, emotionally and mentally. and it takes her at least a few months to recover. during which, she has a emotional outbursts of misplaced anger. stuff like that. kate isn’t a carer, but claire gets better eventually…

Which one is more easily made jealous?

i’m thinking kate. she’s less rational than claire. and also very protective. so when some guy is giving claire a Look, kate is alert as fuck

What is their favourite thing to get to eat?

kate: chocolate

claire: peanut butter!!

wait a minute… [gentle gasp] i just realised… YOU GOT PEANUT BUTTER IN MY CHOCOLATE! WELL YOU GOT CHOCOLATE IN MY PEANUT BUTTER!

truly they belong together

Who’s the cuddly one? What their favourite cuddling position?

awww ya know it’s claire. i’m not saying kate isn’t a cuddler. who the fuck wouldn’t cuddle claire. and i’m sure claire’s recovery involved at least some spooning from kate. what i mean is, claire is more affectionate

claire = little spoon, most often.

kate’s personal fave is laying her head on claire’s chest/stomach

Are they hand holders?

YES GOSH DAMN IT THEY HELD HANDS IN CANON A BUNCH

How long do they wait before sleeping together for the first time? What’s the circumstances?

i’ve been wondering about that myself. like, i’ve imagined it plenty (oh boy have i) but i’m not sure how much time should pass until they get there

like, claire’s gotta be okay, claire has to realise kate is bi, then finally admit to herself that she is bi, then confession + kissing, then i’m thinking more time has to progress because things get sexual… so… at least 1 year after the finale?

that time also coincidentally gives kate time to go thru her whole pregnancy (long story short: the preg from jack theory) and recover from that. which is nice

Who tops?

oooh I LIKE THIS QUESTION because i get to talk about this again:

basically, they switch. but the fun part is that when kate first got her strap on out, claire was genuinely surprised when kate suggested claire wear it. being new to all this, she assumed she was “the girl”. kates response to this what you’d expect from her: “claire, we’re both girls”. basically they’re not imitating strict gender roles and like, it’s up to them. and kate likes to be fucked, too

and the mental image of itty bitty adorable sunshine claire wearing a strap on (and she’s a little sheepish!) is like… heaven on earth

What’s the worst first they’ve ever gotten into?

i can’t think of anything

Who does the shopping and the cooking?

both

Which one is more organized and prone to tidiness?

claire. i picture her writing lists a lot to focus her mind

Who proposes?

OHHH I PICTURE THEM MARRIED IN THE FUTURE BUT I NEVER PICTURED THE PROPOSAL. that’s something to think about

Do they have joined Bachelor/Bachelorette parties or separate?

oh, they could share a party

i just realised their only friends who are girls post-finale are penny and cassidy

Who is the best man/maid of honour? Any other groomsmen or bridesmaids?

there’s a fuck ton of dudes are their wedding, i can tell you that. as i said, there’s a significant lack of ladies in their lives post-finale…

Big Ceremony or Small?

small, and it’s like, in a public garden-y place

Do they have a honeymoon? If so, where?

yes but i can’t think where. all things traditionally associated with honeymoons are things they’d wanna avoid (plane trips, cruises, islands…)

Do they have children? How many?

two. aaron and david

#lost headcanons

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aoi-midori · 7 years

Text

Lucid Storm Chapter 2

yo! i meant to post this one a while ago, but i got sidetracked by a lot of stuff, so i wasn’t on tumblr too much. so i’m doing it now. also, note how I HAVE A NEW TITLE FOR MY STORY. ‘lucid storm’ is now the official title! woo! anyway, i’ll post the links to the previous chapters before the ‘read more’!

Chapter 0: ETMA (Prologue) | Chapter 1: First Mission

Chapter 2: The Element Spheres [Emma Parker]

“Whoa. Geez Al, calm down! You’re hitting too hard!”

“Oh, I am? Sorry, my bad.” Al relaxed himself more and continued punching away, this time a bit more gently, at the blocking cushion I was holding up for him.

“Got something on your mind?”

“Nah, not really. I read the new chapter though.”

