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orkbutch · 7 months

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Okay! time to add my accompanying essays with each image from this set of work about why I assigned which types of play to each set of characters, and how Baldur's Gate III supports these in the text of the game. Because I thought about all of this way too much im not joking

First, Context: All of these are drawings of consentual play happening between these characters after they have put aside any active conflicts between each other. Nontheless, they utilise the dynamics and emotional conflicts of these characters. Each of these characters are in some way violent people, deeply stressed out by their circumstances, and craving pleasure and connection. Sometimes you need a little pinch and squeal before the end of the world just to get through the night, you know?

Wrestling & choking; Lae'zel (D) / Karlach (S)

I'll be honest, figuring out how Karlach and Lae'zel's dynamic would manifest was difficult for me at first. This piece came into existence primarily to balance the other pieces; it had to be the two of them with Lae'zel domming and Karlach subbing. But those restraints ended up guiding me to something I possibly may not have considered and have ended up really, really liking! Lae'zel immediately likes and respects Karlach because she is powerful, hardy, direct and honest. She tells Tav to show Karlach due respect the night she joins you. I think everyone loves Karlach because shes Karlach, but that is an unprecedented level of immediate respect from Lae'zel. I reckon one of the first things Lae'zel thought when getting to know Karlach was how fun it'd be to spar her, to test her strength. Not even sexually - just as bonding or morning exercise before taking on the day. And I know she'd want ideally to win, because she always wants to win, even if she'd be horny about losing.

Karlach seems to respect Lae'zel just as much for similar reasons; direct, honest, committed to her principles, and a beast on the battlefield. I think she'd feel a lot of empathy for Lae'zel's alienation from the world around her. She spent 10 years in Hell and is only now finally coming home, and she'd see in Lae'zel the opposite; someone flung out into space, braving a terrifying fate with nothing grounding or reassuring her. I think she'd be invested in welcoming Lae'zel into fun, casual friendship without being patronizing.

If these two powerhouses spent enough time wrestling each other or watching each other drill or whatever... INEVITABLY... it'd turn horny. Lae'zel's no. 1 turn on seems to be respectable beefcakes, and Karlach would fucking love wrestling in a horny way. Lots of body contact, its playful, its a little competitive, you got some power struggle shit going on which I think Karlach would enjoy, and she gets to use her big muscles for fun!

Wrestling also has a layer that I think Karlach and Lae'zel would absolutely connect on, which I kinda wanna flesh out in some more work: a love for Primal dynamics.

Now, a little detour, because Primal can be embodied and understood differently by different people. For some people, Primal is all about the specific power dynamic Primal usually plays on: Hunter/Prey. This is a dynamic of power struggle, pursuit, conquering and claiming, all things I think Lae'zel would definitely love, and Karlach would also enjoy. Where I think Primal clicks more for Karlach is another element of how many people do Primal: As play that emphasizes liberated expression of emotion, and roleplays loss of control. Its The Berzerker's Kink, and The Werewolf's Kink, the restless adhd jock's kink. Just getting lost in struggling and contact and fucking and roughness, and expressing whatever emotion comes during that. Karlach and Lae'zel find really, really good partners in each other for this kind of play.

Lae'zel is tough as fuck, competitive as hell and kinda scary, so Karlach wouldn't need to worry that much about getting too rough with her. She'd get to truly go hard in the struggle for power. But, ultimately, I think Karlach would let Lae'zel win pretty frequently (and tbh I think Karlach would usually win wrestling Lae'zel just because of her size and reach) because Karlach would LOVE being pinned and held by a body. Its the most high contact, our bodies are all over each other fun, and I think she'd relish that after 10 years of denial. She gets to just enjoy the feeling of being held, spent and physically overwhelmed after some good fun rolling around in the dirt. It's a great time. Karlach is deeply admirable to Lae'zel from the moment she met her. I think Lae'zel kind of sees Karlach as this singular force of nature warrior peer. Lae'zel doesn't have preconceived notions of what a tiefling is, or what most Plane beings are. She doesn't see Karlach as someone whose been Changed from an original form by time in the Hells. She sees Karlach, and she sees a war-torn tower of long surviving muscle that pours out fire and kills baddies with terrifying power and efficacy, who is also bright red and a team player. And seriously, I think for Lae'zel this would have been a moment of like. "Holy shit, they make people like this here? Maybe this Plane isn't so bad. She is a dragon and I want a ride." And getting to wrestle away control and power and subdue that beast, to conquer this amazing peer you admire so much, would be ... SUCH a rush for Lae'zel. The ultimate power trip. To bring Karlach the unique pleasure of being physically immobalized and held and conquered in a way thats hot, satisfying and safe. Yes. They'd love it. In Conclusion: They'd fuck a bunch and get extremely exhausted and roughed up. Then they'd go sit in a pond that Karlach would set at a comfy spa heat with her body and give each other shoulder rubs and drink beer. And they'd be like, "Hey seriously, x move was really good. I did not see that coming. Your leg lock is stronger than it was last month. I totally overpowered you with that pin though, right? Oh it was a fluke huh? We'll see next time." Jocks having some good rough fun.

#bg3 #Karlach #Lae'zel #Laelach #??#idk what their ship name is #Nasties #art #kinkposting

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cartoonemotion · 5 months

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hiii. after watching class of 3000 what character interactions do u think would be most fun to explore. I almost typed explode

YAAAAY this is such a good question !!!!!! honestly as an ensemble cast i feel like class of 3000 overall balances itself and its cast interactions out pretty well (lil d, eddie, and philly phil maybe get some more extra centric episodes in my opinion though. granted it makes sense for lil d since there was an interview where andre said that the character was supposed to in some way kind of be based off him as a kid/his experiences in school)

ALL THAT TO BE SAID !!

pretty much tamika and anybody else. being fully transparent, this is bias cuz tamika is arguably one of my faves of the show and while she does actually get moments to shine i feel like shes just a liiiittle underutilized. when they start using her to set up gags about eddie being clearly infatuated with her instead of that being more of a consistent background detail it starts really negatively effecting the writing of both characters imo. she and madison have some charming bits and that episode where theyre paired up together but i would have also loved to see more of a dynamic between her and kim !! kim's very artistic and expressive and wants to be something of a trendsetter but is obviously (for very reasonable 12 year old reasons, i think) invested in still being apart of the "in" crowd and other people's perception of her, and i think that mirror's tamika's whole thing of being cool and tough but being afraid that that image might be compromised if she lets more of her softer side come through (her collecting dolls, baking cookies with her goofball dad, and actually really enjoying very mushy displays of affection for example) rather nicely ! plus their instruments (turn tables, misc percussive instruments and the harp) would go nicely together imo

I ALSO THINK tamkia and lil d would be fun to explore !!!!!! they kind of start off strong in the beginning of the first season but theres less of it as the show goes on which is a shame ! its funny to watch them squabble almost like siblings but its very clear that they still like and care about each other-- i mean in one episode where tamika goes to hang out with some other girls lil d laments that he misses her threatening him and when she shoves him he exclaims "we missed you tamika !!!" very earnestly !!! it would be nice to explore tamika's side of that yknow !!!

maybe the writers thought philly phil and madison were too similar since theyre both kind of eccentric goofballs to have them paired up more often but i think they could play off each other really nicely ! after all madison is supposed to be more of a ditzy but friendly hippie type and philly phil's mostly just socially inept and kind of clumsy, i think you could find a lot of comedy potential balancing that

i also think philly phil and kam could have gotten more screen time as a duo, seeing as they have the whole geek and nerd dichotomy going on. kam is more of a skeptic whereas philly phil seems to be more willing to believe in things like aliens and santa claus and unicorns even though hes a "man of science", i think it was a real missed opportunity to not have him and kam maybe get into friendly arguments about it or something, or maybe realize they have converging interests (like kam's belief/enthusiasm for bigfoot)

i like lil d and eddie's friendship ! it read to me like eddie was the closest to lil d out of everyone in the group, and i say that even without taking "eddie's money" into consideration (even though thats a great showcase i feel like as to what im talking about !) like everytime lil d needs to pay for something and hes just like "its whatever eddie's got it" eddie just does with very little to no complaint, idk !!! i just like em. plus i think they illustrate again some of the stuff andre was talking about in his goal of exploring the culture of atlanta and his own experiences there since lil d and eddie come from bankhead and buckhead respectively, and him (andre 3000 i mean) mentioning that he went to school on the other side of town with a whole bunch of ppl including the mayor's kids lol

i just love sunny's little individual mentor moments with the kids in general !!!!!! obviously he and lil d are big one and kind of the show's highlight for obvious reasons, but i also really love the one on one moments he gets with kim, which happen way more often than i initially expected !!! i would have loved to see him sort of guide and mentor again tamika a bit more too again to possibly help her reconcile both elements of her identity as both a no-nonsense butt-kicker and somebody with more "childish" or "girly" interests. and also him and philly phil, just because i think. it would be zany. and good for hijinks.

