#i am nothing if not predictable to my audience

[kitamars]

high school joui 4 shenanigans

#deep breaths takasugi #the worst friend group you will ever know #only ones who can somehow tolerate each other #gintoki’s one worst quality is that he cannot shut the fuck up #i couldn’t stop thinking of them after watching daily lives of highschool boys and they’d get up to so much dumb shit actually #can you tell i kind of miss my high school days #i sound so old when i say that wtf im 19 #painting has been a lot of fun lately i will not lie #but also college starts like. day after tomorrow im so cooked #GINTAMA OBSESSION PLEASE GET ME THROUGH ANOTHER TERM 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 #i might draw some ginhiji stuff to accompany this later bc of course i will #i am nothing if not predictable to my audience #anyways #sakata gintoki #katsura kotarou #sakamoto tatsuma #takasugi shinsuke #joui 4 #gintama #ok bye

[leah-lover]

Good chaos. Mary earps x pundit reader.

Mary spoils her relationship with reader on air.

Ever since you were a kid you loved talking. You started doing it from a very young age. 

you found your comfort in having conversations. Whether it was about the weather, a movie, gossip, or deep concepts you thrived. When you got older you discovered theater, and fell in love with the stage. Cameras and audiences never frightened you. 

Heading into college you chose media as a degree and you were expelled at it which landed you a job in the best company in British television, the BBC. of course your beauty helped in the process but they assured that they cared more about your thoughts and talent of capturing attention and holding meaningful conversation. You started your career by doing interviews on red carpets, and hosting a few talk shows. Your audience grew quickly and you found yourself a household name for half a year, which was unheard of. 

After a few years you grew tired of the facknes od the Hollywood scene but you still loved your job so you decided to change the scenery and go to sports. The change was radical and brought about many questions from your fans. But they stuck by you. You brought a new following to the sport you chose which was women’s football.

Women’s football was on the rise and you saw an opportunity to change the field. 

The WSL felt like the home you needed. The fans of the sport, the atmosphere and the message it transpired was very much up your alley. The thing that helped you feel more at home was the queerness of the game, and the acceptance of the people,  something you have been longing for.

It has now been 8 years since you joined BBC sports. Like many predicted you had a huge following across all the platfomùs, you have won awards and presented many to other people. 

Everybody loved to be interviewed by you. 

Tonight was a special night, it was the last leg of the Olympic qualifying. You as usual were a part of the team that covered the Lionesses games. 

The game was nothing short of exhilarating, after a tough 120 minutes the Egland girls made it to the olympics. Screams and cheers erupted as wembley. The most notable person people were cheering for was Mary Earps , the exceptional goalkeepers or as you have her in your contacts by, lovely girlfriend. 

Mary was protective, she wanted to keep your relationship a secret to protect your career and you as a person. 

You were beyond proud of her, and she was proud of herself too which you described in the sideline interview you did with her.

“ So Mary, that was a stunning performance by you , player of the match, tell me what you think.?” i asked 

“ I think the girls did a wonderful job, cheering the midfield for distributing good balls, the forwards did a fantastic job finishing, and obviously my defender who battled with me today. '' she replied shouting.

“ Well I am most excited for this years’ Olympic games. The competition is very heated. What are your thoughts about that?” 

“ i am looking forward to playing in the olympics, aiming for gold, and having you there as my good luck omen.” 

“ wheel I will make sure to be there all the way.” 

Before leaving she gave you a kiss on the cheek and her hand lingered a little too long on your ass. 

While Mary left to do press conference duties and leave for your home in Manchester, you stayed in London doing some post production work and you undecided to go party with your team after. 

The night was fun, you took a 4 Am flight after and opened your front door around  9 am. It was Mary and your off day so she decided to sleep in. 

“ Good morning my love.” you said kissing her temple, and passing your fingers along her face softly. Without hesitation she picked you up and threw you in the bed next to her. Giggling you kisses her softly again, and again, and again. 

“ So proud of you baby. I love you so much.” 

“ I missed you. I wanted to celebrate with you yesterday. I miss your beautiful body so much.”

“ and my ass.Speaking of my ass, I need to check mùy phone.” 

You moved from Mary’s group which earned you a groan. you then put your phone in the charger and set it on. 

Your phone almost exploded when you opened it. Your notifications were crazy. You Clicked on the first one which was tweet

“ holy shit Mary is for the girls, holy shit she is an ass girl.” under the tweet was snap pon the moment mary kissed you with her hand on your ass. 

“ holy fuck Mary, i think we have been exposed.” you say to here. 

You both looked at the tweets for a little bit. All of the ones you saw were positive and surprising. 

“ Well you have a very good ass baby.” she said. You smack her hand as a response. 

“It was time for people to know that you and your ass are mine now get back into bed so that you can reward me for yesterday.” she added.

“ I have to tweet This first.” you said

“ proud of my goalkeeper. Proud of my girlfriend.” you wrote. 

“ Now let the chaos begin while I create chaos between your legs,” you say to Mary. 

#woso fanfics #woso #woso imagine #woso community #mary earps #mary earps x reader #mary earps imagine #pundit reader

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Security is class war, not intergenerational conflict

Today, Tor.com published my latest short story, "The Canadian Miracle," set in the world of my forthcoming (Nov 14) novel, The Lost Cause. I am serializing this one on my podcast! Here's part one.

The very instant the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, American conservatives (in both parties) began lobbying to destroy it. After all, a reserve army of forelock-tugging plebs and family retainers won't voluntarily assemble themselves – they need to be goaded into it by the threat of slowly starving to death in their dotage.

They're at it again (again). The oligarch-thinktank industrial complex has unleashed a torrent of scare stories about Social Security's imminent insolvency, rehearsing the same shopworn doom predictions that they've been repeating since the Nixonite billionaire cabinet member Peter G Peterson created a "foundation" to peddle his disinformation in 2008:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.O.U.S.A.

Peterson's go-to tactic is convincing young people that all the Social Security money they're paying into the system will be gobbled up by already-wealthy old people, leaving nothing behind for them. Conservatives have been peddling this ditty since the 1930s, and they're still at it – in the pages of the New York Times, no less:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/opinion/social-security-medicare-aging.html

The Times has become a veritable mouthpiece for this nonsense, publishing misleading and nonsensical charts and data to support the idea that millennials are losing a generational war to boomers, who will leave the cupboard bare:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/opinion/aging-medicare-social-security.html

As Robert Kuttner writes for The American Prospect, this latest rhetorical assault on Social Security is timed to coincide with the ascension of the GOP House's new Speaker, Mike Johnson, who makes no secret of his intention to destroy Social Security:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-10-31-debunking-latest-attack-social-security/

The GOP says it wants to destroy Social Security for two reasons: first, to promote "choice" by letting us provide for our own retirement by flushing even more of our savings into the rigged casino that is the stock market; and second, because America doesn't have enough dollars to feed and house the elderly.

But for the New York Times' audience, they've figured out how to launder this far-right nonsense through the language of social justice. Rather than condemning the impecunious olds for their moral failing to lay the correct bets in the stock market, Social Security's opponents paint the elderly as a gerontocratic elite, flush with cash that rightfully belongs to the young.

To support this conclusion, they throw around statistics about how house-rich the Boomers are, and how much consumption they can afford. But as Kuttner points out, the Boomers' real-estate wealth comes not from aggressive house-flipping, but from merely owning a place to live. America's housing bubble means that younger people can't afford this basic human necessity, but the answer to that isn't making old people homeless – it's providing a lot more housing, and banning housing speculation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

It's true that older people are doing a lot of consumption spending – but the bulk of that spending isn't on cruises to Alaska to see the melting glaciers, it's on health care. Old people aren't luxuriating in their joint replacements and coronary bypasses. Calling this "consumption" is deliberately misleading.

But as Kuttner points out, there's another, more important point to be made about inequality in America – the most significant wealth gap in America is between workers and owners, not young people and old people. The "average" Boomer's net worth factors in the wealth of Warren Buffett and Donald Trump. Older renters are more rent-burdened and precarious than younger renters, and most older Americans have little to no retirement savings:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2023/10/28/the-new-york-times-greedy-geezer-myth/

Less than one percent of Social Security benefits go to millionaires – that's because the one percent constitute one percent of the population. It's right there in the name. The one percent are politically and economically important, but that's because they are low in numbers. Giving Social Security benefits to everyone over 65 will not result in a significant outlay to the ultra-wealthy, because there aren't many ultra-wealthy people in America. The problem of inequality isn't the expanding pool of rich people, it's the explosion of wealth for a contracting pool of rich people.

If conservatives were serious about limiting the grip of these "undeserving" Social Security recipients on our economy and its politics, they'd advocate for interitance taxes (which effectively don't exist in America), not the abolition of Social Security. The problem of wealth in America is that it is establishing permanent dynasties which are incompatible with social mobility. In other words, we have created a new hereditary aristocracy – and its corollary, a new hereditary peasantry:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Hereditary aristocracies are poisonous for lots of reasons, but one of the most pressing problems they present is political destabilization. American belief in democracy, the rule of law, and a national identity is q function of Americans' perception of fairness. If you think that your kids can't ever have a better life than you, if you think that the cops will lock you up for a crime for which a rich person would escape justice, then why obey the law? Why vote? Why not cheat and steal? Why not burn it all down?

The wealthy put a lot of energy into distracting us from this question. Just lately, they've cooked up a gigantic panic over a nonexistent wave of retail theft:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/31/the-retail-theft-surge-that-isnt-report-says-crime-is-being-exaggerated-to-cover-up-other-retail-issues/

Meanwhile, the very real, non-imaginary, accelerating, multi-billion-dollar plague of wage theft is conspicuously missing from the public discourse, despite a total that dwarfs all retail theft in America by an order of magnitude:

https://fair.org/home/wage-theft-is-built-into-the-business-models-of-many-industries/

America does have a property crime crisis, but it's a crisis of wage-theft, not shoplifting. Likewise, America does have a retirement crisis: it's a crisis of inequality, not intergenerational conflict.