“Yeah?” The chapter in question was from a long-running manga series Al had been reading for years. I didn’t read this one in particular, but I knew a lot about it thanks to him. “And?”

Al shrugged. “It was okay, I guess.”

“Really? Just okay?”

“Yeah, well I feel like this arc in general has just been dragging for a while now. Some aspects are pretty interesting, but there was mostly just exposition stuff this chapter. And not too much has been going on just yet.”

He started punching harder again, but I was ready for it this time. “Still, at least the fave was able to kick some ass this time around. It’s pretty cool to see him in action since all the focus has been off of him for 3 irl years.”

Al stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm. “Alright Em, you’re up.”

“Thanks!” I handed him the cushion and braced myself before I gave it the first blow. Upon first contact, I could feel the warmth from Al’s punches. It was… very comforting, and it put me at ease.

“So, the arc is definitely almost over, right? I mean, that’s what it sounds like to me.”

“I have no idea to be honest. You can’t really predict anything with Oda involved.”

He sighed. “But nevermind that. Is there anything new with you?”

“What? We just saw each other last night Al!”

“Yeah, well something could have happened since then! You never know, right? So?”

“Mmm, I don’t think so. After you left last night, I just went to bed. But…” I paused for a second as I slowly started to remember. “But I did have that dream again though.”

“Which one?”

“You know, that one recurring dream with the girl in it?”

“Oh shit, that one? Again?”

“Yep.”

Ever since I was seven years old, I had had this one dream every now and then. Coincidentally enough, that was also around the same time when my powers first started acting up. A few things would change each time, but the main aspect that always stayed the same was the black-haired girl who showed up in them. She never spoke, and her eyes had always been closed shut, so it was like she was never awake when I had them. I had no idea who this girl was, and why it was her in particular who showed up. I had first originally thought that she was just some random person I’d passed in the street somewhere who my subconscious just conjured up for some reason. But then she became a recurring character in the dreams, and that basically threw my theory right out the window.

My punching became faster and harder. “It’s weird. Over the past several years, I’ve had it on and off. But now…. I don’t know, since last week I’ve been seeing her a lot more often. Like… every few days or so. Is that even normal?”

“Beats me. But you know, I wouldn’t put it past me to believe that it’s somehow magi-related. We did have our first mission last week after all. Maybe that had something to do with it?”

“I have no idea! But just for once, I want to know who that girl even is! I mean she keeps showing up, so she’s got to be important somehow, right? I just need answers already!”

“Yow!” Al dropped the now-burning blocking cushion and reeled back as he clutched his hand. “Jesus Em, watch what you’re doing dammit!”

“Shit!” As soon as I realized what had happened, I dropped to the floor and tried to put the flames out before the fire alarm could go off. “Sorry Al!”

He sighed as he pulled the water out of one of the water bottles sitting on the floor nearby and spread it over the cushion. The flames went out instantly. “It’s fine. Just try to keep your cool though, alright? I know you’re a Tecmentic and all, but come on! That shit’s dangerous!”

“Yeah I know, I’m working on it!” I leaned back and sat down on the gym floor. “But I still don’t even know what it all means. I know Sammie explained it and everything, but I feel like I’m even more confused about it now.”

“Is it the ‘having two aura sources’ thing? Or having Tectonic abilities on top of the Elemental stuff?”

“All of it! Like, how did they even figure out that I was a Tecmentic anyway? What I can do right now isn’t anything different from what other fire users can do, right?”

“Sure, but you can generate your own fire, whereas people like Lex can’t and have to use other means to do so.”

“So is that all there is to it then? I can just automatically make fire by myself? Everyone makes it seem like being a Tecmentic is such a huge deal, but I just don’t see it. What’s so special about being able to make your own fire?”

Al looked deep in thought. Eventually, he shared his thoughts with me. “Maybe it’s something that you have to ease into. Like… as you start to learn more about yourself and the limits of your powers, you’ll find that you’ll be able to do more stuff with it. Things like this always take some time getting used to anyway.”