#THIS IS SO LONG OOPS !#class of 3000 moment #class of 3000

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five-rivers · 3 years

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Loved 8

Danny found himself without human senses or even a rough analogue of a human body. Even so, he still had an understanding of his surroundings, alien senses leaving impressions on his mind.

His body was soft, boneless, rounded, unformed. He was intimately connected to, part of, and entirely surrounded by an infinitely greater being, whom he was dependent on. He was known, all of him, by this being.

If he’d had eyes to cry with, he would have, knowing that he would never be able to know this being as he himself was known.

Amusement and affection – or, at least, things that were like them – pressed into him as the being contracted around him. An object was inserted into the single orifice he currently possessed.

Slowly, Danny became aware of an intense… discomfort in that area. He couldn’t call it pain. He currently had no sense of pain. But he could feel it and he didn’t like it and it was growing—

He woke up, tangled in blankets, skin slick with sweat, head and teeth aching.

Except, he didn’t. He was in the Dream. But if he were in the Dream, what had that been?

Already, many of the details were slipping through his fingers. He could no longer recapture what he had felt, although the general events were still somewhat clear.

He… had sleeping here somehow peeled back the layers of metaphor through which he experienced the Dream? Or had that just been a different metaphor, no truer than this one?

He sat up – or, rather, he tried to. An unexpected weight around neck stalled him. Overnight, the chain of Clockwork’s Love for him (and his Love for Clockwork in return) had more than doubled in size. It had also been reinforced by thick, colorful, silk ropes wound in and out of the links as well as other, smaller, chains.

There were also two of them, now, leading in opposite directions. As if Clockwork’s Love was simply too great to be confined to a single representation.

More carefully this time, Danny sat up. At least the collar, despite being far, far heavier, was no longer configured like a neck brace. Danny could turn his head to look at things.

The dog, evidently sensing an opportunity, deposited itself in Danny’s lap. Danny, not knowing what else to do, started petting it, running fingers through shadowy fur. He had always wanted a dog. Although, he didn’t remember telling Clockwork that…

“Maybe I should name you,” said Danny. He wasn’t sure how he felt about naming a personification of his hate, but he wasn’t sure if that’s what the dog was, or if the dog was just a container for his hate. It was confusing. “How about Cujo?”

The dog wagged its tail agreeably.

“Cujo it is, then.” He sighed and looked around the room. It didn’t have a door or any other visible opening. Honestly, in comparison to everything else he’d experienced in the Dream, that was pretty pedestrian. He supposed he’d just have to wait until Clockwork came back.

Maybe he could take a look at some of those interesting objects along the wall in the meantime? Something in his mind whispered that they were his and they were toys. They could take his mind off the pain building in his jaw and temples.

He stood up and walked almost all the way to the edge of the depression in the floor before being brought up short. He stumbled and sat down abruptly. What-?

The end of the chain was buried in the floor at the center of the depression.

Oh. Well. This whole room was part of Clockwork, too, so Danny really shouldn’t be surprised. It wasn’t like the chain hadn’t acted like a chain before.

Still.

Being forcibly trapped in, well, a crib was infantilizing. Not that everything else about all of this wasn’t. This just seemed like a step further.

The collar hummed lightly against Danny’s throat, eliciting a croon as he reflexively attempted to harmonize. The act settled him somewhat, and he gazed blankly at the runes surrounding the depression. The drop between the depression and the rest of the floor was too high for him to get over by himself anyway… no, that wasn’t right… couldn’t be… he couldn’t see the runes if that was the case, he’d be too short… but the lip there was definitely too tall, he knew it…

He tore his eyes away, squeezing them shut against his suddenly raging headache. The dog, Cujo, padded over to him and sniffed him gently. Danny whined, trying not to cry.

It looks like your horns might be growing in as well, said Clockwork’s avatar, running a hand through Danny’s hair. Poor baby. Teeth and horns all at once. That must hurt.

“Horns? Like Nocturne?”

Yes. They will help you navigate the other layers of the Dream once they are fully grown. With practice.

Danny let Clockwork’s avatar lift his head, resting his chin in its palm. “Layers of the Dream?”

You did not think the Dream was as simple in structure as that place you call reality, did you, little Love? This place you have become familiar with is only the closest layer to that place, no matter how deep you go.

“But—” said Danny, trying to work out how that could be. The answer slotted itself neatly into Danny’s mind. “It’s… like a tesseract?”

More than that, but essentially, yes. The avatar was gathering blankets around Danny again, swaddling him. Danny squeaked and tried to twist away, but the avatar easily anticipated him, and the fight quickly went out of him.

Danny was carried from the room and brought to a long table covered in bowls. The bowls contained pastel orbs of various sizes and colors. A single piece of furniture shaped like a basket woven of silver strips sat next to it. Clockwork’s avatar set him down gently on this piece of furniture and several of the strips peeled off to wrap securely around Danny.

Time for breakfast, said the avatar, happily.

Mentally and emotionally, it was easier to eat the orbs than the obviously alive things of his previous meal. Physically…

Danny asked why the orbs were so tough and difficult to chew. The avatar murmured something about practicing using his teeth. Danny wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse, so he was filled to satiation and beyond, until every piece of food on the table had been eaten.

By the time Clockwork’s avatar lifted him again, he felt exhausted and disgusting.

“Can I go home now?” he asked.

You are home.

“You know what I mean.”

It would be remiss of me to let you go when you are still in so much pain. Besides, sleep is necessary for children such as yourself to properly digest food.

“Don’t want to sleep,” said Danny, alarmed. He didn’t want to go back to the place he was before, where he could not see, hear, smell, taste, or touch.

That is not the only place you may go, said the avatar. In fact, it is rather unlikely for you to return there unless you do so on purpose. It touched the place where one of Danny’s horns would eventually bud. It was tender and Danny whined. Which is not something you can yet do. It paused. Perhaps I could guide you to a… cozy layer. One you might find educational. Would you like that?

“I wanna go home. I feel icky.”

I will set up a bath for you when you wake up.

Danny moaned and tried to tuck his face into the avatar’s shoulder. “Don’t want a bath.”

You do need one eventually.

“Don’t wanna.”

The avatar lowered Danny back into the nest of blankets.

Sleep well.

Danny woke up. This time in an actual crib. A mobile with star shapes hung overhead. He reached up with a chubby baby hand. A medical bracelet jingled around his wrist.

With some difficulty, his hands lacking dexterity, he turned the bracelet over. The writing there was incomprehensible and made him slightly dizzy. He huffed and rolled over before pushing himself up onto hands and knees.

The room he was in was dark, and far more defined than he was used to in the Dream. He could see picture frames on the walls and clocks. Every wall had at least one clock.

He grabbed the top of the crib railing and pulled himself up into a standing position. The rest of the room looked normal. Lived in.

The door opened, letting light in. A figure walked through the doorway and picked Danny up.

“You’re awake already! Ready for the day?”

“Clockwork?” squeaked Danny.

“Hmm, yes. But there’s something else you can call me here, hm?” The figure shifted, light falling on a feminine face and long hair.

“Mama?” tried Danny.

“There we go,” she said.

“Where are we?” asked Danny, lisping his words slightly. He wasn’t sure he had teeth right now. He put his hand in his mouth, feeling his gums. “’s different here.”

“Yes,” said Clockwork, walking out into a hallway. It was bright. There were clocks here, too, evenly spaced on the walls. Danny hid his face. “Oopsie daisy. Too bright, baby?”

“Mhm,” said Danny.

Clockwork balanced Danny on her hip and fiddled with a dimmer switch. The lights dimmed to a more comfortable level. “I’m sorry, baby. I keep forgetting about your eyes.”

“What about my eyes?”

“You’re photosensitive. That’s what the bracelet is for. You need low light.”

“Mama?”

“Hm?”

“What is this place?”

“Ah,” said Clockwork, putting him in a highchair. “A world within the Dream. Once,” she punctuated the word by clipping Danny into the seat, “it was much like the place you were first born. But we came to understand it completely and everything that thought or dreamed opened themselves to us. We engulfed it, brought it here. Now everyone is happy.”

Clockwork put a sippy cup on the little table on the highchair and then several pieces of cereal. Danny didn’t recognize the brand.

“Do I have to?”

“You need energy for today,” said Clockwork.

“But I just ate so much.”