Social Security has been under sustained assault since its inception, and that's in large part due to a massive blunder on the part of FDR. Roosevelt believed that people would be more protective of Social Security if they thought it was funded by their taxes: "we bought it, it's ours." But – as FDR well knew – that's not how government spending works.

The US government can't run out of US dollars. The US government doesn't get its dollars for spending from your taxes. The US government spends money into existence and taxes it out of existence:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/14/situation-normal/#mmt

A moment's thought will reveal that it has to be this way. The US government (and its fiscal agents, chartered banks) are the only source of dollars. How can the US tax dollars away from earners unless it has first spent those dollars into the economy?

The point of taxation isn't to fund programs, it's to reduce the private sector's spending power so that there are things for sale to the public sector. If we only spent money into the economy but didn't take any out of the economy, the private sector would have so many dollars to spend that any time the government tried to buy something, there'd be a bidding war that would result in massive price spikes.

When a government runs a "balanced budget," that means that it has taxed as much out of the economy as it put into the economy at the start of the year. When a government runs a "surplus," that means it's left less money in the economy at the end of the year than there was at the beginning of the year. This is fine if the economy has contracted overall, but if the economy stayed constant or grew, that means there are fewer dollars chasing more goods and services, which leads to deflation and all kinds of toxic outcomes, like borrowing more bank-created money, which makes the finance sector richer and the real economy poorer.

Of course, most governments run "deficits" – which is another way of saying that they leave more dollars in the economy at the end of the year than there was at the start of the year, or, put another way, a deficit probably means that your economy got bigger, so it needed more dollars.

None of this means that governments can spend without limit. But it does mean that governments can buy anything that's for sale in their own currency. There are a lot of goods for sale in US dollars, both goods that are produced domestically and goods from abroad (this is why it's such a big deal that most of the world's oil is priced in dollars).

Governments do have to worry about getting into bidding wars with the private sector. To do that, governments come up with ways of reducing the private sector's spending power. One way to do that is taxes – just taking money away from us at the end of the year and annihilating it. Another way is to ration goods – think of WWII, or the direct economic interventions during the covid lockdowns. A third way is to sell bonds, which is just a roundabout way of getting us to promise not to spend some of our dollars for a while, in return for a smaller number of dollars in interest payments:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/08/howard-dino/#payfors

FDR knew all of this, but he still told the American people that their taxes were funding Social Security, thinking that this would protect the program. This backfired terribly. Today, Democrats have embraced the myth that taxes fund spending and join with their Republican counterparts in insisting that all spending must be accompanied by either taxes or cuts (AKA "payfors").

These Democrats voluntarily put their own policymaking powers in chains, refusing to take any action on behalf of the American people unless they can sell a tax increase or a budget cut. They insist that we can't have nice things until we make billionaires poor – which is the same as saying that we can't have nice things, period.

There are damned good reasons to make billionaires poor. The legitimacy of the American system is incompatible with the perception that wealth and power are fixed by birth, and that the rich and powerful don't have to play by the rules.

The capture of America's institutions – legislatures, courts, regulators – by the rich and powerful is a ghastly situation, and to reverse it, we'll need all the help we can get. Every hour that Americans spend worrying about their how they'll pay their rent, their medical bills, or their student loans is an hour lost to the fight against oligarchy and corruption.

In other words, it's not true that we can't have nice things until we get rid of billionaires – rather, we can't get rid of billionaires until we have nice things.

This is the premise of my next novel, The Lost Cause, which comes out on November 14; it's set in a world where care and solidarity have unleashed millions of people on the project of maintaining the habitability of our planet amidst the polycrisis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

It's a fundamentally hopeful book, and it's already won praise from Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. I wrote it while thinking through and researching these issues. Conservatives want us to think that we can't do better than this, that – to quote Margaret Thatcher – "there is no alternative." Replacing that narrative is critical to the kinds of mass mobilizations that our very survival depends on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/intergenerational-warfare/#five-pound-blocks-of-cheese

This Saturday (Nov 4), I'm keynoting the Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA.

#pluralistic #class war #inheritance tax #death tax #mmt #modern monetary theory #intergenerational war #intergenerational wealth transfers #social security #ss

[shortpplfedup]

Only Friends Character Rankings Pre-Air

Jojo, Ninew, Ninepinta and Vivienne have now presented their stable of hoes to us, y'all have chosen your fighters, and I am gnawing on concrete in anticipation of August 12. Since I'm gonna be doing weekly character rankings, I wanted to set up a pre-air Clown Checkpoint so I can look back later and see how wrong I was. Until that YouTube premiere countdown hits zero, we know exactly nothing, but I'm ready to predict whose gay wrongs I will most support! Here we go!

1. Nick

I just want you to love only me!

Audience ranking: 6

Ever since Mark Pakin showed up in that pilot trailer scheming and sex-taping, Nick has been MY DUDE. I want him to be the most manclown character of all time. I want him to be DESPERATE AND PATHETIC for Boston's dick. ANSWER EVERY BOOTY CALL NICK, I BELIEVE IN YOU. HE WANTS YOU TO DO A THREESOME? NO PROBLEM, WHATEVER YOU WANT BABE. I want Nick to call his bestie (Sand?) crying because Boston came over at 3:02 a.m. and left at 4:37 a.m. and 15 minutes of that was him taking a post-coital shower. I want crying and begging and clinging and devious acts. Khun Pakin has the chops to make my dreams come alive, make it happen boo!

2. Mew

My type is pretty simple. I'm not a picky kind of guy.

Audience ranking: 4

Right up until time of posting I thought my #2 seed would be Boston, but something is telling me that when it comes to manipulation and making grown men cry, Mew will emerge the champion. Something in this butter-wouldn't-melt expression is telling me this man is the true demon from hell whereas Boston is merely a top-tier-yet-still-garden-variety slut. Him shit-kicking Boston into the pool and then jumping in himself to finish the job is the kinda deranged shit I respect immensely. Kill them all Mew. You deserve.

3. Boston

You should be glad to be my favourite.

Audience ranking: 5

I may have called this man a garden variety slut, but I love a good slut though! Especially one who will lend his toys to help out a friend. And then almost instantly regret it. And then cause chaos and problems for himself as a result. And then make it everybody else's chaos and problems. Basically, I expect Boston's job to be throwing hole around Bangkok and ruining lives, and I expect him to do it WELL, and I expect him to do it in the sluttiest rent boy outfits I've ever seen.

4. Ray

You think my life will be better with you? It's only fucking going down to hell.

Audience ranking: 3

Speaking of chaos and problems, OUR BI DISASTER IS HERE GUYS! Bisexual? Bipolar? Why not both? The trailer is letting us know from jump that Ray is A Mess With Money and happy to use that money to buy himself some company, but also not able to keep those lines from getting blurred. I’m expecting this character to make me fall in love with him but also want to strangle him, Teh Krittikorn Saetun-style, so expect this ranking to go up until he is somehow my fave.

5. Sand

Friends don't charge friends. Besides, you should save your money for a shrink.

Audience ranking: 2

First Kanaphan’s job at GMMTV is to rip our hearts out roughly twice a year, and he’s right on schedule. It seems like Sand never learned not to fall for poor little rich boys, so we will all have to suffer with him. Honestly his ranking is this low right now because I see these guitars and microphones and I want no part of them. There is a short list of GMMTV boys allowed to sing at me and as much as I love First he is not on it. Ditch the microphone and bring back the baseball bat bb, I’m ready to see you bust some heads, kneecaps, car windows, whatever in pursuit of your love.

6. Top

When I take aim, I never miss.

Audience ranking: 7

Ah yes, the hoe-turned-seeming-housewife who’s actually still hoeing. The village bike. The community top. Boston basically turns him out and he’s not only fine with it, he falls for the john. Delicious. I desire his ruin like I’ve desired nothing before in media.

7. Everybody we don’t know nothing about yet (Yo, Nam/Syrup, Nes, Lesbian!Nonnie, A Wild Papang, various and assorted surprise guests I’m pretty sure we’re getting)

Friends don't do this to each other.

Audience ranking: 1 (combined score)

We await the tea on all the side characters, but the casting is superb, and I’m ready to see how high in the rankings they can climb.

LET THE MESS COMMENCE!

#only friends the series #bless this mess #only friends weekly character rankings #i support gay wrongs #only friends series #only friends #bl meta series

[lurking-latinist]

I just saw this awesome post about including mobility aids in fantasy writing, and I do not want to create a tangent but I *do* want to share some things I learned about disability in ancient Greece when I was researching that paper I wrote on the Philoctetes, so I am making my own post.

Philoctetes is a mythical figure who was one of the Greek heroes going to the Trojan war. Before they got there, he suffered a wound in the foot which would not heal. The other Greek leaders were unwilling to have the noise of his screams and the stench of the infected wound in their camp, so they abandoned him on a deserted island with only his famous weapon, the Bow of Heracles. He survived there for ten years. Now the war is almost over, Troy has almost fallen, but the Greeks have heard a prophecy: they cannot win until they have the Bow of Heracles. So wily Odysseus and young Neoptolemus (the son of the recently dead Achilles) go to the island where Philoctetes is still living, still dealing with his injury. Philoctetes is eager to escape the island, but can he trust the community that abandoned him ten years ago? Can they ever make right what they did to him?

Now that’s the type of story that someone might very well point to who was arguing that disabled people have to be neglected and excluded in a “historically accurate” story. And it’s definitely not an example of casual inclusion. But what that person would be missing is that Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation in this play was intended to be shocking to its Athenian audience. The audience is invited to identify with Philoctetes and to be horrified at how he does not receive the support from his community that real-world people with similar disabilities did receive, as we can tell from both textual and archaeological evidence.

Martha L. Rose’s book The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece emphasizes this. Look, here’s what I wrote in my paper, why should I rewrite it:

Rose approaches her material “though the lens of disability studies, which approaches the phenomenon of disability by assuming that there is nothing inherently wrong with the disabled body and that the reaction of a society to the disabled body is neither predictable nor immutable” (1). In other words, it is necessary to see what attitudes and assumptions about disabilities are actually recorded, rather than projecting any of our own assumptions. ...