I groaned, leaning forward so that my elbows were propped up against my knees. “That sounds like a lot of unnecessary work if you ask me.”

“Well no one did say it was going to be easy.” Al sat down opposite me; we were so close, our knees were touching. “But if anyone can get a handle on this, it’s you. So don’t sweat it! And as always,” he slid his hands under mine, “I’ll be right here with you every step of the way. That’s what best friends are for, right?”

No matter what, Al always had me smiling. It was like he did it on pure instinct. “Yeah. Thanks.”

His hands were cool to the touch. They felt really, really nice, especially since mine were always very warm. In fact, my entire body was like that, always had been. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had ever felt legitimately cold. I guessed it just came with the package of being a Tecmentic fire user.

I flipped my hands over so that my palms were touching his, and my fingers closed in around them. “It’s nice that you’ve got so much faith in me! I hope you’re not jealous.”

“Jealous? Jealous of what?”

“It’s like Sammie said! Tecmentics are pretty rare, you know.” My grip on his hands tightened as I pulled him in closer, our noses just barely apart. “And I know you always get excited when I use my powers. Don’t deny it.”

“Sh-shut up!” Al blushed as he averted his eyes from mine. He pulled himself back a bit, putting a slight distance between us. “I will admit, you’ve got a point there. Who wouldn’t be excited about that stuff anyway? But I don’t envy you for having them over me. I’m perfectly okay with what I’ve got now, thank you very much.”

“Really, you’re sure you wouldn’t want them? It could be fun!”

“Mmm I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but… I think I’ll pass. I don’t think fire suits me anyway.”

“Okay then,” I scooted myself closer so that my knees were on top of his. “Here’s a question for you. If you could trade powers with anyone here, who would it be and why?”

“Ohhhhh now there’s a tricky one. There are a lot of pretty cool ones… No wait, what am I even saying? This should be a no-brainer. Will’s, hands down.”

“What? Really?”

“Hell yes. Will’s super endurance is the only one that’s actually practical if you ask me. You don’t even have to do anything really to use it; it’s always activated. And besides, having high endurance would be extremely useful in a fight!”

“Well I guess that’s true.” I tilted my head to the side as I eyed the blocking cushion next to us. “Anyway, wanna train some more now?”

Al looked down at it too and sighed. “Yeah, alright.” We both stood up in-sync. “Just don’t flare up on me again, okay?”

“Sure, sure. I’ll do my best.” I tucked a strand of blue hair back behind my ear as Al picked up the cushion. I readied myself once again, but before I could even punch the thing, I could hear the chorus of “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” coming from my pocket. “Huh? Someone’s calling me?”

I pulled my phone out to see that it was a text, and then almost immediately, Al’s started going off too. I could easily tell thanks to the several loud rounds of “ROW ROW, FIGHT THE POWA” that were very recognizable.

<From: Bro - Get Al & come to Briefing Room 1 ASAP, & be ready to go on a mission. It’s an emergency!>

“Yeah, I’m with her right now. Whoa, just calm the fuck down already! What happened? Yeah yeah alright, we’re on our way. Bye.”

I heard Al put his phone away as I texted Bro back. “That was Cho, said we need to head for the main building right away.”

“Yeah, Bro just texted me about that too.”

“Right. Guess we’d better get going then, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I grabbed the single remaining water bottle off the floor and downed it in one gulp. “It’s sad we didn’t get to train anymore. But if it’s a mission, then it can’t be helped.”

“I’m just wondering what the hell’s going on. Cho was pissed when she called. The last time I heard her that angry was during last week’s mission, and if she’s like that now… This mission must be really important.”

“Well whatever the case, things’ll work out in the end! I’m sure it will.” But even I was curious about it all. Bro had said that it was an emergency. So whatever this mission was, something bad had to have happened.

The two of us left the gym and immediately headed for the main building on base. Luckily enough, the two buildings were only five minutes apart from each other, so it didn’t take long for us to get there. And when we did finally reach the room in question, we found three people in there waiting for us.

“Oh good, you’re here!” Bro sounded relieved at the sight of us, but that didn’t change the fact that he looked very uneasy. The way he was sitting along with the fast drumming of his fingers on his leg implied as much.