“Not here. Come on, sweetheart. It’s just a little bit.” Clockwork sat down in one of the chairs at the dinning room table, brushing her hair over her shoulder. She smiled. “Isn’t this nice?”

Danny shrugged.

“I know you don’t care for the other part of the Dream, that you find it frightening, so… If you like this place, you can stay here. It’s just like the other place. The one you like. Would you like that?”

“My friends are there.”

“I can bring them here. It’ll be difficult, but very possible.”

Danny shook his head. Clockwork sighed.

“Well. Let’s just see how this day goes before you decide. Maybe you’ll like being here so much you’ll never want to leave at all. Give it a chance. Just for one day, okay?”

“Okay,” mumbled Danny.

“And that means eating your breakfast.” She ruffled Danny’s hair. “Okie-dokie?”

“’Kay.”

Clockwork smiled, eyes crinkling. “We’re going to have so much fun today, just see!”

#danny phantom #eldritch abomination au #loved #dannymay 2021 #dannymay 2021 day 23: cozy #dannymay

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1-800-imagine · 3 years

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autumn’s song

sero x reader

✎ genre: angst, pro hero au?

✎ warnings: angst, major and implied death

✎ word count: 2.5k

✎ inside scoop: this fic is inspired by autumn’s song by stephen day for more than obvious reasons, and i personally recommend you listen along as you read (you can click here for that). of course you don’t have to if you don’t want to -- whatever optimizes your reading experience.

on a separate note, i’ll probably get some more time to finish up some pieces this weekend that’s honestly debatable but we’ll see. so if you’d like, you can go ahead and request something.

✎ synopsis: fall had always been a tough time for sero, seeing that it had always reminded him of you.

the last thing sero ever wanted to do was get so hung up on the past -- it was the last thing you ever wished for him. though it’s tough when everything seems to bring back so many memories.

even the entire season of fall brought him back to times when you were around. afterall autumn was just filled with so many great memories of your relationship.

swinging through the awfully familiar city of musutafu, sero can feel the tears pooling at the corners of his eyes -- threatening to roll down his cheeks at any given minute.

the tape hero stops at the next post available. he lifts off his helmet in order to take in some of the fresh air. that cold, crisp atmosphere hits sero’s tear-stained cheeks, along with reels of unwanted memories.

he does his best to suppress those reminders of what once was -- at the very least keeping them tucked in the farthest part of his mind so that he can finish up his patrol.

“great,” he utters. just as sero thought he could escape his little swamp of thoughts, he realizes his surroundings -- far too familiar for his own comfort. he looks down, only to see your favorite, seasonal spot, surprised that it was still running its usual business after all this time.

right as the hero boarded up those old memories, the floodgates seem open right back up. this time hitting him harder than the bullet trains running all through japan.

sero felt the wind cascade through his long hair, tickling the back of his neck. he felt your hand in his own -- fingers intertwined. the sound of leaves crunching filled his ears with every step along this newer, unknown path.

your destination, to you, was a mystery -- a surprise actually. sero had always seemed to cross paths with this little cafe on his way to pick you up from your hero work. he was actually quite alarmed, when you said you hadn't heard of it since you passed by almost everyday.

well, sero gave you the benefit of the doubt considering it was a small place -- family-owned he assumed. a quaint little shop, lodged between two much taller, corporate buildings. in short: it was very easy to skip past the place.

when the two of you had stepped inside, you were greeted with a sense of shelter from the cold, bitter outside. that smell of sweet pastries filled your numbed noses. the space was a lot smaller than it appeared to be.

it was empty too, the only other people inside were an older couple, but they didn’t seem much older than the two of you.

the older man wore a mossy green cap, despite there being no sun needed to be shielded from. a narrow, grey streak weaved through the woman’s hair, contrasting its natural, dark tones. it was pretty, representing the wisdom she gained in her years of living.

“ah welcome,” a voice called out. it was the older woman’s voice -- smooth and sweet like honey. “what a lovely young couple,” she mentioned, “you two must’ve been dating for quite a while, yeah?” her question earned a rosy shade from sero’s cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears; and a nervous chuckle was all you could seem to muster up.

“you don’t have to answer her,” the older man, who was presumed to be the woman’s husband, interrupted. just by listening to the tone in his voice alone, sero could tell the man was clearly displeased with the woman’s antics.

the older woman gestured for the two of you to come inside. “we don’t get too many people coming by,” she spoke. “i think that’s obvious,” her husband interjected.

the wife gestured to you two to come in, she made the both of you feel very welcomed -- like a part of their little family. “we’re glad you chose to stay” the husband observed, “we’re the kokawa’s by the way.”

the lady maneuvered around the tables, claiming that the one directly in the center was the most perfect. she handed you two some paper menus as you sat down and got yourselves comfortable. “thank you kokawa-sama” sero thanked, scanning over some of his options.

“please, call me chiyoko,” the older woman requested, “and that is isamu.” she was very casual, inviting you to use both her and her husband’s first names. in return, you had offered your names to the couple, “i’m (y/n), and that’s hanta.” sero felt so giddy inside when you pronounced his name, like a little kid on the swing set. it was just that he always loved how his name rolled off your tongue.

chiyoko shared some of the couple’s favorite items with the two of you, “i recommend the yuzu honey, it can be served hot or cold,” she explained, “the hojicha is a favorite of isamu’s; though, i would only indulge after a big meal.”

your eyes seemed to have lit up at something chiyoko recommended, and sero knew exactly what it was. given the two of you had been dating for a year or so, he was able to read you like the back of his hand.

“i think the yuzu honey sounds great,” you ordered -- just as sero predicted, a silly, little smirk gracing his lips. he knew how much you loved that sweet, citrus tea rain or shine. “and what about you?” chiyoko had seemed to catch sero off guard. “i, uh, yuzu honey as well please,” he uttered.

“so the two yuzu honey? that’s all?” chiyoko affirms. you respond with a small nod.

the older woman takes the menus and walks to the back, leaving the two of you alone for a moment. “thank you hanta,” you expressed. “what for?” the male asks, hints of confusion littered in his voice. “this,” you answered, “we haven’t spent quality time like this in a while.”

there was a pause in your words, and you reached out for sero’s hand across the table. “i’m sorry,” you muttered. when you looked up, your boyfriend noticed the glassiness layered over top your eyes.

“don’t be,” he assures, “we’ve been really busy lately, you know, saving the city.” his signature proud, triangular smile lit up the room. “but i’m glad we can spend some time together every now and then,” sero adds, giving your hand a tight squeeze.

you found so much comfort in his words -- it was like he knew exactly what to say.

“ahem,” isamu grunted. he was holding a small tray with two cups of tea balanced on top. from the background you could hear chiyoko scolding her husband, “isamu, quit being so impatient. can’t you see they’re having such a sweet moment.” you watched as she discarded a lonesome tear.

isamu took the cups from the little tray and gently placed them on the table. “don’t worry about it,” sero assured, followed with a light-hearted chuckle; your lips shifted into a simple little smirk.

you took a small little sip of the tea from the cup, your expression perking up almost immediately -- like a small dog wagging their little tail. the steam from the cup warmed up your face as well. sero took a swig of his tea, and he tasted the bright flavors of the yuzu, which contrasted the duller shades of autumn.

“enjoy?” the older woman asked. your small, little smirk spread into a smile. “very much,” you responded.

while you continued to sip on your drinks, chiyoko even brought out albums of countless, old photos of the life her and isamu had shared. it was a life sero only wished he’d be able to share with you.

but things aren’t always so simple -- they always say all good things must come to an end, right?

it was the first day of fall following summer -- the weather was much cooler than the previous days. some people even claimed it to be an ominous sign. the wind threatened to pull trees from their roots, the fog made it difficult to see nearly five feet ahead.

but sero continued to fight the both wind and the fog. he rushed through the city, because he knew what was at stake. cellophane had been called onto the scene to support a mission gone awry -- your mission that had gone awry.

the closer sero got, the more he could see how disastrous the mission had gone. what was once a tall standing building, now turned to nothing but rubble. heroes from all over the board came to offer any sort of assistance.

though he could barely recognize them, but sero even saw some of his old high school classmates coming to the rescue.

he watched as the tentacle hero, tentacole, brought the leftover civilians to safety, being sure to shield them from any of ground zero and gale force’s uncontrollable blasts of power. uravity, sugar rush, and battle fist had been maneuvering larger masses in order to find anyone hidden in the debris, while alien queen melted away the concrete and steel.

even sero’s former teacher, eraserhead, worked with the underground hero, mind jack, to round up the last of the villains.

as soon as the tape hero swung onto the scene, he found the nearest person he could ask for help. he figured top hero creati was sure to know where you could be. “mo-creati,” cellophane announced, granting him the creation hero’s attention. “have you seen them?” he questioned.

the least she gave him was a shake of her head. “i’m sorry,” the creation hero began, “we don’t know of their whereabouts as of right now.” though she made it seem that she was composed under the frantic situation, creati was just as scared as cellophane.

from then sero did one of the most unprofessional, irrational things a hero could do and run straight into the chaos without any other instruction. it was against protocol -- it was against his own rules, but he was desperate to know if you were safe.