Also unlike today, Greek concepts of disability were not medicalized. “Permanent physical disability,” writes Rose, “was not the concern of doctors in antiquity beyond recognition of incurability” (11). This does not mean that disabled people had no resources or were simply left to perish, of course. Rather, they were often cared for within their households and their communities (28), which means that both Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation form a shocking exception to the norm. The importance of community support suggests that Philoctetes’ joy at being reunited with humanity comes from practical as well as emotional needs. At the same time, the wide range of tasks and trades in the Greek economy meant that many disabled people were far from economically dependent (think of [the god] Hephaestus the lame smith), so that “[a] physically handicapped person earning a living would not have been a remarkable sight” (39). People unable to walk at all rode donkeys or were carried in litters, while those who walked with difficulty used a staff or a crutch (24-26).

So for writers: the ancient Greeks didn’t invent the wheelchair--but they had the wheel technology (I suspect the issue may have been with roads and pavements instead), so your Greek-inspired fantasy world totally can (which was the point of that earlier post). Or maybe your protagonist goes on their adventures with a faithful donkey sidekick that helps them get around. Maybe they are respected for their skill in a craft, making their home and workshop a lively meeting-place for customers. If you’re writing fantasy, you could be inspired by one of the myths of Hephaestus, in which he creates metal automatons--basically, magic robots--that not only support him as he walks, they also act as assistants in his workshop!

Anyway, the point of this post is basically just that I agree with the other post about including mobility aids in fantasy and I had some relevant knowledge in the back of my head. And also that you should read the Philoctetes. Look, here’s a recent free modern English verse translation: https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/sophocles/philocteteshtml.html

Oh, and if you would like to see my term paper or the relevant section from The Staff of Oedipus, message me, I will share them.

#philoctetes #writing #I should add that Rose also has information about things like blindness and deafness in her book #I just happened to be writing a paper about mobility

[demodraws0606]

Why I am a die-hard believer that Whit is the mastermind

You know I was going to make an entire structured theory thread about it but Tumblr decided to be a little bitch and remove all my writing so I'll just kinda throw a messy list of evidence here.

Notice how Veronika's summary of Forever Dead is suspiciously similar to the secret dialogue

Notice how the main character's gender is pointed out

It's also interesting how the mysterious dialogue in the beginning who seems to be related to the hidden text (the idea of not being able to remember anymore link those two) seem to often mention the fact that they're grieving the loss of someone.

That someone most likely being Mai who seems to have suffered a tragic fate due to Teruko, which can explain the mastermind's hatred of her.

Guess who's character is linked with grief ?

(I know this is most likely about his mother but there is nothing contradicting the fact that he could be idolizing multiple dead people)

Wow it's interesting how these secret texts about Mai seem to be really idolizing her.

We can also add how the person who wrote the note to Xavier is very clearly the mastermind and how Whit's tool is a Stationery (it's spelled Stationary but i believe its a typo) which is commonly known as writing and other office materials.

Which includes paper, pens, ink, highlighters and other tools for writing

It's even made worse by the fact that the note seems to be written by a specific type of blue pen that we haven't seen anywhere in the series.

And even worse is that Charles, who knows Whit's handwriting, couldn't point out the writing is his as he couldn't access the scene of the crime due to his trauma therefore he couldn't see the note's handwriting.

It's really really interesting how the hidden text points out how they can predict everyone's behavior in a killing game and Whit's intuition is highlighted three times in this game.

Another suspicious thing is how the mastermind of the game talks about how they basically can predict anything that can happen. It's almost like how Whit jokingly predicted Arei's death.

Along with how Whit is the only one who has directly talked to the audience (him showing the papers) or how he's nudged the killing game into more interesting directions/avoided it from going off the rails.

Other exemples would be him defending Teruko/Charles in the first trial, him not revealing David's secret until the last minute (as well as the note that suspiciously pointed to Eden), him not trying to help with the fight in episode 4, him insisting that Charles and Teruko talk about their family life (aka nudging them to talk about their backstory which would entertain the audience) and other stuff i don't feel like adding.

It's also important add that Mono-TV and Whit also have similar personalities. They both don't take anything seriously and make constant jokes about the killing games, Mono-TV and Whit also act constantly incompetent and like they're a lot dumber than they actually are.

Another thing is that it's interesting how Whit opens up about his secret so easily, even though almost everyone's secrets are something they're at least flustered about and at worst completely ashamed by. If he was the mastermind, it would make sense that his secret wouldn't be anything that could ruin his character and that he could just admit easily.

Also another point, the mastermind character talks about a time when they cared so much about people and how it hurt them so much when they died. Which you can see that caring nature shine through a lot with Whit as it's possible that Whit's personnality is not actually a lie but more so a reflection of how he used to be before he went through all this alledged horrible stuff.

We can also note how the mastermind has to be one of the students and how there is an extreme likelyhood that Mono-TV saying it isn't bait because it's not actually told to the students but to us. Why would Mono-TV tell it to us and not to the students if it was a lie meant to make the game more interesting, wouldn't it be more entertaining to reveal to the students of a fake mastermind among them to get them to kill one another more easily. It's why I have no doubt someone in this class has to be the mastermind behind it.

Mono-TV also seems to not have any contact with the person controlling him which would make sense if it was someone in the killing game as they would have a hard time communicating without being caught.

(It's a stretch but it would make more sense if Mono-TV didn't know if the mastermind was one of them as if the mastermind was behind the scenes there would be no reason why it wouldn't interact with Mono-TV, although take this with a grain of salt as he could be lying)

And just really there aren't a lot of other options for the mastermind that would be compelling unless they introduce a mysterious new character.

It could be the mysterious red haired girl but everything hints towards her being dead or hurt and it being the cause for the killing game rather than her being the one behind it. There is some decent evidence that it could be her but I genuinely don't think so considering it again feels a little too obvious and doesn't work with how the story/secrets present her.

(It's just not very compelling to make your ONE mystery character the mastermind and again it would be weird considering Mono-TV telling the audience the mastermind is in cast doesn't make sense logically as he would have no reason to try and trick the audience)

Not a lot of characters in this cast can be really put into the mastermind category as they are either too obvious (teruko, veronika) or too farfetched (eden, hu etc...).

I honestly am a die hard believer that Whit is the mastermind however what's interesting to me is not If Whit is the mastermind but more so the Why ?

Which honestly might be a question for another time...

But yeah this is why I 95 pourcent believe Whit is the mastermind

If anyone has anything more to add I would be really interesting in seeing what other people have in terms of evidence.

#whit young #whit #danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt theory #drdt whit #This is so messy I apologize but I was getting impatient as I had like started writing an actually well structured essay and tumblr said #“lol no” #I'm so fucking insane for this theory you people have no idea #it lives in the unhinged part of my brain

[aurae-rori]

AVENTURINE TRAILER ANALYSIS - THE GOLDEN TOUCH

SPOILERS FOR 2.1 CONTENT & AVENTURINE’S TRAILER! 

TW FOR VERY VAGUE SUICIDE MENTIONS. 

Hey girlies, hold still. On another note, hello again! I will be going through visual analysis, symbolism, and talking about how this trailer ties multiple aspects of Aventurine’s character together. Some of the things covered here I will be covering in my full analysis of Aventurine himself, so feel free to give that a shot. 

My disclaimer! Although I have been researching psychology personally for about six years, I am NOT a professional. (Yet. When I do, Tumblr Will Know.) Any conclusions I come to are because of my own deductions, personal interpretations, analysis, and logic. You are free to disagree with what I say! 

I also do NOT know card numbers and symbols – what they mean and symbolize and all that jazz. Sorry guys. :( 

Now, let’s get into it. 

First of all, let’s fucking go, let this man ENJOY himself (well. A little. This trailer is not as happy silly as it seems, just like the character himself.) He gets to have a silly boogie woogie! Look at you go!! (He is not boogie woogie-ing.)

Second of all, time for game theories.  

The first scene is really pretty. It’s a coin falling down, toppling against a few stray objects before we flash to the next panel, the ground, as it rolls to the feet of a young boy. Gently, he reaches down, before picking it up, and then, in true Aventurine fashion, proceeds to flip the coin in his hand. However, this gesture actually holds more meaning than I originally thought it did. The coin that Aventurine has seems to transcend his definition of ‘time’ – his inherent ‘value’, or his ‘roots’, never changing. It also shows his connection to his younger self – how he’s still holding onto that child, still connecting to that child, and showing that this child is still a part of him, even if it’s only his past self. 

I believe that the coin that he always has flipping around actually represents Aventurine himself – it represents his ‘value’ as a gambling chip. In Aventurine’s eyes, interpersonal relationships are just like that – they are gambles, where people take advantage of one another and backstab each other. However, it also represents how little he seems to care for his own life – he tosses the coin around, does tricks with it, and is overly flamboyant – just like how he presents himself to the outside world. This single gambling chip is actually the presentation of how Aventurine sees himself and presents himself to everyone else, as well as encompasses his worldview – bet himself, going ‘all in’ with his own worth, or doing nothing. That worth has been with him his entire life – the worth of being a child blessed by a God from his home, being blessed with good fortune. 

Also, sick ass transition. Love that shit. 

Pay attention to the next scene – there’s a brief moment where it shows him walking through a hallway… through the lens of a camera. This could definitely be alluding to the idea of always being watched – I mean, he’s the last of his own race, of course there’s going to be eyes on him. People are going to be asking questions - how is he still alive? Why is he with the IPC? Can he be trusted, considering his race was known for scheming and plotting? 

And then, he tosses open the door in a grand display – a grand display of his fake persona. He opens the room to a whole bunch of robots, who are all gambling, and they stare at him in surprise. That’s Aventurine – flamboyant, showy, confident. He holds a captive audience and all of the others move to the side as he strides towards the slots machine – and as predicted, due to his good luck, he gets three in a row. However, what I think is important to note is that he slides his coin into the machine – and remember what I said about the coin representing his worth? This is what I mean by he bets himself. He is just another gambling chip that he will use to achieve victory no matter what. He is another pawn on the table who has made his way this far, and it’s all or nothing – his whole worth, or not worth the gamble at all. 

Also, at 0:42, we see a briefcase open up to reveal a gem – definitely a callback to the 2.1 trailblaze quest with his moment with Ratio. Damn, gay people. 