“You okay there Bro?”

“I’ll be fine!” He nodded and said all of that a bit too quickly to convince me.

Al meanwhile grabbed his arms and rubbed his hands furiously against them. “Jesus fucking christ it’s cold in here, what the hell?”

“Are you sure? I don’t feel anything.”

“Are you kidding me? It feels like it’s 30 degrees in here!”

“Cho. Calm down. You’ll freeze everyone if you keep this up.”

It was only when Shuuhei spoke that I finally noticed what Bro was so anxious about. Sitting in the corner by the door was Cho, and she looked livid. She sat indian-style on the floor, and her arms were folded so tightly across her chest, it looked as if she might actually tear them off. But it was the look on her face that really startled me. Pursed lips, a permanent frown, and those stormy green eyes; it definitely put me on edge.

She didn’t respond to Shuuhei at all. She just sat there, staring at the opposite wall with a death glare powerful enough to scare anyone. And apparently it was so cold in there that even Bro and Shuuhei were now starting to shiver.

As we moved farther into the room, Al went for Shuuhei and muttered into his ear. “What’s her problem?”

Shuuhei sighed. “It’s complicated. There are a lot of things factoring into it.”

“Like what? The mission?”

Shuuhei hesitated before slowly nodding his head. “That, along with other things that are involved.”

Right on cue, a small gust of wind passed through our group of three. Shortly after that, both Al and Shuuhei huddled in for warmth. I assumed that the room had just gotten even colder, and it was then that I noticed my breath hanging in the air. I moved in closer too and put my arms around the two of them to help try and warm them up.

Bro stayed where he was, but he did eventually stand up and took a step towards Cho. “Come on Cho, please calm down! Everything in the room will start freezing over soon if you don’t stop this!”

He didn’t get an answer, but there was another short wind gust though. And that seemed to make things even colder since Bro now came over to join our group.

Al leaned in even closer so that his head rested against my chest. “Goddamn,” he muttered as his teeth chattered simultaneously. “Shuuhei, do something!”

He didn’t need to be told twice. He left for the other side of the room and knelt down on the floor beside Cho. He gently put a hand onto her shoulder. “Cho. Cho! Listen to me!” He shook her shoulder a bit to try to get her attention. “You need to stop this! If you keep this up, you’ll only end up hurting yourself!”

Nothing happened. Her eyes remained staring at the other wall, unfocused. Shuuhei then moved so that both hands were grasping her shoulders and shook her even more. “Come on Cho, snap out of it!”

“Wha?!” Cho finally snapped back to reality with that one. She looked over at the rest of us before turning back to Shuuhei. “What happened? Did something- oh hell, it’s cold in here!”

“Yeah, no kidding!” Al hissed, his body still leaning against mine. “This was your doing, so fix it already for god’s sake!”

“Oh shit, really?” Almost immediately, the atmosphere within the room lightened considerably, and I assumed the temperature went back up. “Sorry! I zoned out for a while…”

“Augh thank god,” Al sighed with relief as he let go of me. Even Bro looked a lot more relaxed.

Shuuhei took Cho’s hands and helped her up to her feet. “Are you alright?”

Cho’s frown returned, but she looked a lot more calm this time. She folded her arms again as she leaned back against the wall. “I’ll be fine.”

From the way her tone sounded, she sure didn’t seem fine to me. She was anything but fine, but at least she wasn’t freezing up the room again.

“So… is everyone here now?” Bro asked the room. “Al, Sis and I are the only ones you needed to see, right?”

“Yes.” When I got a closer look, Shuuhei didn’t look very happy either.

“So what happened exactly?” I looked between him and Cho before continuing. “Is it that serious?”

The look on Shuuhei’s face was a grim one. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I’ll just cut to the chase this time since we only have a limited amount of time to act here.”

There were plenty of chairs in the room to sit down in, but Bro, Al and I remained standing, which ended up being a good thing in the long run since Shuuhei beckoned us over to him soon enough. “About an hour ago, we received some intel that the Chang-Los are planning to go after the Element Spheres.”