“cellophane!” another hero called out. it was red riot, a former classmate and a close friend. the bmi hero, fat gum, followed close behind.

sero gripped both of his red-haired pal’s sturdy shoulders. “please,” the hero’s voice began to grow desperate, “please tell me you’ve seen them.”

“no,” the red-head answered. sero began to drown himself in his own thoughts. where on earth could you be? were you even alright? you had to be. he thought. “but the last anyone has heard or seen from them was over that away,” red riot pointed out.

cellophane gave his buddy a simple nod as a sign of appreciation, before proceeding down the path he had pointed out.

as he continued in that direction, the tape hero stumbled across a body, which laid dormant and defeated in front of him. he recognized the definable features to be yours, eyes growing wide at the sight. despair washed over sero at his discovery.

‘no it isn’t,’ he thought, ‘it can’t possibly be them. is it?’ sero knew there was only one possible way to answer that question -- a question he wished he would never have to answer.

it was almost like his legs took root in the ground below, his knees pulled him to the ground like heavy rocks. sero felt himself sinking into the ground.

“(y/n)?” he whispered. the warmth of his arms contrasted that of the body held between them.

a silent bubble formed around the two of you, but all sero wished for was to hear your voice. he wanted that voice to tell him that everything would all be okay. that things would soon go back to normal -- though he knew they wouldn’t.

“hanta, say something. please,” you begged, your words filling that silence, “let me hear your voice once more.”

nothing. unlike the countless times before, sero didn’t know what to say. he simply just didn’t have the right words.

you had brought your hand up to hold onto sero’s cheek, and he felt the warmth begin to fade. “hanta,” you spoke out, barely even whispering. every breath containing less and less life in it.

“(y/n). . .” he whimpered, but it was too late. your hand dropped due to the lack of life in it. “(y/n)” he continued, “(y/n), please, (y/n)!” the tears finally began to fall, with no sign of stopping anytime soon.

“don’t leave me,” he pleaded, “don’t leave me without saying goodbye.”

there was no response.

“you promised,” the words echoed through the open space, “you promised.”

that day japan lost a strong hero, and sero lost an even stronger love.

just about two autumns have passed since your incident, and there isn’t a day that goes by where sero doesn’t think about how things might’ve been if you were still around.

he wonders if you would still have been the same person you were back then. he wonders what would have changed. what would have stayed the same?

but sero knows he can’t get so hung up on the what if’s, because they aren’t the reality -- a reality without you around anymore.

the wind hits the back of sero’s neck, and it brings him back to that first time he walked down this once familiar path. however, this time he can only wish that you were still by his side, accompanying him.

when the male stepps inside, he’s hit with that same warmth once more. just this time he can tell that something was the slightest bit off.

a voice calls out -- isamu, “long time no see.” a long time it indeed had been -- just about two years to be exact.

since the tragedy had struck, sero hadn’t come back to the little cafe; however, the male figured he’d stop by while he was already in the area. at least to say his hello’s to the couple if nothing else.

the older woman, chiyoko, emerges from the back room, a tray in her hands. her eyes grow wide, like she some sort of apparition stood in front of her. “welcome back,” chiyoko greets. a relieving smile shifts onto her face. it makes sero feel at home -- the most at home he’s felt in a little while. “please come sit,” isamu insists.

sero does as he’s told, walking toward the center of the cafe -- the best seat in the house. it reminds him of that first time he visited with you.

chiyoko comes by the table with a small cup in hand. “yuzu honey?” she offers, “it’s on the house.” sero gives the woman a simple little nod, taking the offering from her. as he sips on what once was your favorite beverage, he tastes that bright, citrus flavor. that flavor you had fallen in love with all that time ago.

“how’s (y/n) doing?” chiyoko questions. she was always a very curious woman and probably couldn’t help but ask. sero could hear isamu grunting from behind, attempting to signal to chiyoko that she may have overstepped her boundaries.

“it’s alright,” sero utters, “they-”

he can’t even give the older couple a proper answer. so instead, sero put on that signature, triangular smile -- like a mask, covering the deep, twisted despair inside. he took a deep inhale and lied.

“they’ve been doing well,” he wished.

#boku no hero academia #bhna #bhna imagines #bhna angst #bhna x reader #my hero academia #mha #mha imagines #mha angst #mha x reader #sero hanta #sero hanta x reader #sero x reader #sero angst

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sunshinereversed · 4 years

Text

𝙙𝙮𝙡𝙖𝙣’𝙨 “𝙛𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙡”: 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙮𝙨𝙞𝙨

I think it’s eerily prophetic how the song “Flowers on the Wall” (performed by the Statler Brothers) radiates so strongly with Dylan Klebold. The country tune has already been associated with Dylan because it appears in the background of the video where he and Nate are driving to school. But if you really listen to the lyrics and reflect on Dylan’s inner struggles, they coincide strangely well.

Let’s take the very first line of the song.

I keep hearin' you're concerned about my happiness.

The constant ‘Are you okay? Are you sure you’re okay? You seem so down lately’ from his parents, especially Sue, is reflected here. His mother sees that Dylan is ‘moody and irritable,’ often withdrawn, spending time hauled up in his room. She notices the tightness of his voice, which is unlike him, and she offers to make him French toast or an omelet. This must be about something small, she thinks. Yet his sullen demeanor stays as days turn to weeks, and she must ask again in vain, ‘Are you okay?’

But all that thought you're givin' me is conscience, I guess.

It doesn’t even cross Sue’s mind that her son may be unwell. She is simply asking out of concern for him looking unhappy, believing whatever it is will solve itself out. His mother wears her heart on her sleeve, and it pains her to see him so sad. But what can she do if he refuses to talk about it? All she can do is ask and wait for it to pass. He’s a good kid, after all. He’ll do the right thing because she’s worked hard to instill her morals into what he does.

If I were walkin' in your shoes, I wouldn't worry none.

Dylan reassures her repeatedly. ‘I’m only tired. I have a lot of homework. Nothing’s wrong. No one gives me a tough time, I’m 6’4”.’ He wishes she would leave him alone. He thinks she wouldn’t understand; she wouldn’t listen. He tells his parents not to worry. ‘You can trust me,’ he tells his mother one evening after the prom. Dylan goes out of his way to prove that he is the golden child. It works, and they worry none.

While you 'n' your friends are worried about me I'm havin' lots of fun.

Dylan’s social life serves as a mask for what is going on in his mind. He goes over to his friends’ houses, bowls on Friday nights, makes videos after school, plays catch with his dad, and even watches old movies with his mother. He has pictures of good times with friends. Outwardly, he is smiling; life is a dream. This makes his parents rethink their concerns. He’s a happy kid who does normal teenage things. What is there to worry about? He’s assuring those around him that he’s fine.

Now here comes the chorus, which is a bit tricky but makes sense when you consider these things:

Countin' flowers on the wall.

If anyone is familiar with the book The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this might be a clue. Like the protagonist in the book, Dylan is trapped in his four-walled cell (his bedroom) which is where he does most of his thinking and spiraling downwards. This is where he writes in his journal and vents his frustrations. It’s a toxic environment for his brain. His room is where he cries himself to sleep; hugs his pillow in loneliness; gets drunk by himself. Most importantly, it’s where he blurs fantasy and reality. While not as plainly mad as the poor woman from Gilman’s novel, Dylan is mentally tortured by what he perceives to be ‘an unfair/miserable existence’ and being ‘stuck in humanity.’ He rejects both, and often retreats into his fantasy where he is with his love and away from the world. The ‘flowers on the wall’ symbolizes his own deception of life when he is alone, and might not only symbolize his bedroom, but also his brain.

That don't bother me at all.

Unlike the real world, Dylan very much prefers to live in the fictional one he’s conjured within his mind. It’s his safe place. Paradoxically, his mind is also where he tears himself down and others around him. It’s a poisonous escape. Yet he is already so far gone in that escape, he can’t see the damage he is doing to himself. And he continues to do so, unbothered, and unaware.

Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one.