Then, after that, he slides many chips towards the table – and interestingly enough, they’re all copies of his one singular chip. This, your honour, is what we call a ‘bluff’. Pretending to be more than you are in order to appear more confident so that your enemies will fear you. Pretty good strategy, honestly. 

Also, cool editing with the machines falling into the Void of Cards. Maybe symbolism for how people fall into his persona easily and fall for his schemes? 

Epic ahh pose, 0:54. Love that for you, my silly homosexual lad. 

Also, him in the elevator going to the top at around 1:02? That means more than you think it does. Probably most likely a representation of how he had to crawl his way from the bottom to the top, and yet, now, it’s showing that he is at the top now. He takes an elevator instead of having to climb – he’s gotten higher, he’s gotten more status. His ‘all or nothing’ mentality pays off. 

And then, he’s set into an arena. Representation of life, honestly. His whole life is a stage, a play, something to be watched. He’s here to put on a good show. He’s being watched, which is a callback to my note about the camera at the start. 

Then, the horrors are set loose. He does his gambling stuff with the cup in his hand while he dodges the monsters. That’s him, alright – taking gambles in dangerous situations, relying on his luck, smiling through what should be terrifying. 

“The wager will be life and death,” but oh, that’s your usual wager, Aventurine. We all know how you have self-destructive tendencies. 

1:42. Hand behind his back. Oh lord, we all died. We all know what the hand behind his back means. We all know how much emotional damage that caused. 

1:46. The dice cracks. Just like his cornerstone, eh? Just like his façade, right…? :) 

And then, everything is drowned in gold coins. Yay! 

And then, he’s standing on a ledge. Possibly a callback to how he said that he had “tested death” in the dreamscape. What better way to test it than jumping? 

And then his enemies are drowning in coins. Probably a metaphor for his win against them. 

And then, here is where things get interesting at the two minute mark. He tosses his coin down, again, like at the beginning of the trailer. Kakvasha flipped the coin up, trying to get higher, and then, Aventurine tosses the coin down, keeping his connection with his younger self. It falls down to the ground, and Kakavasha picks it up with awe in his eyes. He’s still keeping in mind his younger self, still keeping him with him, even to this day. Holding onto his past like a lifeline. 

Aventurine’s trailer… while it does seem on the surface that you’re having fun, you’re really not, when everything is a show and a gamble, right? 

Alright, thanks for reading, everyone! :) 

#aventurine #hsr #honkai star rail #hsr aventurine #honkai star rail aventurine #analysis #media analysis #character analysis #let me cook #aurae analyzes

[thefangirlfever]

The studious type (a Miguel O'hara fanfic, 18+, MDNI)

Summary: Boyfriend Miguel helping you relax during your finals week.

Tags: F/M, afab reader, College AU, established relationship, smut, oral sex (F. receiving), Miguel being a munch (because I can), use of condoms, masturbation, thigh riding, PIV penetration, fluff, soft Miguel O’hara, a bit of dirty talk, aftercare

Note: Finals are not the only thing coming… Very self-indulgent. My first time trying this format, hope you like it.

I am too tired and I don’t have much time, so please, accept this blurb instead of a real story ToT

============================================

Saying that you are anxious for your upcoming finals is an understatement. You keep on pulling all-nighter after all-nighter, taking micro nap sometimes, eating only instant noodles… Finals are really taking a toll on your physical and mental health. And it shows. You also start to get tired and more susceptible.

This doesn’t go unnoticed by your boyfriend, Miguel. Not only does he notice all of this but he also tries to help you as much as he can.

He also has to think about his own finals but that doesn’t stop him from texting you every day, making sure you’re eating enough, taking some naps and just to check on you in general. He is not really prone to public displays of affection or such things but he cares. And his way to show it is by his actions, as small as they may seem.

The two of you also had shared study session. It didn’t matter that you had different classes and majors. You would just keep helping each other, exchanging glances from time to time… And each time Miguel would feel you close to falling asleep, he would either tell you to rest or wake you up with a gentle nudge, depending on the time of the day.

Always brings your favorite snacks to make sure you have eaten at least one thing.

He doesn’t say it but you really amaze him. You’re always motivated, determined to do your best no matter what. One would even call you a perfectionist but that doesn’t bother him. He is really supportive of you in everything you make. You got a presentation? He’ll gladly listen to you as if he was your future audience. You could be talking about something he knows nothing about and he would still be 100% invested in your speech, asking questions afterward… You want to write a phd thesis? He got your back. You want to spend more time than it’s necessary on a paper because the topic matters to you? He will proofread you.

Needless to say, you gladly do the same for him. In fact he likes when you ask questions about what he is working on. And it’s actually endearing to see him geek out about things like dark energy, quantum physics and other things that would usually bore you to death.

After every study session, he walks with you to your bus/ subway station. You usually don’t talk much since you are both tired. Sometimes he would take your hand and slips his fingers between yours without saying anything about it.

Always texts you to make sure you did get back home safely.

You can be sure that the last day of your exam (or a few days after if his finals end later), the two of you will have one of your usual date nights.

Depending on how tired he is, he would either cook something or order take out. If he cooks something, you always make sure to bring something of your own. Even if he tells you that you don’t have to, he always ends up eating what you bring because he is a sweet tooth.

You’re usually too tired after finals to do anything else than just sitting on his couch, watching a movie the two of you probably already watched a hundred of times but that doesn’t matter. There’s something comfortable in what’s predictable.

And every part of this evening is predictable. From you falling asleep while the two of you cuddle to him gently playing with your hair in order to keep you awake. If it’s cold outside, you are wrapped under a warm blanket that covers each of your limbs. His hand that holds your waist slowly drifts to your thigh and draws lazy shape over it. He is not even thinking about it; it has become a habit of his.

Just like the way you nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck while wrapping your arms around his shoulders. Was it the most comfortable position? Not. Did you care? Also no.

The night would usually end with Miguel having to carry you to bed since you passed out on the couch.

NSFW content ahead

******************************************************************************

But sometimes the night would take an unexpected turn. All these days and even weeks spent studying had left the two of you filled with pent-up sexual frustration. And no alone time was the same as the intimacy you guys wanted.

You’re sitting on Miguel’s lap in front of the TV, but none of you are really paying attention to the movie at this point of the night.

He is too distracted by the scent of your hair since your head is so close to his face. His fingers playing with the locks of your hair are not enough for him. He has reached this part of the night where he wants more. He kisses the top of your head in an attempt to test the waters, see if you’re in the same mood.

He would make it look like it’s nothing, or an accident but the two of you know each other too well. After the third kiss, you understand what he has in mind. And you’ve been thinking the same thing all night long, if not longer. These last weeks have been nothing but frustration and you’re more than ready to give in.

You lean further into his embrace, clearly indicating your will to go further. You do this in a nonchalant way, as if it was nothing but he noticed the way your thighs brush against his and how you rest more of your weight near his crotch region.

The hand that was on your lower back supporting you slowly snakes up along your spine until it rests on the back of your neck. His free hand drifts toward your thigh to draw lazy shapes over it. But this time he is deliberately thinking about the moves he makes. His fingertips brush over you as if it was an accident once again, it’s barely a flicker.

The back of his fingers drag along the curve of your thigh, running over your skin until he reaches your knees. He repeats this movement over and over before gripping your thighs more intently. His fingers dig into your flesh, making you feel very aware of his presence behind you. He would usually use his thumb to draw small circles on your inner thigh, eliciting a trail of goosebumps all along.

While the two of you played this little game, you never look at each other. On your side, you still pretend that nothing’s happening, keeping your eyes on the TV but still pushing yourself more against him. He can feel your chest presses against his, your hair brushing his chin and at some point, you’re practically just sitting on his groin.

As the evening goes on, Miguel’s hands get bolder with his actions. He squeezes your thigh from time to time before eventually bringing it under your shirt, avoiding the spot you want him on on purpose. His warm touch on your stomach makes you squirm on top of him. The way your hips shift doesn’t help with his growing erection and his hand on your neck keep you in place, holding you in a careful but firm way.

Without saying a word, his fingertips dance their way over the curve of your belly. He makes sure to trace over the folds of your skin, of every roll on your tummy, to just explore and take in the softness of your belly. He can’t wait for the moment his face will make contact with it. Your skin is too smooth to resist it in his opinion.

You’re a blushing mess at this point and you don’t dare looking at what his hands are doing on you. Your breath gets a little more shallow with every stroke of his on your stomach. He leans closer and brings his face to the crook of your neck, nibbling your skin while making fun of you for not being attentive to the movie playing in the background. When he sees how flustered your are, he decides to act upon it.

“Got something else on your mind?”

You just nod your head and tighten your grip on his shoulder. But he has other plans for you. The hand behind your neck now grabs your waist and makes you sit still over his bulge. Your eyes are on the TV and your mind is on Miguel’s body.

His fingertips brush over your crotch, making you squirm more. Your butt rubs against his crotch and he can’t hide a smile this time. His fingertips barely tap over your crotch before his middle finger rubs over your slit. He then rubs two of his fingers over your groin, pushing his fingers against the fabric of your pants, rubbing his fingers in circle… When he gets too frustrated by the fabric covering you, he asks you if he can just take it off.

“Wanna feel you closer, muñeca...” That’s what he would usually whisper into your ear before kissing your earlobe. You can feel his warm breath, his voice almost shaking with desire as he toys with your zipper. A nod of you and your pants are pulled down your thighs. He doesn’t wait for you to remove them fully or even take off your underwear. His eager finger keeps rubbing you over the fabric of your panties until a damp spot appears in the front.

You lost the count of time as the minutes pass. You’re making a mess of yourself, rubbing yourself on him and when he finally pulls down your underwear and his hand cups your sex, the two of you let out a low moan. His fingers find their way through your bush and he rubs your labia, waiting for you to let him know when you’re ready to take him.

You bite down your lower lip and completely leans back against his body. He wraps his arm around you, holding you tightly and making sure you’re comfortable. Miguel then kisses your cheek. He rubs his nose against your skin, kisses your jawline before nuzzling his face in the crook of your nick, kissing and lapping at your skin.