A wave of silence passed between us. I didn’t think any of us were expecting to hear that. Then Bro was the first to speak up. “What are they trying to do? Do they plan to destroy the spheres?”

“Not exactly.” Shuuhei looked between the three of us. “Have any of you heard the myth surrounding the Element Spheres?”

We all shook our heads. “I didn’t think so. Alright then, I’ll make this brief. Legend says that when all five spheres are brought together, they have the power to combine and create a single, more powerful sphere. It goes by the name of the Quintessimal Sphere, and it has the power to control all five elements alone. That is what the Chang-Los are after. Or more specifically, that’s what Heng is after. What he really wants is to create the Quintessimal Sphere.”

Al shifted his footing beside me. “Wait wait, hang on a second. Who the hell is Heng?”

“Heng Chang-Lo,” Cho piped in from her corner. “He’s the leader.”

“Oh. Okay then, never mind.”

“Wait,” I put my hand up slightly. “You said it forms by combining all five spheres. Since the spheres are a magi power source, wouldn’t that have an effect on any Elemental mages?”

“You’d think that, but no. According to our intel, Heng thinks he’ll be able to wipe out all Elementals if he creates and uses the combined sphere, but that won’t be the case. The Element Spheres will only have been combined, not destroyed, so it shouldn’t have any negative effects on Elemental mages whatsoever.”

“Oh, well that’s good!”

“However, we’ll have a different problem on our hands. The Quintessimal Sphere’s power is so great, it’s near impossible to control it. And as such, it will most definitely cause a chain reaction and destroy everything in a very wide radius. If Heng does succeed in creating it, a lot of people are going to die.”

Al’s face went dark. “... This has happened before, hasn’t it?”

The look on Shuuhei’s face said it all, despite the blindfold. “Unfortunately, yes. The last successful attempt occurred several centuries ago. There aren’t many known details about it, but it’s been stated that the damage caused by the Quintessimal Sphere was massive enough to wipe out entire civilizations.”

“Successful attempt? You say that as if there’ve been multiple attempts since then.”

“That’s because there have been.” Shuuhei glanced over at Cho before continuing. “The last attempt happened back in 2005 in Japan, and ETMA was one of the groups in charge of handling the situation.”

“Oh that’s right,” Bro mused. “I always keep forgetting that there are other mage organizations besides ETMA.”

“Right, well ETMA is certainly by far one of the largest, so it can be easy to overlook. Anyway, though we were able to stop the last attempt from succeeding, we can’t afford to rest easy. We’ll have to act fast if we’re to put an end to Heng’s plans.”

“So what are we going to do then?” I asked as I folded my arms. “If he’s going after the spheres, we’ll have to beat him to it, right?”

“Yes, retrieving the Element Spheres will be one of our top priorities, that’s for sure. But the spheres themselves aren’t the main concern.”

“How so?” Al narrowed his eyes at Shuuhei. “I mean, if the Quintessti- no… the Quinessi- ah fuck. You know, the thing- gets formed by all five spheres combined, then…”

“Well, no matter what Heng does, it won’t be that easy. First of all, the specific locations of each sphere are all heavily guarded and can only be accessed by a mage. And even if Melisma can help him with that, there won’t really be that much danger by bringing all five of them together.”

“Okay, now I’m even more confused.”

“What I’m saying is that just bringing all five Element Spheres together in the same vicinity won’t cause the Quintessimal Sphere to form. By themselves, they won’t do a thing at all. In order for the spheres to combine into the Quintessimal Sphere, another key element has to come into play first.”

“And what’s that?”

Shuuhei digged through one of the file folders on the table in front of us and pulled out a single sheet of paper, handing it to me for us to look at. “This right here.”

It was a picture of a… well, a rock basically. From the looks of it, it was very small, and it was colored black and white, like the colors were split straight down the middle to look like one half was black, the other white. Judging by the picture itself, it didn’t look so harmless to me.

I skeptically looked up at Shuuhei. “This is the picture you wanted to show us, right?”