‘Playing solitaire’ could be a metaphor symbolizing his isolation and loneliness, his solitude. Solitaire is a single-player game, and Dylan feels alienated most of the time, especially when he is sulking in his room. Thinking, always thinking. Sometimes, as the line implies, until dawn. He is a night owl who cannot sleep because his mind is constantly awake. Playing music, conversing in chats on the computer, formulating poems in his notebooks, doodling, or just thinking (negatively). He oversleeps often because he is up late doing these things. He is alone, in the middle of the night, consumed by his own sadness. Something is missing inside him, and that is why he plays with ‘a deck of fifty-one.’ He thinks a significant other is the thing that is missing, and if he finds her, he will finally be playing with fifty-two cards, figuratively.

Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo.

For Dylan, this is a dichotomy. An everlasting contrast. The balance between two things, lightness, and darkness, good and evil, etc. He’s doing grown-up things like holding a job, applying to colleges, driving a car, and as the lyrics say, smoking cigarettes. Marlboro, preferably. At the same time, Dylan is caught between acting his age and longing for simpler days. This is where ‘watching Captain Kangaroo’ comes in. It’s a kid’s show and is intended for such an audience. Dylan thinks back with nostalgia for his childhood, when life wasn’t full of disappointments, stress, high school bullies, responsibility. He hangs onto items that remind him of his youth: his stuffed koala, origami, classic movies, his trademark baseball cap, his love for fixing old cars with his dad. Dylan is stuck somewhere in the middle of the two, never truly satisfied with one over the other.

Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do.

Again, Dylan tells those around him that he is perfectly fine by engaging in normal teenage things. He hides how depressed he feels. Dylan becomes increasingly irritated the more people ask if he’s okay. The repetition of this line throughout the song is more like a cry for help than a reassurance.

Last night I dressed in tails, pretended I was on the town.

This could symbolize several things, but what comes to my mind is Dylan’s prom night. The fact that he even goes to prom is a pleasant surprise to his parents, confirming that there’s nothing abnormal lurking on the horizon. His father helps him get dressed in his tuxedo, struggles to figure out how the bow tie works, and he pulls his newly washed hair back into a neat ponytail. His mother thinks he looks quite handsome, comparing him to a character in a movie they are both fond of. For a moment, he is just a normal high school kid going to a dance. Nothing out of the boring ordinary.

As long as I can dream it's hard to slow this swinger down.

For one night, at the prom, Dylan pretends this is his life. He is good at blocking out what he considers evil, and Dylan allows himself to enjoy the moment. He’s had a lot of practice at ignoring his pain. If he can retreat into the fantasy he’s created in his mind, he is capable of anything, good or bad. It’s like an out-of-body experience. He’s not there when he’s there. Nothing can stop him. He has two settings at this point, 0 and 100. An unhealthy dreamer can be deadly not only to others, but to the dreamer himself.

So please don't give a thought to me, I'm really doin' fine.

As mentioned previously, Dylan flies under the radar to not be asked about his well-being. He holds out his arms to point to all these social activities he’s engaging in with his friends as if to say ‘Look what I’m doing. I’m fine. Do not worry.’ It’s a cruel deception, and he doesn’t even realize he is being deceived as much as those around him are. Dylan starts to believe what he’s telling others. He doesn’t think he is worth the worry.

You can always find me here; I'm havin' quite a time.

‘Here’ can mean one of several places: his bedroom, his mind, or perhaps his existence. Either way, ‘I’m having quite a time’ is a sarcastic remark. He’s drowning in his harmful thoughts, yet that’s where he feels the safest. It’s his protective shell that he puts up against the world. Dylan entertains the idea over and over in his mind that his love is waiting for him in another existence. No matter where he physically is, he’s ‘always there’, lost in his thoughts.

The chorus repeats. Dylan outwardly seems okay. Left to his own devices, he is not.

It's good to see you, I must go, I know I look a fright.

This is a goodbye. Even though it is a casual farewell, it has deeply painful undertones. He says he didn’t like life too much but hopes he will find peace in the next one. He offers a final goodbye to those he loved, family and friends. ‘It’s good to see you’ displays how detached he feels toward the end. These are no longer people he knows fondly; it was simply good to see them. The thoughts must end, and he must leave before they worsen. Like the lyrics suggest, he doesn’t want to stick around and knows he must go. A big part of his self-esteem had to do with his self-image. The line ‘I know I look a fright’ symbolizes how negatively he thought of his own appearance. Dylan couldn’t see his own attractiveness. He felt awkward due to his height, long facial features, shaggy hair, and the way he dressed.

Anyway, my eyes are not accustomed to this light.

This is the trademark dark sunglasses that Dylan wears almost everywhere. He hides behind them, shielding his tears from the world. The light comes from the sun, and he cannot withstand the same light that others can, a nod to him feeling isolated from humanity. Though he is called the ‘sunshine boy,’ his eyes are not meant for its light. So, he dawns the shades to (metaphorically) keep it out.

And my shoes are not accustomed to this hard concrete.

Unlike the sneakers worn by the jocks at his high school, Dylan sports black combat boots. They are unusual among the other students, but Dylan feels comfortable in them. Again, he separates himself from the rest of humanity. He is not meant for it. He knows he must go somewhere he feels free.

So I must go back to my room and make my day complete.

By the end of the song, it becomes clear that Dylan now lives inside the world he’s created in his mind. It almost becomes odd for him not to retreat there at least once a day if not all the time. But like the final lyrics, he goes to stay there forever and never to return.

The final repetition of the chorus only emphasizes the truth. He was not ‘doing fine’, despite all the work of convincing others the opposite.

The last line loops again before the song ends. The upbeat and happy tune only makes the message more haunting.

Don't tell me I've nothin' to do.

And no one did.

#analysis #flowers on the wall #dylan klebold #american tragedy

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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years

Text

animorphs!!!

ok I read animorphs when I was 10 or 11 I think? and I only read it once, along w/the spinoffs and stuff, and I've always meant to revisit it...SO HERE I AM....

and oh MAN I forgot how good this series is. like I knew it was good but some things from your childhood don't hold up yknow? especially books aimed at younger audiences

but oh boy does animorphs hold up. they're easy to read and perfectly balance the line between dark/adult topics and more kid-friendly lessons. excellent

so yeah I'm loving it so far. I forgot how fast some stuff happens lmao, like I forgot that tobias gets trapped as a bird in the FIRST BOOK

also I just adore how realistically disorganized/confused the animorphs are. like, they got the elevator pitch version of the conflict from elfangor before my mans got eaten, and also they're middle schoolers. of course they’re always just like ‘wtf do we even do’

so like...their plans mostly don't work. and even when planning they run into tons of logistical issues w/morphing, traveling, communicating etc.

and I love how they clearly need to maintain their normal lives as well in order not to raise any suspicion

and I like the little details like them not spending all their time together at school because they didn’t before so that would be suspicious

oh man and I love the different family dynamics in the series. you have jake, whose family seems pretty normal until we find out that tom is a controller, and rachel, whose parents are divorced, and who has to deal w/the complications of that. and then cassie, who is an only child (I like that we have a mix, with rachel and jake having siblings), and of course marco...

iirc marco was one of my favs (if not my fav, but its hard to choose) back in the day, and I forgot how reluctant he was to participate in the animorphs thing...and the fact that he was about to quit the team and then runs into visser 1.....

another fucked up little moment I liked - when they morphed dolphin and marco had to morph back to human bc he gets injured and he was like ‘I cant swim, and my mom drowned, I don't want to die like she did’ I was like oooof

also on that topic I adore how little the animorphs know about how anything works. like they once wondered if there's a limit to how many morphs they can acquire and they were basically like ‘idk guess we’ll find out’

and then when marco got injured as a dolphin and they were like ‘morph back I guess and hopefully you'll be okay?’ like damn luckily that worked

basically these books do The Most Excellent Job showing that these are just kids. like they're literally in jr high which is 90s speak for middle school....they're like 13???? at most???

and the narrative reflects that perfectly!! all of them, even rachel who is pretty much the most gung-ho about fighting and stuff, have nightmares and all these terrible experiences bc they don't have basically any guidance

and even with ax, it’s immediately obvious that he’s also just a kid, even though he’s this deadly alien....

also oh mannnn I love so much how we’re introduced to the andalites as this heroic race and how that slowly changes over the course of the story

like, when elfangor introduces himself as ‘prince’ you assume he’s part of the andalite monarchy - but later we find out that ‘prince’ is a military rank, and the andalites are a lot more militaristic than we would assume at the beginning

its so fantastic how it starts off as a fairly black and white conflict of andalites = good guy aliens and yeerks = bad guy aliens

and you even have some background stuff going on w/the taxxons being controllers by choice, and the hork-bajir being enslaved

but as the story goes on, all of those lines get blurred in different ways...