The movie has already come to an end and in the silence of the room, your moans and Miguel’s heavy breath are the only thing that can be heard. His hooked fingers stimulate your clitoris and when you get comfortable enough, he starts thrusting them in and out of you, almost scissoring you.

He then brings his attention to your clitoris, rubbing it in slow motions. He can feel it throbbing under his fingertips and that makes him moan against the skin of your neck. His warm breath raises all the small hair on your nape and you’re getting hot and bothered. His words aren’t helping either.

“I’ll be damned if I don’t taste you before the end of the night. Been craving this pussy of yours for day now...”

When he catches you trying to relieve yourself of all the tension, he whispers “What are you doing?” There’s no anger in his voice, just pure astonishment. “You know you could just ask…”

The mischief in his voice doesn’t go unnoticed by you. He likes seeing you this needy and you can feel it. Your body writes on top of him and your shoulders slouch down when you whisper his name. You know what he wants to hear and you finally surrender when the teasing gets too overwhelming. “Please, Miguel…”

Your needy voice gets him to smile again. He leaves an affectionate kiss on the back of your neck before pulling his fingers out. He wouldn’t mind having his way with you here and there but he has more self-control than that. He gently kisses your shoulder before lifting your body up.

He usually carries you to the bedroom, helping you lay down the bed while the two of you undress. When your clothes are discarded on the floor and he is busy looking for the box of condoms in his nightstand, you take a good look at him. You watch his figure being drawn by the shadows in the room and your gaze lingers on his back. From his shoulders to the small of his back, your eyes trail down his spine. You smile when you see his back dimples and he catches you staring.

With a cheeky grin on his face, he gets back on the bed. You’re expecting a kiss but his lips land on your stomach. His face rests against your skin while he kisses you all over the smooth surface of your belly. Maybe it’s the scent of your lotion. Maybe it’s the way he can feel your breath catching up. Maybe it’s how close he is to your arousal and can literally smell it… he doesn’t know exactly what makes him love him love this moment but he never gets tired of kissing you there.

Of course he has to taste you after that. Each of his kisses send an electrifying feeling to your body and you can feel yourself growing more aroused. When he starts eating you out, you wrap your legs around his head and this feeling immediately gets stronger.

One of his hand holds your thigh while the other keeps teasing you. His fingers keep thrusting in and out of you while his tongue focuses on your clitoris, sucking and licking. When he feels you close, he keeps his pace steady, focused on only one thing. You. Your thighs quivering around his face, your hands holding his hair, your soft moans… He has waited too long for that and when you finally relax and release all the pressure inside you, he growls against your lips.

He quickly wipes your juice off his chin and gets up. His body towers over you, watching the aftermath of what he did to you. His thumb rubs over your sticky thighs and with his free hand, he brings his cock closer to you. You can see the red and swollen head of his member rubbing against your clit while a few moans escape his throat. He throws his head backward, his shoulders quivering as he feels himself growing more impatient.

He is still careful when he penetrates you, using a tad of lube to make this easier. And the fun part is that he gets to tease you more while rubbing it over your entrance. You wait patiently, at least you try, with your hands gripping the sheets while he gets you prepped up.

Everything feels worth it as soon as you feel him moving inside of you. He keeps his pace gentle, making the moment last as longs as possible. You’ve both been waiting too long for this for it to end too soon. Your limbs are entangled over the sheets and he melds into you. You brush away a few strands of hair from his face and he leans his cheek into your palm. His lips place a few kisses on your hand and even your wrist.

You both make sure to never break eye contact, reading on the other one’s face his emotions. He can see from your red cheeks and parted lips that you enjoy this moment. With one hand on your cheek, he leans closer and kisses the tip of your nose before whispering sweet nothings to you. It could be about how he likes your scent, your eyes, or even how good you feel wrapped around him…

Your hands travel down his back that you were admiring earlier and grabs his butt cheeks firmly when he starts to fasten his pace. You keep guiding him with not only your expressions but also your words. When he gets closer to his release, his shoulders lock tightly and you can feel every muscle on his body flex.

He is not really vocal in this moment and usually a few groans let you know that he reached his climax. However he likes hearing your small whimpers while your body writhes and arch under him. He watches you reaching your orgasm with a content smile before kissing your forehead, telling you how good you were.

The two of you stay in bed a few minutes after this moment. He doesn’t usually pull out immediately after, letting you feel him inside of your walls as his member gets back to its usual size. Even after that, you’re still locked together in a tight hug. He knows he will have to let you go at some point but for now he just wants to keep you inside his arms as long as he can.

The aftercare can vary depending on your mood. If the two of you are in a good mood or still feeling playful, you keep exchanging a few kisses. Miguel’s fingers keep running over the curves of your body, especially your stomach and your thighs. On your side, you like letting your fingers run down his spine until you reach the small of his back. Your fingers then brush against his skin in slow circles. He both loves and hates when you do that. You know he is very sensitive down there and he can’t hold back a few moans.

Some days he would help you get into your pajamas while kissing your shoulders and the back of your neck. You don’t speak that much these days but the silence is not awkward. It’s rather comforting. His fingers run down your hair and he can’t help but take in the scent of your curls. He watches you detangle your hair after a long day of work. This has easily become one of his favorite rituals of yours. When you’re done, his fingers run smoothly down your hair and he watches you in awe braid it, helping you when you ask for it. You can be sure that as soon as your nape is exposed, he will kiss it gently.

It usually doesn’t take long for the two of you to fall asleep after this. His arms are wrapped tightly around you, even though he knows you will probably move too much during your sleep for it to be really useful. But he doesn’t care and you nestle yourself against him.

==========================================

Note: This was supposed to be really short but I got carried away ToT

Thansk for reading.

#miguel o'hara #atsv miguel #spiderverse #spiderman 2099 #across the spiderverse #miguel x reader #miguel o'hara smut #fanfic #atsv #miguel o'hara au

[p-redux]

PSA and Update: Regarding the Sasnak City private fan event on August 26, 2023 with Sam Heughan, Duncan LaCroix, and Charles Vandervaart...

Predictably, I woke up to some hate Anons in my Inbox. And also to an Ask from a go-between person sending me screencaps of a message from the Sasnak City ORGANIZER herself. The message was directed at me and my event source and she gave the go-between person permission to share the screencaps with me. The organizer is very upset that my source shared the event info with me and that I posted it publicly. And she goes as far as saying that because the info was shared, that this will be the end of any more Sasnak City events with Sam et al. C'mon now, I know I'm dramatic, but that's a bit over the top.

Lets' be real, people talk. It's human nature. And A LOT of people talk to me and share things with me. It's naive to think that an event with Sam Heughan will remain completely private. I heard at least a handful of other people who were at the event were also sharing info with people. I have a big audience and my blog is public, so it will have a wider reach, but still, others besides me did the same thing. I didn't sign an NDA and my blog is literally about posting insider info, scoops, etc. That's the way celeb blogs work.

As for the source who was at the event and gave me the info. She asked me to not post until 9:00 PM PST because that would make it 12:00 AM EST, which is the NEXT day. I could see being upset if any info about the event was posted AHEAD of time, or even DURING the event...but NOTHING was posted until AFTER the event was over.

As for Sam et al still being in the city where the event was held and fans possibly going to the airport to wait for them today...um, that's showbiz, baby...Sam has been photographed with fans waiting for him at airports for YEARS. He knows it's part of the deal of being famous. An airport is a public place. This does not put him in "danger," dramatic much? IF any fans go to the airport and get pics with Sam et al, that's literally ALL that it will be--a pic with a fan, not an assassination attempt FFS.

As I was in the middle of writing this, I received a message from someone else saying that the organizer is thinking of "suing." Um, suing WHO? I'm Anon and I didn't sign an NDA, so I can't be sued. And my source is also Anon, I don't know her real name, and I NEVER reveal sources, unless they give me permission. That's why people trust me and know they can come to me with info. You can only sue for breach of NDA if you can serve an identifiable person. There is no identifiable person here.

But, now I'm the one getting angry. The organizer is worried this will be the end of any Sam related Sasnak City events and is making a HUGE stink behind the scenes. It would be in the organizer's best interest to let this go, and stand down. I'd be worried about Sam finding out that she's THREATENING other fans, i.e. ME and my source who was at the event and provided info AFTER the fact.

I won't share the screencap of the organizer's message to me, but let's just say, it's very apparent she overestimates her importance. No one is curing cancer here, it's an expensive, exclusive fan convention. Nothing more, nothing less. Sam goes because he gets paid. Simple as that. Sam is super chill about everything, he doesnt care about any of this drama. I literally know people in L.A. who know him. Keep paying him and he will continue to attend. 🤷‍♀️ Just like any other celeb. Sasnak City events will continue.

It seems to me the organizer is more upset the info was posted before SHE could post it. I outscooped her about her own event--I get that would piss her off. But again, we're talking about a celeb con here, not state secrets.

I've been here a long time, I know how to play this game, who the players are, and people who can relay messages directly to Sam. You don't want to mess with me. Trust.

Again, I would just let this go, chalk it up to, "the event was a success, Sam knows we try our best to keep things private, but leaks happen, it's just how it is," and MOVE ON.

Deep breaths. I'll be at a pool party for a few hours, will check in here and there until later.

People are dying out there in this country and all over the world...let's keep things in perspective...

#samheughan #sam heughan #duncan lacroix #charles vandervaart #sasnak city #august 26 2023 #source #sources #fan event #stand down #let it go #nda

[twig-tea]

Let's Talk about Cheum

I've had multiple Cheum posts in my drafts since at least episode 6, and the main reason why I haven't posted them is because I keep waiting for the show to give me more. There have been some great posts reflecting on her character this week, so I thought I'd give it a try anyway right before the finale this weekend.

@waitmyturtles laid out her thoughts on Cheum here and this was followed up on with some excellent context by @ctl-yuejie re: the split in the audience around their reception of Cheum.

@my-rose-tinted-glasses tied the way that folks seem to want to iterpret Cheum's character to the trailer, which was an interesting take I hadn't considered! I like it.