“Yep,” he nodded.

“It’s a marble.”

“Yeah, I know, but don’t underestimate its appearance. This thing is deadly.”

“Okay, no, I’m with Em on this one,” Al placed his hand on my shoulder. “How is a freaking marble deadly to us?”

“Alright, let me explain. Looks can be deceiving. That right there is essentially the core of the Quintessimal Sphere.”

Bro gulped. “Th-the core?”

“Uh huh, right. As I said earlier, the spheres by themselves won’t combine. If they’re just left alone, then nothing will happen. However, if this ‘marble’, as you guys call it, comes into the picture and makes contact, the spheres will supposedly get drawn to it like a magnet. And then… Well, you all know what will happen next.”

I set the picture down onto the table. “Okay! So the bottom line is that the marble is 500 miles of bad road. What’s our plan then? I’m assuming we’re going to have to go and find that too?”

“Exactly. While the other teams are going to be sent to each sphere location to retrieve the Element Spheres, I’ll want you guys to go after the marble. With me so far?”

We all nodded, though I was still curious about one thing. “But why us in particular?”

“Because I’ve worked with ya before, and we work well together.” It was Cho who answered us. She straightened up and finally left her corner to join us around the table. “Also, Will’s super endurance’ll be pretty damn useful for this mission, so there’s that.”

“Cho is going to be leading the mission, in case you were wondering.”

“Ah, okay then. Gotcha. So do we know where to find the thing anyway?”

“That we do.” Shuuhei brought out another file folder and pulled out two printouts. “Going back to our intel. Each source has a different story to tell, but the fact remains that Melisma is most definitely involved with this one. One source says that Melisma is in charge of locating the marble and that they’ve pinpointed the location to Greece. The second source goes further to say that they actually found it.”

Al placed his palm onto the table. “So what you’re saying is that we’re basically going to be raiding a Melisma base then? All to find the yin-yang marble?”

“You got it.” Cho replied with a quick nod. “We go in, find the damn thing, and come back here with it. And of course, we’ll have to be on the lookout for Melisma agents at every nook and cranny, but no pressure! We’ve got this in the bag!”

Even though she did sound optimistic enough about it, Cho still seemed pretty distant. She looked a lot more calm than when Al and I first got there, but I knew those pent-up feelings were definitely not gone yet. She was keeping something bottled up, but I couldn’t question that at the time. We had a mission to complete after all, and I’d have to put that as my top priority for the time being.

“Well, if there aren’t any more questions, then I’ll go ahead and send you on your way,” Shuuhei said with a smile. “Does anyone feel the need for a rousing motivational speech right now?”

“No no, we’re all good. Save it for later dude.” Cho side-waved him as she lead the way out the door. “We’ll be back later!”

“Alright then, good luck!”

I was the last one out. As soon as I took one step out of the room, a wave of heavy pressure jabbed at my backside. It was startling, but also felt kind of familiar, and I came to the conclusion that it was, without a doubt, someone’s aura. And not just anyone’s aura.

He may have kept his emotions at bay during the briefing, but one thing was for sure: his aura felt at least ten times stronger, and much more threatening, than Cho’s ever did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

alright guys, PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK! I’M BEGGING YOUUUUU!!!

#my story #my ocs #my emma parker #my ls ch2 #now we're getting down into some more serious stuff here #this kickstarts the first major conflict in the plot #enjoy guys!

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lia-snow · 7 years

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My 10 Fave Babes of All Time

Tagged by @faecakes. Thanks! (I loved your selection btw~).

I think I did this one a while ago but I took the chance to make this my first drawings of the year :pp to start warming up again ww. These are in no particular order.