also ooof the poor hork-bajir. I always felt so bad for them. it’s crazy that even in the first book, the animorphs are killing their enemies - at least I inferred that in book 1, but it becomes way more overt later on...the tough situation of them knowing that the hork-bajir are unwilling hosts but that they’re so dangerous that not killing them could be fatal to the good guys

and ngl this time around I have a lot more sympathy for the yeerks, even tho they don't really deserve it (at least in the early parts of the story where I am rn)

like...they're just these blind helpless slug creatures, but they're also fully sentient and intelligent? like, that's so fucked up. imagine yourself as you are now, but you're just a sensory deprived slug swimming in a pool. that's pretty fucked. and then the fact that the yeerks are biologically made to be parasites...its kinda no wonder that they ended up the way they are (and it also makes stuff like the yeerk peace movement really compelling)

also wow I kinda forgot about all the body horror w/the morphing. like ik that's one of the things that animorphs is known for but like. I forgot how much it happens and how creative the horrifying descriptions are. I love it

and omfg so when I first read this series the ellimist stuff confused me a lot bc I didn't read the books That closely (I mostly wanted to see what would happen next) but I loooove time travel bullshit so I’m really enjoying it so far

even tho tbh I think even if I had paid more attention as a 10 yr old I still would've been confused bc the ellimist stuff is kinda just inherently confusing lmao

ok and I just love the characters,,,I love that the books switch perspectives, and KAA did such a masterful job of portraying differing and realistic reactions to their situation....like, all the animorphs react so differently to their circumstances, but their reactions are all so grounded in realism and also their personalities

like man I love rachel. she was one of my favs as a kid too bc I always loved female characters and she was just so cool. and she still is, and so excellently written too

liiiike the fact that even though she’s so tough and brave, she’s still a kid and has plenty of moments when she’s scared or uncertain...

and I just really like the fact that she out of all of them is the one who’s tough and loves to fight...and the fact that she also unapologetically loves shopping and stuff like that...its about the multifaced characters

just like how marco is the ‘funny guy’ but they make it very clear from the beginning that this is his way of coping w/shit like his family falling apart, and then alien BS

and also marco is really smart? I kinda forgot abt that (sorry marco) but I like that bc that's uncommon to see with ‘funny’ characters

oh mannnn and ax. I love ax. I forgot a whole bunch about the early stuff w/him and how conflicted he was w/keeping secrets from the other animorphs

KAA did such a fantastic job w/ax - he really comes across as the perfect mix of ‘fish out of water alien’ and ‘young teen/tween’ and ‘alien from a strict militaristic society who is in training to become a soldier like his famous older brother’

n that was so sad n fucked up when he called the andalite home world and had to tell everyone (including his parents) that elfangor died, and then the elders or w/e forced ax to take blame for elfangor breaking their laws in order to preserve elfangor’s postmortem reputation, even at the cost of ax’s career/life :(

and man I loved the part where ax is like ‘well, we didn't help the hork-bajir even tho we could have and now they're all enslaved. I'm not letting that happen to the humans’ and the council or w/e is like ‘well you should let it happen, don't interfere’ and ax basically realizes oh shit sometimes adults are wrong

basically I love the conflict there, where the andalites are the ones who gave the yeerks the technology that led to them spreading across the galaxy like a disease, and now fight to stop them due to their guilt, but also refuse to directly help the less advanced species who are being invaded by the yeerks for fear of making a similar mistake like w/the yeerks....

ooooof and the part where ax is like ‘guess I have to go fight visser 3 and die’ :( he’s just a babyyyy

and augh when alloran asks them to kill him....geeeez there’s so much fucked up stuff already and I'm not even in the double digits yet

oh my god and the brutally awful fact that any freed controller will just get tracked down by the yeerks and murdered so the secret invasion stays secret...and the animorphs think that by destroying the kandrona they've freed a bunch of controllers but really they just signed their death warrants - what a catch 22

oh and I love how even early on the yeerks aren't a completely unified force - we have the obvious rivalry w/visser 1 and visser 3, with visser 1 even arranging the animorphs release from visser 3′s prison bc of this, and that yeerk who told ax where to find visser 3 because he was pissed that his yeerk gf got killed by visser 3 - even though the reason she was killed was due to kandrona rationing, which was caused by the animorphs...i love the layers

ok what else. oh yeah I love tobias sm, he was one of my favs as a kid too, his whole story is so deeply tragic but also interesting and we haven't even gotten into all the stuff w/his parents yet

the part where he’s freaking out as a hawk and he’s gonna fly into the windows even tho he knows it’ll probably kill him...christttt

also tobias and rachel are so romance aughhhh

ok also jake - he was never my favorite when I was younger bc I felt like he had Basic Protag Man Syndrome but now I can appreciate his character a lot more. like, he basically got elected the leader and he’s kinda like ‘guess I have to do this now.’ and that of course ends up fucking him up majorly in the long run bc even tho he’s more serious and responsible, he’s still just a kid too

and I loooove the horror of finding out that tom is a controller, and jake having to contend w/the fact that it’s very likely that he’ll have to fight and/or kill his brother someday

also the book where jake gets infested w/a yeerk was one of my favs and still is. so fucked up and interesting. the fact that that yeerk was previously tom’s made it even more fucked, w/the yeerk taunting jake the whole time

and then the yeerk dying in jakes head...so messed up

omg and cassie too. I love cassie. I didn't appreciate her as much when I was younger bc I was a straightforward kid who liked action, and cassie is all about pacifism when possible and compassion, which I love a lot now that I Get it more.

cassie being such a gentle person but still fighting in this fucked up war bc doing nothing would be worse is super compelling. plus the conflicts with her having to figure out where she and humanity fit in the circle of life and whatnot is great

I loved the contrast of her being very aware of how nature works bc of working w/her parents and all these injured animals, but also being so compassionate that it still bothers her to see death and especially participate in it

like her feeling awful about killing the termite queen even tho its ‘just a bug’ and stuff

basically what makes the series great isn't that it’s got all these fucked up moments and horror elements and is overall quite dark - it’s that all of it comes together to make the point that war is hell, and child soldiers are gonna end up traumatized pretty much no matter what happens

it’s a very strong message, and the story never feels like it’s being dark just for the sake of being dark, but rather never letting the reader forget how awful things are

TL;DR: anirmorphs is to the YA genre what hunter x hunter is to the shounen genre

in animorphs, the heroes of the story are kids who get cool powers and get to fight aliens - in any other YA story they would have a bunch of fun adventures and come out on top most/all the time - things might get darker towards the end, but good would prevail. the evil yeerks would be stopped, and the main couples would get married and have kids and live happily ever after.

however, war isn't like that, especially when the soldiers are kids. so instead we get animorphs, and it’s brutally realistic. they barely ever get to enjoy their powers - on the rare occasion that they get to, something usually goes horribly wrong

compare to hxh - it seems like a regular shounen story about kids participating in a fantastical mostly-adult world and being able to match the adults bc they're Special - but as the story wears on it becomes clear that the kids are just very traumatized. this all leads to gon’s berserker collapse in the chimera ant arc, which is led up to masterfully w/a bunch of adults treating gon as an adult even though he’s a child.

essentially the same thing happens in animorphs - with jake being shoved into the leader role and becoming a military general as a kid, which leads to him committing horrific war crimes because he’s been put in a position no child should ever have to be in

similarly, kurapika has what would be a very straightforward revenge plotline in any other story - but this is hxh, so the bad guys aren't just 2-dimensional evil caricatures, and the road to revenge just leads kurapika to ruin. we root for kurapika to win bc they’re a character we like, but it becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on that getting revenge is not the path kurapika should be taking

nothing is ever as straightforward as we want it to be, basically. and the same applies to animorphs. so many times they're faced with conflicts that seem to have an obvious answer, only for it to be revealed later that the choices they made led to other unforeseen awful consequences

ok i need to stop rambling this is already super long. basically: animorphs good. I’ll probably do another post like this semi-soon as I continue reading (I'm partway thru book 10 now)

#not me doing another liveblog that i probably wont finish #animorphs #lj reads animorphs

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fart-gate · 3 years

Text

SGA

Season 5 episode 17

Notes by me

- PREVIOUSLY - they tried to help the wraith by giving them a drug that takes away their NEED FOR FEED, but oops! Team Bimbo accidently turned on the arturro device and blew up some hive ships and todd did NOT like that for some reason :\ . now they dont want a truce and todd is out for blood

- atlantis is being attacked? Whats going on

- oh theres a hive ship floating above them

- john in the chair💞

- they really have to to fix the whole 'one or the other' problem with the cloak and shield

- rodneys snappy fingers

- "disease" "help us"???? Do they have covid 😷

- once again, ronon votes violence

-its jumper time my dudes

- no life signs? Todds dead?