I've been pushing back on Cheum being the voice of the audience or the only character who has it together for the entire time we've been watching this show [one of the places I've done this most explicitly was in my scene-by-scene breakdown of ep6]. Nothing in the actual show, to me, encourages us to see Cheum as the one who 'has it together'. She gets sloppy drunk out of the gate in ep1; she's rude, she's catty, she seems like a party girl. She's kind of mean about her girlfriend's films behind her back, she constantly insults Boston, Ray, and Mew in subtle ways, she supports Top as a "good candidate" for Mew even when we all in the audience know that he's a player, and even after she knows he betrayed Mew's trust (we can debate over whether it was "cheating", this is how Mew saw it and how Top knew he would see it); she says she's tried to help Ray in the past but we only see her enable Ray's alcoholism--in other words, I have been baffled this entire time why anyone would see her character as the voice we're supposed to trust as a reliable narrator or moral voice of the show, when the audience has enough information to know she's very often wrong. I said after episode 10, in which Cheum accused Boston of assaulting her brother despite her knowledge of Boston's character and the fact that the photos did not support Atom's story, and with the audience knowing she's in the wrong, that I was so thankful this would have to be the nail in the coffin of the theory that Cheum is supposed to be the "voice of the audience" or the "correct" one in the show, and I am aghast that this still seems not to be the case.

In my post about Cheum after ep 10, I said:

When Cheum realizes that Atom lied, though, if she just shrugs it off the way she did Top sleeping with Boston or Ray bringing drugs to the hostel...my rage will be fierce. Part of unconditional belief is holding your sibling to account if they abuse that trust.

But of course I wrote that because I suspected she would, because that's how her character's been to date. So my own previous post is evidence that Cheum has actually been legibly and predictably written, at least to an extent.

And while I like @my-rose-tinted-glasses' theory that maybe folks are being influenced by their memory of the trailer (in their post linked above), I also suspect that a lot of that comes from the audience bringing their sexism to their viewing experience, and assuming that a female character has to be The Voice of Morality if they are not an Evil Seductress, and cannot simply be as messy and nuanced as the other characters. And also maybe from the assumption that SOMEone in this show must be right, when I think that's a faulty assumption to make.

To be fair to the audience, a lot of what's going on with her is subtle, because the show to date has not often explicitly called her out on her bullshit. I remember being so happy to get the confirmation that she knew Ray was in love with Mew this whole time (during the big blow-up at Yolo bar) for example, because it confirmed what I had thought: that she was not oblivious, she intentionally was not acknowledging the tension between them in order to keep harmony within the group. But I would not necessarily expect everyone watching to put that together, especially not as a reveal in the middle of that dramatic scene where so much else was going on.

Cheum is, like @wen-kexing-apologist said in the fantastic post about hypocrisy, just as young as her friends, and just as flawed. She's a bit of a nag, a bit of a party girl, a bit of a people-pleaser, and a bit of a selfish 20something. But so many viewers are refusing to see her that way, and I don't think that's all on the show. And none of this makes me hate her. She's actually the character I relate to most (I know I said I'd be mad at her for not holding Atom to account, and I am, but I don't hate her for it).

Knowing to pay more attention to the rudeness of her language has helped me with this too, because I was looking for a lovable personality trait, and I think @ctl-yuejie's point (linked above) is a great theory as to what's missing for the English-speaking audience. The difference between an asshole character I hate and an asshole character I love is often (a) intention and (b) eschewing social/societal expectations (as opposed to being an asshole in order to meet societal expectations). I don't think we are given enough about Cheum to tell much of the former (though she says she cares, and I do believe her to some extent, I just think she's also blind to how selfish she often is); but knowing she has been doing the latter helps me connect with her in ways I may have been struggling to before.

That being said, as I hinted at above, I do still agree with a lot of what folks have been saying, in that I think she has been under-written, because what I don't have for Cheum (in the same way that I don't have this for Top) is any sense of what motivates her, whether she really does love her girlfriend or she's just riding out the relationship she's in, how much work she's actually doing at the hostel (we see her work the party, but otherwise it's just implied that she's the one doing all the work on the ground, but we never get to see it and in a show full of unreliable narrators, it's hard to know what's true); and how much she really cares about these friends of hers, since most of what we see is her saying she's a good friend but not actually doing things that a good friend would do (or doing things a good friend would not do, like inviting the ex you're still mad at to the party, or yelling at her friend as he's being arrested, or listening to his explanation after he's been accused of a crime). We don't even really know why she wanted the hostel project to be a thing to begin with, or why she cares enough to keep working on it.

I'd like to give the show the benefit of the doubt and say that could be intentional; Cheum is a bit of a fringe member of the group; she doesn't hang out with them with her girlfriend that often, so she's not always around, and she's clearly not best friends with any of the three others. She's who people go to in order to vent and decompress after something happens, and so most of the time we see her, she's helping someone else process their emotions, usually with an eye to reconciliation--though again, the advice she gives is often not good lol. She gets the most mad when someone does something that disrupts the harmony of the group, which is one of the reasons why I read her as the peacekeeper in the group, or the "link" as her name means in Thai I think, that holds them together. Ironically it's her who severs the group in the way that's most permanent to date, by kicking Boston out of the project. But if this is what they were doing with her character, keeping her as the solder rather than a member of the chain (apologies for this belaboured metaphor), I don't know that it was successful; as always gotta wait to the end to be sure.

In the final episode, I would love to get a peek into the core of who Cheum is, or alternatively, Cheum herself saying she feels lost and unsure of who she is. I would also love for someone to point out Cheum's bullshit to her face so that more people understand that what she says is not the moral backbone of the show, though I'm trying to let go of that part of me that wants everyone to get it with this show because I know that's just not possible (and thanks to all of the excellent previous conversations we've had around that). It would be an exciting reversal, and very in character, if Cheum makes Atom's lie and her subsequent banishment of Boston all about her, and then someone calls her on that, for example. And I'd also like more Cheum and April together on screen because they are very aesthetically pleasing and I am a simple creature.

Also just to say, I am hesitant to chalk up Cheum's character having gaps as a 'men writing women' situation because Yo is given the grace to be a full character in fewer scenes than Cheum; also Top as a character suffers from the same problem. So I think this is uneven writing, rather than sexist writing. But I'm open to debating it (and it's not something that we'll ever necessarily know for sure).

#only friends the series #only friends meta #only friends #ofts meta #ofts #long post #I feel like I know who Cheum is because I relate to her #but how much of that is what I'm bringing to the show vs what the show is actually offering? #this is the same question I had about Top #and the fact that I'm not certain about either of them is I think evidence that the writing is lacking for these two characters

[theodysseyofhomer]

this is not to single anyone out, but i have a lot of new followers, and i would just love for you all to know... the search function on my blog is operational. if you search for epic the musical, you will find that i have dabbled in it. it is slightly annoying to be asked over and over whether i've heard of it, even by lovely, enthusiastic, friendly people.

i have another reason for not answering those questions, which is that when someone is being enthusiastic and friendly to me, i don't want to be mean to them. but if i'm going to speak from my heart as an odyssey lover, i don't think epic the musical is that good. it doesn't especially interest me as a standalone piece, but i also don't find it provides much insight on, or compelling points of comparison with, homer's odyssey. i'm glad you're all having a good time! please stop asking me about it.

bullet point review below the cut, for those who are more curious about my opinions.

things i like about epic:

astyanax's murder doesn't get brought up a lot in stories that are sympathetic to odysseus. it's optional when adapting the odyssey or the iliad, but i am definitely of the opinion that odysseus did it, and even if he didn't, he convinced the other greek leaders that it needed to be done.

the athena/odysseus duets.

i found the reframing of polyphemus' blinding compelling, where he's doing the same thing he does in the odyssey for a different reason. i also liked that the audience doesn't learn his name until he reveals it to polyphemus. that's a neat touch.

earwormy as hell.

the fanart! i saw odysseus fanart maybe 3 times a year before the troy saga dropped. i'll take that trade (for my sanity when i try to navigate the tags).

jorge seems to be invested in odysseus/penelope, which is like the bare minimum to hold my attention, but still.

anyhow jorge seems charming; all his videos and interactions with fans seem nothing but excited about what everyone can contribute. commissioning wolfy to animate a trailer? widely regarded as a great move.

things i don't like about epic:

as gutsy as i think it is to start with astyanax's murder, the main thing to me is not whether his hands physically threw the baby, but whether he is in some way responsible for it. more than that, astyanax's death isn't divinely mandated: it's a ruthlessly pragmatic preemptive strike against vengeance that the greek leaders are afraid of. it's 100% human. so framing it around zeus, known troy stan, forcing odysseus to do it and he feels so so bad about it ????????

baffling to me to start with a moral conflict about infanticide, and after committing it, odysseus is still like... maybe kindness is brave? maybe i'm not a ruthless person? please be serious. you murdered that baby.

(been talking to @littlesparklight about this but you could have started out with some version of sophocles' ajax, a death caused by the gods that odysseus actually is complicit in when he didn't necessarily want it to happen. i digress.)

don't like the way the fandom talks about astyanax, specifically, as if odysseus raising a kidnapped trojan boy whose people were destroyed and whose mother was sold into slavery in another land is ever going to be a fluffy au and meanwhile odysseus did very much murder that baby, so!

the songs are not... good. like i said, they're earwormy, but that's also because they're repetitive and predictable. the lyrics are distractingly bad at times, not only from a character perspective, but in the sense of using words wrongly or awkwardly to try to fit them into a rhyme scheme.

i like the reframing of the polyphemus episode. not so much the aeolus one. at that point, you have odysseus doing the opposite of what he did in the odyssey for opposite reasons, which makes him a character bearing no resemblance to odysseus at all.

and this happens while other characters (mostly gods) try to drag him kicking and screaming into his actual homeric characterization.

like, odysseus is haunted by the war in the odyssey, but not because he regrets what he's done as a moral injury. he chose violence on purpose. the gods did not force him to be this person. it's a narrative throughline that serves only as a bid to make odysseus more sympathetic.