1. Horokeu Usui (HoroHoro) / Shaman King.

Horo was probably my first masive 2D crush. I obsessed over him like a psycho lol. I learned every single little thing about him (and I mean trivial stuff like... the exact numbre of frame, page and volume for his first appearance xd), the meaning of his name, the name of his techniques (which were in Ainu). Oh, and also, SEIYUUS! Horo started my obsession with making seiyuu connections x) (I was never really fan of Ueda Yuuji, tho). And I really admired Horo... I felt he was like my soulmate, my perfect husbando. So, based on priority right, he should be like my #1 bae :')

2. Hinata Hideki / Angel Beats! & Kuga Aki / Kamisama Dolls.

I'm putting them together because they're both special characters to me for the same reason: I knew Kimura Ryouhei because of them, and I loved him from the very beginning. Coincidentally, I started watching Angel Beats and Kamisama Dolls at the same time, and the contrast between these two characters, voiced by the same seiyuu, made me fall in love completely. They're both so different. Hinata is a bright, loyal, energetic boy while Aki is this manipulative, rude, meticulous, violent guy (though he's also super calm and indifferent about certain things). Hinata had me loving his voice changes whenever he was put into ridiculous and funny situations while Aki got me melting becasue of his manic laugh. I love Hinata & Aki both as characters, not just because of Kimura, but they're the perfect examples of why KimuRyou is my fav seiyuu <3 <3

3. Kise Ryouta / Kuroko no Basket.

Oh boy..... my love for this man burns like a thousand suns bursting, ISTG. He's too pure too good to pretty too shiny too precious for this world. Ok, I admit... Kimura Ryouhei is partly at fault here lol. Kise actually reminded me a lot of Hinata and I liked him from the start too, but soon I started loving every single little thing about him. He's introduced a little as an arrogant dude but soon enough comes to change after his loss against Seirin (I loved it when he cried sddsffg). He's like the cheerful, carefree member of the group, but he also shows so much determination, strength, and even selfishness. But I really think he's the most admirable of the Generation of Miracles. And he's so pretty I wanna cry everytime I see him, sob.

4. Judal / Magi.

Yes, the Kimura Ryouhei syndrome continues... but I swear it's coincidence(?). Judal caught my eye since I saw him in the opening (that sequence when he's falling, grabs a white rukh and turns it black it's mesmerizing), but when he was finally introduced in the show, I WAS DOOMED FOREVER. Goddamn, I loved his personality. Even if he's a little bit of a psycho, I loved his childish arrogant attitude. He's like my twisted son ♥ Except... not really a son, because... he makes me feel things 6//6 (???). Aahaahgsdjhk yes yes ok, I love his design, really, L O V E I T ♥ ♥. His long braid, those beautiful ringed eyes, the makeup on them, the necklace and bracelets, that crop top, those abs, DAT WAISTLINE aksjdhjkashdkjhgasgasd ⁄(⁄ ⁄ ⁄ Д ⁄ ⁄ ⁄)⁄ He needs his own manga, there's just never enough Judal in my life.

5. Nozaki Umetarou / Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun.

I've said this before, but it me. Nozaki is me, I am Nozaki (except I'm not tall and handsome lol). Looks cold, mostly serious, suuupr dense in some subjects (specially about love and romance), zero experience in love... but somehow still makes love stories! His shoujo manga is terrible haha but he's surprisingly popular as mangaka in spite of that x) I bet if I were to draw a manga it would be as ridiculous as his (or if my comics serve as an example... well, there ww). He has this stoic aspect, but he makes the most idiotic faces when he gets excited too~ I think Nozaki is more socially skilled than me but we're both awkward anymway(?) xD. He's my spirit animal ♥

6. Netherlands & Finland / Hetalia.

Ah, my time in the Hetalia fandom... feels so distant :') Italy was my fav at first but then I started roleplaying Fin (the first chara I ever roleplayed) and my love for him kept growing from there. He was just too adorbs <3 I got to know a lot of super nice people, both on the internet and irl, because of him. Also, back then I listened to lot of metal music, and I always pictured Fin as a secret metalhead xD And then Netherlands... I don't remember exactly how I started liking him, I remember they released the chara design, stuff happened, and then there I was cosplaying the dude. Hahaha ah, even though I loved Fin, I couldn't identify with him cause he's super cute, happy and lovable; but Netherlands was more like me~ Stoic, cold, tsundere. Over time, Netherlands became my favorite over Fin, but they're both special.