- "this better not be a wraith ship from another reality" ronon has some trauma from the last time they encountered a dead hive ship lmao

- john: if we die, we die

Rodney: I have some objections

- Rodney looks GREAT in this outfit thank you costume department

- the gene therapy worked!....side effects may include eventual death

- ronon has a face on like he absolutely does not give a shit

- why is Woolsey bringing up the IOA I thought he blocked and deleted them

- ronon said Let Them Die

- still cant get over the fact that john named this alien the most generic name possible and everyone just went with it

- "the wall is melting"

- ah shit hes dead :(

- awww Rodney and keller quality time

- "im not used to having the fate of the galaxy hang in the balance"

"You get used to it. It helps to have a massive ego"

I mean???? Hes right

- shoulder rubs for the happy couple

- wait a minute hold up. The ship is made of living tissue right? The ships alive? So thats why the walls are moving right? Am I right

- rest in peace to the guy with teeth marks all over him

- HOLY SHIT ANGRY BALD WRAITH

- TRIED TO EAT JOHN BUT HES OKAY. ITS OKAY EVERYONE HES FINE

- wtf no one told these wraith that they didnt have to eat people anymore when they took the drug? Smh

- another wall is moving bitches 5 bucks that the ship is alive

- ah yes the only way out is dropping 300 feet into the abyss. Whats plan B

- SOMEONE OWES ME 5 BUCKS

- reviving todd is a bad idea (he doesnt like you guys😬)

- THE ATTITUDE THIS GUY HAS

- the disease is in the ship????

- todd: theres fluid exchange between wraith and hive

John:

- only 4 days thats it????

- when in doubt, blow it up!!!

- getting a bug to suck out your diseased blood and hoping that helps somehow. Lets call that plan C

- "you owe me sheppard!"

"I dont owe you anything"

KING SHIT

- john is unadopting all his wraith kids at once

- ronon being saved by teyla ❤

- they just have an unlimited amount of bullets I guess

- ripped in half!!!!! Shit!!!!

- "sheppard! Come in, please!!!!" So desperate 😭😭

- COLLISION IMMINENT

- "THINK!!" love how johns last hope is rodneys Big Brain but also his confidence that rodney will indeed find a way out of almost anything

- todd is in depressed emo teenager mode

- "I'll take you to your Bug Planet"

- die a stupid death or save everyone and live. Hhmmm tough choice

- pissy wraith at the helm

- johns like 'heres my advice for badly landing a ship! Trust me I'm an expert'

- time to land this bitch like Anakin Skywalker

- yay! Johns readopting todd!

- "you realise this is the kind of decision that could cost me my job?"

"Arent they all?"

PRETTY MUCH

- "I will remember this john sheppard"

Bye todd!!! I will probably see you again. Heres to hoping ✨

#stargate atlantis season 5 #ronon get attacked by a wraith and teyla saves him #john gets attacked by a wraith and is saved by another soldier #both last less than 10 seconds

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heartbreaknow · 4 years

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Vampire!Peter Imagine

I’ve been sitting on my vampire!Peter imagine for a couple of months now, thinking about whether there’s any chance I might want to turn it into an actual fic, ever. But this week seems to be vampire!Starker week on tumblr (\o/), so I’m just gonna post the damn thing before I completely miss the boat.

NOTE: This takes a bit to get dirtysexy y’all, but it gets there eventually. This has been my one effort at self-promotion. That is all. 👍

The way it starts is: Peter gets bitten by something while on an Avengers mission in space. (Ever since the whole situation with Thanos, space missions have become a thing they occasionally do, much to Peter’s delight and Tony’s…whatever the absolute furthest thing from delight is.) So there they are, trekking through an oddly echo-less cave on some alien planet, and suddenly some kind of creature—smallish and not overly threatening—bites Peter and then skitters away into the darkness before he can even get a look at it.

By the time they get back to the ship, Peter can’t find any trace of a mark from the bite, and he’s not even sure how something could bite through his suit anyway, and honestly, Peter’s not sure he didn’t just imagine it. Maybe something in his suit just went haywire for a second and jabbed him. That could happen, right?

The Avengers return from the mission and everything is fine for a couple of days.

But then Peter begins feeling mysteriously light-sensitive and feverish, and by the time a week has passed he finds himself developing a…craving. At first, he can’t even put his finger on what it is he’s craving, but over time it begins to distill into a strange, relentless kind of hunger, and a corresponding urge to- well- bite people. (The first time Peter notices it, he’s in the lab with Mr Stark, and it goes away when he leaves the lab. But pretty soon its become a constant nagging hunger.)

Peter tries to ignore it for as long as possible, kind of downplaying it to himself and assuming it’ll pass, because it’s just too weird to really be happening. But the longer it goes on, the sicker he feels, and the hungrier he gets.

Until one night, nearly two weeks after the space mission, Peter finds a lost dog while he’s dragging himself weakly through his nightly patrol. The dog has an ID tag, so he catches it, with the intent of returning it to its owners—but then everything gets kind of weird in his head, and he goes into some kind of trance and drinks the dog’s blood. Which is horrifying, obviously, and also just objectively super gross.

Clearly, ignoring the blood-thirst and denying there’s a problem isn’t working.

(Also, even though the dog’s blood satisfies the obsessive hunger that’s been building in him for days, it tastes foul and gives him a massive stomach ache.)

So Peter, who is now very much freaking out, goes straight to Tony and explains the symptoms he’s experiencing. At first he kind of hedges a little, and doesn’t immediately tell Tony about the dog, because he can’t bear for Mr Stark to look at him with disgust. Unfortunately, that leads to Mr Stark not really getting how serious it is. He just makes a Lucy the vampire bride joke, and suggests it’s some kind of spidey version of Pica; asks how Peter’s nutrition is; tells Peter he’s a growing superhero, and he can’t subsist on ramen and Gatorade alone.

Until finally Peter blurts out, “Idrankadog’sblood!”

It’s kind of a showstopper.

Tony’s like, “Um, excuse me, you—you killed a dog?”

Peter is instantly aghast. “What? No! Oh my god, no, I just…bit it…some. And then I found its owners.” And then, after a second’s pause: “Oh god, what if the dog is a vampire now? And I just left it with that nice family! I’ve gotta go warn them!”

As it turns out, the dog is not a vampire. But Peter…kind of is?

Apart from the dog-biting incident, Peter has also suddenly grown a pair of retractable fangs, his pupils react weirdly to light, and when stimulated, his fangs disgorge a small amount of some kind of venom—the properties of which they are working on isolating.

As soon as they prove there is in fact something happening to Peter, Tony is immediately adamant they will find a cure for whatever it is. But the first couple days of tests yield no real answers, and by then Peter is getting hungry again.

That’s about the time they discover Peter vomits up bagged blood pretty violently. So that’s Plan A off the table.

When Peter starts looking sallow and jittery, and Tony notices him chewing his own lip until it bleeds and then licking up the blood, Tony thinks, Fuck it, and goes out and buys him a nice, robust-looking American Bulldog. PETA can sue him.

Peter tries to refuse Mr Stark’s, uh, provision, but his protests are weak. He’s so hungry. It doesn’t take long before he gives in.

Unfortunately, dog blood doesn’t work so well the second time around. This time, the taste is so foul Peter can barely keep it down, and what’s worse, within minutes of feeding he’s doubled over with the worst stomach pain of his life

They try a couple other types of animals, with the same results: nauseating flavor and crippling stomach pain.

So alright, Plan B is maybe not as viable as they thought it was, either.

Peter puts on a brave face, and insists that it’s fine, he doesn’t need to eat. He can tough it out, at least for a little while longer. But after another couple of days, he looks like death warmed over, and Tony suspects he doesn’t feel much better than he looks.

Also, Peter starts keeping at least a couple of steps between himself and Tony in the lab at all times. And when, out of habit, Tony gets close enough to give his shoulder a squeeze, Peter jerks away lightning fast, and Tony swears he sees a glint of something in Peter’s mouth, right before he clamps it shut.

So yeah, Tony’s worried about him.

The fifth morning without blood, Peter doesn’t show up in the lab.

Worried, Tony goes to check on him.

He barely makes it three steps into Peter’s room before he finds himself pinned to Peter’s bedroom door, with a black-eyed, fangy Peter leaning into him, panting and staring at his neck.