... and in doing so, strips away his agency — in sacking a city, in lying and obscuring the truth with his crew (his lies are more than a quirk that endears him to athena, they have consequences!) — some might say his personality. i do have sympathy for odysseus, even at his worst moments morally, because i find his character as a whole compelling. you don't need to try to absolve him of these things! they tell you about what kind of person he is! they are evocative (and provocative) already! take them away and he is boring, because he is not choosing to do anything.

the new wave of odysseus fans seem unable to handle homeric odysseus' complicated aspects and character traits, and to a degree i blame this on the musical characterization. it's allowed to be its own thing, certainly, but now i regularly get people arguing about whether he's a good person when all they know is something epic made up and that was never the fucking point, anyway.

are we really going to pretend he didn't have sex with circe and calypso at all

#anna.txt #a tag for bitching

[citruscarnival]

Mini rant abt the misuse of a popular phrase in writing:

One of my pet peeves in writing is when someone uses "all but" wrong

Now I'm not a professional but hear me out

Here's an example of proper use:

"He was so excited he all but screamed at the top of his lungs" or "he all but fucking exploded"

This means he expressed his excitement in such a noticeable way he did so many things to show it, all but the greatest extreme of expressing that excitement: screaming or exploding

Maybe he was shaking from excitement, maybe jumped and clapped his hands, cheered or something but he obviously didn't explode

"All but" means they were very extreme in whatever they did, but in a feasible way. "All but" uses an actual extreme and unlikely action/reaction as a comparison to give the audience an idea of a more predictable yet still heightened reaction.

It's like saying "he might as well have two horns and a tail, he was so evil" "he might as well shit rainbows and flowers, the guy is a saint" "he might as well have exploded from how excited he was."

It's more powerful than saying "he was shaking from excitement" because it lets the audience sense just how excited you'd have to be to contain yourself from screaming or, of course, to nearly fucking explode

But people use it wrong so often!

"He all but gasps"

Am I supposed to believe he held back the gasp? That he just stood there while surprised? Cuz that's fine but it's not the intended use of the phrase

"He might as well have gasped." Okay? Why didn't he?

Gasping in shock is not exactly an INSANE thing to do, it's just a gasp. There's no reason to give the audience a sense that he's holding back. If not gasping what *is* he doing? There's not much to do when you're saying your character did everything but gasp

There is nothing that comes before gasping in intensity other than, like, watching vaguely or going "hm."

It grinds my gears to see it misused because it's such a cool way to get audiences to engage with your writing and imagine for themselves the heightened emotions of your characters or add humor and levity to a subject! Using it wrong can just muddle your writing instead of enhancing it!

Let's stop "He all but chuckled" and other mild reactions that don't add to the use of the phrase and may leave the audience confused as to what your character expressed at all

How about "He all but crawled into a hole and died from the shame" "they all but raised pitchforks and organized a mob" enhance! It's a creative and exaggerative phrase! Enhance!!!

#creative writing #writing #writing tips #writing tag #writing problems #writing prompt #writing pet peeves #pet peeve #writers on tumblr #writeblr #writerscommunity

[arom-antix]

Yuri!!! On Cards collaboration!

So, I know I've been pretty inactive recently, at least in posting my own art but for good reason! In the Yuri on the Web Discord server artists and writers alike have all collaborated to illustrate a deck of cards and write stories for each of them. And as a resident artist myself, I couldn't not take the opportunity to draw for this project UuU

Oh and if anyone was wondering, yes, I am to blame for inflicting this giant project onto the server BUT I REGRET NOTHING AND NEITHER WILL YOU IF YOU CHECK OUT EVERYONE ELSE'S WORKS. Trust me, they are amazing! The masterpost can be found here!

GIANT thanks to @lines-on-ice and @yaoiconnoisseur for helping so much and being amazing co-administrators and basically making this entire thing possible! You really saved me from my own overambition XD

The guidelines for this project can be found on the Yuri!!! On Cards blog as can the masterpost with all the links to everything. All the art that gets posted to Tumblr will also be reblogged by the blog.

With all that said, here's the actual art I made! (Break for those who don't want their dash to die UuU)

Okay, I lied. First, I'd heavily recommend for you to check out the guideline posts, both the general and artists' and even the writers' if you're up to it to get a grasp of the perimeters of this project. There's also some vague lore and AU stuff about the whole thing to find which will give you context for why the art looks the way it does to a certain extent.

You can also just jump right in and take everything as I ramble about it which, I mean, I won't stop you, the guideline posts aren't short. I will not blame you. You can still just look at the art. If that's your choice, go on ahead!

First up!

Ace of the Kingdom Otabek, The Deep Shadow

Being of the Kingdom of Diamonds, he's skillful and sharp. He moves quietly as a shadow and is just as mysterious.

Okay, I can't comment much on how he actually is, you'll have find that out by reading his fic(let?). They were supposed to be ficlets but as writers tend to do, none of us could manage that so take "ficlet" with a big grain of salt for every written work.

I've, by the way, not read any of the ficlets for this project beside my own so I'll get to experience the reveal with y'all and I'm gonna perish waiting.

Anyway, about the art. The yellow of course comes from the Kingdom of Diamonds' designated colour. As for the outfit, it's based on this handsome fellow I found who's supposed to be a Kazakh archer which I thought fit Otabek's whole shadow thing perfectly (and Writingfromtheshadow's fic Equivalent Exchange has me in an iron grip and I don't want to be released).

If there are any Kazakhs in the audience, you are free to laugh at me for any inaccuracies or missteps, I am but a humble little not-Kazakh, I don't expect to have gotten it all right UuU

Next up!

King Yuuri, Wanderer of Dreams

The ruler of his realm, he is as the mind flows. Kind and benevolent yet of fickle thoughts, the spirals of the subconscious are ones he both masters and bows to.

Again, gonna be waiting for his fic with everyone else but like. It's Yuuri. Anxiety is kind of a given.

In terms of art, I don't know if you can tell but this was where I started writing my will because oh my stars, what did I get myself into. If you follow me or my art, you'll know that I don't draw lineless. Like ever. And apparently I decided this project on a deadline that others were depending on me making look nice was the place to go all out.

And the worst part is that I'm not even mad at it so I have no argument to not do it again.

Anyway, the blue is from the designated colour of spades and yes, you've guessed right as to why this colour was picked for this suit. I'm predictable, leave me alone. As for the rest, the outfit is inspired by traditional Japanese dress that the Internet told me about (again, Japanese may laugh at me all they want UuU Your culture is very cool but also there was so much info, I hope I got it at least a bit right).

Also I spent like eight hours looking at hanakotoba for this and I've never been this happy about a decision I regretted so much while I was having to draw that many flowers. And you know I had to include The Gay Flower^(TM).

The Japanese iris is now Yuuri's btw.

All the flowers used are: Japanese irises, Jasmine flowers, Forget-me-nots, cherry blossoms, white roses, green carnations and blue roses (Viktor's flower. Read: I am predictable).

And finally!

Queen Minako, Tamer of Minds

Of the Realm of Dreams, she sees your fears, the snares laid by the subconscious and, strict and blunt as she is, she clears a path for the motivated and lets no potential go to waste.

Again, haven't read a word of the fic.

This one was by far the one that I made the fastest and I would've loved to do more with it but like deadlines. I'm gracefully skipping over the fact that I set the deadline and am fully to blame for being late.

But, as with Yuuri, blue is for spades. And since I wanted her to have a leotard but still match Yuuri and make her outfit look even slightly Japanese inspired, sheer fabric to the rescue! With cherry blossoms, of course, because CSP had the pattern preinstalled UuU

And I don't know if it worked but I tried to make her hair both look like her signature style, traditional Japanese hairstyles I found on the good ol' Interwebs and then kind of a spade by having that middle stick be the stem and the hair the spade's butt.

Also this probably goes without saying but the ranks of the characters are just titles. Yuuri is not married to Minako, she is just the Queen and he the King, don't worry.

Again, a BIG thank you to everyone who also participated, it was so fun to work together on this and see everyone's progress! Nic and Lil, you're amazing, thank you so much for everything you've done for this!

And to everyone who's made it this far, thank you for sticking around and please go check out all the other art and the ficlets! I promise it's worth it!

Masterpost | AO3 collection

#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA this project almost killed me #i am so infinitely happy about everyones contributions they are so lovely and i am gonna die happy now #but seriously what idiot decided to try a new and more detailed rendering style on a deadline #its me #i am that idiot and if i had a time machine past me would have gotten the fattest slap #idk if im ever gonna do that again but if i know myself at all itll happen because this wasnt disastrous enough a result to dissuade me #and most of it im pretty happy with #also i had so much fun with otabek #i got to play with light and texture and light and those smoke tendrils in the back and light and that fabric and light and #also rendering minako was a BLAST even if i churned her out on severe sleep deprivation my only energy being spite for my own mortality #oh and yes it was a this we decided that the aces should somehow incorporate the king of the given suit so the anger kitten is there #in otabeks i mean #now ON TO ANOTHER PROJECT #THATS... ON A DEADLINE #UH #yuri on cards #yuri on ice #yoi #yuri on ice fanart #yoi fanart #fanart #art #arom antix art #arom antix #otabek altin #katsuki yuuri #okukawa minako #collab

[roseaesynstylae]

Star Wars: Republic Commando: Hard Contact, Chapter 2

"Clone personnel have free will, even if they do follow orders. If they couldn't think for themselves, we'd be better off with droids -- and they're a lot cheaper, too. They have to be able to respond to situations we can't imagine. Will that change them in ways we can't predict? Perhaps. But they have to be mentally equipped to win wars. Now thaw these men out. They have a job to do.

-- Jedi Master Arligan Zey, intelligence officer"

I'm going to add any of these...I'm not sure what these extracts at the beginning of the chapters are properly called, but I'll add them whenever they're interesting.

Zey's comment about the clones reminds me of the line from Andor. "We're cheaper than droids, and easier to replace." The difference here is that while clones are more expensive and harder to replace than droids, they're superior.

And yes, Master Zey, it did change them in unexpected ways.

"It didn't feel so bad to be revived after stasis. He was still a commando. They hadn't reconditioned. That meant -- that meant he'd performed to expected standards at Geonosis. He'd done well. He felt positive."