7. Furukawa Nagisa / CLANNAD.

My precious child. The purest girl ever created. A National treasure, istg. She's not the type of female characters that I usually like, but somehow she got me from the start. She's too adorable, sweet, innocent and good. She's just too good!!!!!!! She's always caring for others, always supportive of her friends, and tries her best even though she's phisically weak and lacks confidence. She's so strong and admirable, she makes my heart melt. CLANNAD made me cry rivers and hit me hard when... well, when After Story happened. She's the type of character that I want to protect from all evil. I also LOVED Nakahara Mai's performance as Nagisa, btw. I kept watching her scenes over and over just to listen to the cutest voice akjshd <3 I really love this child ;//;

8. Licht Jekylland Todoroki & Lawless / Servamp.

Well, as you would expect x) It's probably obvious that I love them both so hard. And I want to clear up for the records that it's not just because I love them together, or the homo hints flying all over the place between them. I love them both as separated characters. I really admire Licht. His resolution, his unbreakable spirit, his attitude, the hard worker he is, his strength, his pure innocence about the things he loves, his vision, his badassness, his frankness, his creativity... He's a gem, the type of person I could never be :') ALSO, HE'S HOT AF. Lawless is so beautiful. He deserves the universe. I feel him more in a spirital way. How he lost faith in everything, how meaningless lives seemed to him, the vicious cycle he was in. But the fact he's able to change that (with Licht's help) is truly touching and praiseworthy. He made a deep impression in me. Ah, and of course, his flamboyant personality! He's such a dork ahah xD I love his nerdy side, his energy, even his bragging. And the fact that he can literally go from hotdamn vampire to cute hedgy in no time is amazing xD ♥ Also, his voice.... yeah, you know this by this point, but the fact he's voiced by Kimura Ryouhei makes him even more perfect than he already was (everytime I listen to the Drama CDs, I literally have to go back and listen to his lines again because kjahsdjkg perfection in my ears). So yeah, I love my boys ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

9. Morgiana / Magi.

Ah, Morgiana ♥ ♥ The ultimate example of the type of female character that I like. She's strong, kind, determined, tough, has a strong sense of justce, needs no one to do shit for her, BUT she's not arrogant, aggresive or extravagant herself. She's quite, starightforward and helpful. But she's also soooo adorable and cute!! The way she puffs up her cheeks when she's mad, her smile, the little tears on her eyes when he was encouraged by Hakuryuu, her happy face, the way she dances around wearing that exotic outfit... man she is gorgeous, she's amazing, she's a goddess. And dem kicks, THE KIIICCCKKKS, god she's a BADASS. She seriously became like a prototype of my perfect gurl. No kidding, after her, everytime there's a badass fem chara that I like, I call her "a Morgiana". And I know she's probs being "controlled" by Sinbad in the manga right now, but I cried when she said she has come to love herself because of all the time she's been with Alibaba. I'M SO PROUD OF HER <//333

10. Special mention to: EVERY KIMURA RYOUHEI CHARACTER.

Agh, I just.... it's amazing how without a miss, characters voiced by Kimura always become my favourite. I always love them, for one reason or another. I mean, I have other seiyuus I love too (Kaji Yuki, Nakamura Yuuichi, Ishikawa Kaito, Sugita Tomokazu, Kamiyan....), but I don't always like their characters. But with Kimura, I ALWAYS do. I don't know all of his roles, obviously, but here's some that I absolutely love:

- Special mention 2: Jorah Mormont, Eddard Stark, Jon Snow. Because I love GoT, and these are my favs, but I can't draw real people ww.

I’m tagging @pastenaga, @stars-glow-for-you, @adeslowmoqueen, @rhomilch & @reimeijennoir~ Feel free to do it if you want uvu/ Don’t worry guys, you don’t have to draw the charas to do this www Actually, you don’t have to write anything about them either lol my hand slipped(?)

#Personal note #meme #long post #sorry about that #didn't feel like putting everything under the Read More tag #tl;dr #horohoro #hinata hideki #kuga aki #etc....(?)

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