The implication that "under-performing" clones are brainwashed, at best, is one of the Traviss's additions that I genuinely like, emphasizing the cold detachment of the Kaminoans before they become prominent in the series. It's also just a terrifying idea.

"Darman was careful not to stare -- even though any eye movement was disguised by his helmet -- because Jedi knew things without having to see. His instructors had told him so. Jedi were omniscient, omnipotent, and to be obeyed at all times."

And here we see the official beginning of the Jedi-Bashing count. It's subtler here, but it keeps popping up in ways that are unmistakable in the context of the series' attitude toward the Jedi Order. In multiple cases, such as this one, lines that wouldn't make me bat an eye in a different book, (or more accurately, a different author), but make me grit my teeth here.

The way this specific paragraph is written is very similar to how I'd write a passage from the POV of a character who thinks the antagonist is a good person, or is brainwashed, but I want to make it clear what's really going on. Only in this case, it isn't portraying, say, a Sith cult, but the Jedi Order, which is devoted to helping others, enforcing justice, and studying the Force.

Jedi-Bashing: 1

"'This is your unit of four, then? A squad?' He seemed to be recalling a hurried lesson. 'Almost like a family?'"

This might be a stretch, but I'm not cutting this series an iota of slack when it comes to the Jedi Order. The implication here seems to be "Oh look, the Jedi have no idea what a family is! It's so unnatural and wrong, not like the good, wholesome Mandalorians!" Am I being petty? Maybe. Does Kal Skirata ranting about baby-stealers get really fucking old really fucking fast? Definitely.

Jedi-Bashing: 2

"'My squad called me Atin," the wounded commando said.

Niner glanced at Fi but said nothing. Atin was Mandalorian for 'stubborn.'"

Okay, this bit is just funny.

"Darman -- a soldier able to withstand every privation in the field, and whose greatest fear was to whither from age rather than die in combat -- felt inexplicably uncomfortable at the idea of a Jedi having failings."

Jedi-Bashing: 3

"Etain was neither a natural warrior nor a great charmer, but she was aware of her talent for spotting opportunities. It made up for a lot."

In this book, at least, I really like Etain. She's a good audience surrogate and her headspace is easier to get into than the other three narrators.

Jedi-Bashing: 3

Di'kut Count: 1

Main Post

#star wars #star wars: republic commando #star wars republic commando #repcomm #republic commando #fi skirata #darman skirata #niner skirata #atin skirata #etain tur mukan #arligan zey #bardan jusik #omega squad #pro jedi #karen traviss critical

[miscriont]

Okay I've thought about this as long as I can stand and--am I the only person who thought this was *awkward*?

I've been chewing on it, reading about other people's reactions, studying frame by frame the movements of Aziraphale's hands and like. I *see* it, I see how y'all get to the "brief moment of reciprocation" conclusion, but.

It is AWKWARD. It is one of the most awkward onscreen kisses I have ever seen.

Why is that??

The characters have chemistry. The narrative has established their relationship. The actors have chemistry; each of them has a proven track record of standout performances. And it's not as though either of them is new at this. So why, with all that on the table, does this look like amateur hour?

I got curious about it, and my hypothesis is this: they're reading from different playbooks.

"Saw it in a Richard Curtis film".

It feels like a throwaway line, something to wink-nudge a laugh out of the audience. There's a bit of confusion immediately afterwards regarding Jane Austen, Prolific Novelist and Jane Austen, Jewel Thief and Crime Lord, and isn't that funny haha look at the clueless celestial beings but almost NOTHING in this show has been just filler, or meaningless.

So who was Richard Curtis and why is he the model for Crowley's attempts at matchmaking? Turns out Richard Curtis directed some of the more iconic romcoms of the 90s and 2000s. I'm talking Notting Hill ("I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her", remember that one?); I'm talking Love Actually; I'm talking Bridget Jones Diary--which, funnily enough, is at the very least inspired by Pride & Prejudice. Sappy monologues and kissing in the rain is this guy's bread & butter.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, wants to try the Austen-esque approach of having balls. There were fairly rigid rules to courtship back in Austen's day. Rules that HAD to be followed, in the right order, or else face social ruin. Austen made her career out of poking fun at those even as her characters worked within them. Point is, you only get to kiss at the end, and one of you better be wearing a wedding dress.

I may be stating the obvious but I haven't seen anyone else talking about it so: one layer to Crowley's and Aziraphale's brainstorming session on how to get Nina and Maggie together is also their way of subtly indicating what they themselves find romantic, and would want someone else to do for them to demonstrate their interest. For Aziraphale it's dancing and atmospheric lighting and having everything just so and *conversations that clear up everything*. For Crowley it's tearful speeches and getting the chance to tell the truth while streetlights glitter through pouring rain, where the protagonists seem to be pulled into a showstopping kiss almost as of by magnetism alone. There's a formula to each of the kinds of romantic storytelling that inspires their different matchmaking styles.

For Aziraphale, The Kiss (because you know this bitch(affectionate) would use the Capital Letters for Emphasis And/Or Significance) skips several steps in the courtship dance he thinks they've been doing. From Crowley's Perspective, Aziraphale is three acts, two scenes behind from where *he* thinks they are. Their kiss looks awkward because they are desynchronized, out of step with each other.

In other words, and in many more ways than just the one, they are not on the same page.

But you know who these two numpties have in common?

William Fucking Shakespeare. My outlandishly speculative prediction for season 3 is their reconciliation will have something to do with Shakespeare's comedic works. The perfect turnabout would be modeling it on Much Ado, with Nina and Maggie playing the bits of Hero and Claudio in fabricating evidence to get them back together: Crowley and Aziraphale messed about with their lives, it's only fair they should get to dish it out.

#personal #writing #film #good omens #good omens 2 #WE'RE GETTING SEASON 3!!! #not just a modern author aticking 2 paper dolls in romantic situations #I've been chewing on these thoughts like cud and haven't gotten any further than #“crowley thinks they're in a rom com and aziraphale thinks they're in a regency novel” #as in work written during or at least contemporary to the regency period #i leave them with you gentlw readers

[humunanunga]

Project: Eden’s Garden prologue just dropped and here’s my thoughts on the cast so far 👀

Damon: Oh, so we finally get to play as a tool. Just a total trashman. It’s almost like if we went into the first Danganronpa playing as Byakuya LMAO. Can’t wait to watch his guy slowly figure out he was being a gatekeeping prick just to feel self-important and not have to think about having an identity apart from his talent.

Eva: I love her. I already liked her design when the voice cast was announced, which I also really like, and now I’m really looking forward to how her arc pans out. I like how a lot of her dialogue consists of questions/guesses, directives, or observations you wouldn’t need to take her word for. I also like that, assuming it’s true-- and so far, I’m willing to bet it is-- that, while hesitant, she was honest about being the Ultimate Liar. Imagine how that’d blow up in her face later if she tried lying about what kind of Ultimate she was. She knows it’s a lot to ask for with her talent, but she definitely acts like she wants to be trusted. I already said this in Youtube comments, but the contrast against Kokichi really makes a point for why she’s the Ultimate Liar: a good liar knows when not to lie. For one, a bad liar tells lies they can’t get away with, and for another, if your reputation precedes you, all it takes to deceive everyone is to tell the truth and let their suspicion do all the work.

Grace: Uncalled for, but Damon kinda earns it later.

Wolfgang: A polite boy. A lad, even. Save for how riled up that “demo” got him. Wondering whether he’ll be Damon’s Kaito or his Kokichi... Right now, it seems like Damon’s set himself up to be Wolfgang’s Kokichi. Yikes.

Toshiko: We haven’t seen her mouth yet... curious. Could mean nothing... but if this fangame also includes a plant among the killing game participants, she’s my first guess. Danganronpa loves red herrings, so I don’t think it’d be Eva, but Toshiko? Her color scheme would also fit, everyone woke up in pairs, and a lot of those pairs seem to work well together or at least balance each other out.

Eloise: Hello, so you have red eyes, huh? Is there something you’re not telling us? What was that about analyzing your opponent and predicting their next move, almost like you would in chess? Sorry, you seem very sweet, I just know how these games go.

Desmond: Oh no, you’re gonna get a lotta heat for your talent later, aren’t’cha. I am so sorry, you seem like a real chill dude.

Jean: idk, guys, he's jacked and reliable, and beefcakes with integrity tend to strike out on the fourth case in this series...

Ulysses: Another design I loved from the get-go. I get the impression his habit of note-keeping could be important later... I’m rooting for his survival, but that journal could easily be evidence later.

Ingrid: We love a beefsteak.

Kai: I could see the Ultimate Influencer being a traitor or mastermind and using their talent to gather an audience for their killing game, cuz the games are always streamed and he has a lot more black and white in his outfit than Cassidy, but I... kinda doubt it’ll be him unless they’re all revealed to play roles as the mastermind.

Diana: tbh I’m really hoping she’ll be one of the killers. There’s a lot of potential for a makeup artist to cover their crime, like concealing or faking injuries. They did say she’s done makeup for cinema, I’m just saying. I’m just saying! At the very least, even if she’s cleared, I really hope she’ll be a suspect.

Jett: Don’t know what I expected, but I’m loving his energy. He is doing his best.

Mark: What was with that leer on the train? Did he recognize Damon?

Cassidy: Ohhh boy, are she and Wenona gonna duke it out at some point?

Wenona: Damon... my guy... I woulda thought you’d get along with her. You are a certifiable hypocrite if you’re gonna judge her for being an Ultimate elitist.

Cara: Oh, this wasn’t Eden’s first killing game, was it. I’m surprised none of them pointed out after the practice trial how Cara was an Ultimate too... Wolfgang was right. Asking why would’ve been just as important as asking how. We’re gonna circle back to this case later, aren’t we-- hold on... was... was the point of doing this... did... could Cara’s killer have won a class trial?

Tozu: Did... did he sound like Dr. Frank-N-Furter to anyone else or is that just me? Great voice either way, interesting that it looks like he’s wearing a grey body suit under that coat that'd make him look more like an unnamed Danganronpa culprit. Interesting.

Mara: idk, she yoked tho.

#project: eden's garden #project eden's garden #fanganronpa #danganronpa #tldr #etc