This new Peter, with his needle-sharp cuspids, and his demonic-possession eyes, should be terrifying—and it’s not that he isn’t, per se. It’s just that he’s Peter. And Tony remembers how Peter didn’t kill the dog either time he fed, even though he must’ve been pretty damn desperate the first time. So instead of trying to get free, or snap Peter out of it, Tony looks Peter right in his black, iris-less eyes, and says, “Okay, kid. Mealtime,” and tilts his head to the side, baring his neck. Then he reaches up, and guides Peter down.

Being bitten is incomparable to anything Tony’s ever felt before. It’s weird, and unnerving, and intimate, and probably incredibly dangerous. And Tony really, really wishes it didn’t feel so goddamn good.

He has enough to feel guilty about as it is (his feelings for the kid are something he’s been studiously not looking too closely at for a while now). He really doesn’t need to add “My mentee’s in the middle of a serious health crisis and I can’t stop thinking about what it felt like to have him latched onto my neck like the world’s hottest leech” to his laundry list of mental depravity.

When Peter’s head clears after the feeding, he freaks out and basically flees the tower, horrified at what he’s done.

A couple hours later he’s back again, looking defeated and miserable, and not meeting Tony’s eyes. He realizes he can’t be trusted to be among the general population unmonitored until they know more about his condition. And if whatever is wrong with him gets worse and they need to lock him up, the tower and the compound are the only places with rooms that can reliably contain him.

The second time Peter feeds from Tony, Tony suggests that Peter try feeding from his wrist instead. It’s mainly for his own sanity that he makes the suggestion, but outwardly he reasons that wrist feeding is probably safer and more comfortable for them both. Peter nods quietly and agrees, eyes meeting Tony’s and then quickly skittering away.

Tony does find the sensation somewhat less overwhelming when Peter feeds from his wrist instead of his neck—but only somewhat. It still feels bizarrely, almost maddeningly good, like somehow Peter’s feeding has turned his wrist into an erogenous zone. Or possibly his entire body.

Peter and Tony quickly find themselves falling into a routine: research, data collection, tests, and feedings.

Peter will hold off from feeding until his pupils begin to dilate and his skin gets sallow, and the way he looks at Tony as he moves around the lab begins to take on a sharp, slightly animal quality. Then, when Tony is pretty sure Peter’s desperate enough to actually give in, he says, very clearly, very directly, “Kid, come here,” and gestures Peter over with a jerk of his head that’s a hell of a lot more casual than he feels. And just like that, Peter goes to him.

At first, Tony thinks the feeling of Peter feeding from him might become less intense once he gets used to it, but it doesn’t work out that way. A bit the opposite, truthfully.

After a couple of weeks, Tony finds himself fixating: on Peter’s mouth, on his pliant lips and his defined jaw, on he way it hinges open over Tony’s pounding pulse-point. He finds himself growing to love the way Peter ends up curled around his arm every time he feeds, his side pressed against Tony’s front, tucked in close, shoulder to sternum. Generally Tony has to find something to brace against, or Peter will push him off balance with the force of his hunger.

Tony finds that the site where Peter has bitten him begins to feel hot and over-sensitive constantly, but especially right before a feeding. Like there’s too much blood too close to the surface.

Tony finds himself wanting to give Peter what he needs over and over again. Craving it, even.

But Peter’s made it pretty clear that no matter how much this thing in his head enjoys feeding, he himself hates it, and is intent on doing it as infrequently as possible. (Peter’s never overtly said he hates it, not in so many words, but the way he refuses to feed until he’s famished, and the tense, nervous way he looks at Tony whenever it’s getting close to meal time, is pretty eloquent.) And Tony can’t—won’t—allow himself to undermine Peter’s resolve about this. Not when the kid’s just trying to hang onto as much autonomy as he can while this thing runs roughshod over his hierarchy of needs.

So he watches Peter constantly, looking for signs of hunger—then forces himself not to say anything once he does see the signs. He makes himself wait while Peter works through the craving, hour after hour, his eyes getting slowly darker each time Tony catches one of his furtive glances. Until eventually Tony can’t stand it anymore.

When he unbuttons his shirt cuff and calls Peter to him, it’s all he can do to make it sound like a casual offer.

Tony hates himself for enjoying it—the feedings. For practically getting off on them. For literally getting off on them, later, when he’s by himself—his bruised, throbbing wrist shoved against his own mouth, tonguing lewdly at the place where Peter’s snake-like cuspids slid sharpnumbhot into his skin. Fuck. His other hand shoved down his boxers, jacking himself off to the thought of how Peter always clings to him as he feeds—how he struggles to stay lucid and only ever half succeeds. Tony tries not to think about Peter’s slippery tongue chasing a droplet of blood down his neck, the very first time he ever fed off Tony. He tries not to think about Peter’s mouth while he fucks furiously into his own fist, smothering a groan. Peter’s innocent mouth, smeared red and panting. Fuck, oh, fuck.

Tony hates himself for it, all of it. But he can’t stop.

- - - - END - - - -

It’s killing me to leave it here because I have so many more bullet point ideas written out for this imagine. But on the off chance I ever write some of this as an actual fic, I don’t want to have described the entire thing before hand. So I guess I’ll quit here.

But for context: I kind of like the idea of paired feeding being habit-forming for both parties. So like, not only does it feel really, really good, but over time they both start to get kind of physiologically addicted to it.

I’m thinking maybe whatever weird-ass critter bit Peter, feeding is part of its mating ritual. Like, maybe it’s a symbiotic pair-bonding species that mates for life, and determines the suitability of its mate base on how well the blood-drinking half takes to the blood-providing half’s blood, and how well the blood-providing half responds to the blood-drinking half’s venom. (Yes, this is really putting the pseudo in pseudoscience. Just go with it?)

The problem for Peter and Tony is that, despite being profoundly compatible, they keep repeating the mating behavior over and over without resolution—thus causing things to kind of...escalate.

#starker #starker imagine #peter x tony #vampire!peter #nff #not horror at all #but some light horror elements herein #sexy biological imperatives are my jam

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bladekindeyewear · 4 years

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HS^2 bloggin’ Patreon Commentary Catchup 2020-03-29

I know I’ve been sitting on half-a-dozen asks, but I’m gonna sit on those a little longer because after I’m done catching up on ALL the commentary I’ve missed I’ll probably be a little exhausted.

First the commentary on Chapter 5: YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D. I skimmed this before, just so I could leave a comment about what I’d been told about the suicide feeling / Jaspers funeral when she was “eight” being way too late on the timeline. They still haven’t made any corrections to that HS^2 page. Hm. Are they just feeling the general vibe and tags to help the fandom guide things? I’m wondering if anyone came to any of them specifically with that, since Patreon commentary doesn’t seem to cut it. (Which I might be grateful for, from another point of view, because why would they favor paid methods.)

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 5, "YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D"

Starting commentary on why they played with the medium by opting for a Longpage with that update. Unsurprising and understandable~

Ooh, they included the commission/sketch instructions for the image they asked from Xam.

I don't know what we did to deserve Xamag.

Yeah few people dispute Xamag’s awesomeness.~

Much of this conversation was written before they launched HS^2′s first chapter, huh?

With the "primary" version of its original protagonist dead in a wallet,

Did... did Terezi or someone else put John’s body in his wallet after he died? I forget. *checks back*

(Meat 35) That’s definitely a fair question. But I have one that’s much more important for her to answer. Terezi, are you seriously just going to leave the body here? “TEREZI: HUH?” Of course not. Terezi’s a practical girl, after all. She digs the wallet out of her blood-stained pants, and captchas the corpse. She holds it close to her heart, like a secret. Like John’s stupid last words: a confession whispered for her and no one else.And then she starts walking home.

(Meat 36) Terezi’s jaw tightens. She’s not ready to hear any words that remind her of those few hours with John. Her hand goes to her pocket, where she’s keeping the wallet. She traces the contours of it with her thumb and forces a smile.

[...] Here we both are. It’s a beautiful day. You’ve got your dead boyfriend in your wallet. And we’ve already managed to strike such a nice metatextual rapport. So hear me out. [...] I ease the throttle back a bit, just enough so that I’m not whispering directly into her ear when she slips the wallet out of her pocket. She clutches it so hard in her palm that she’s digging dents into the leather, and bites her lip.

God damnit, that was an important fucking thing for me to forget. I hope she preserved his corpse in a better way than just “wallet”. And why the FUCK did Dirk think it was so important to bring him???? That’s not good, is it.

Back to the commentary, going to how the Dirk crew’s conversations especially cover the meta question of why continue the story at all...

This is actually a similar question to one explored by a series that shares a lot of Homestuck's creative DNA, Steven Universe.

Oh god damnit, what timing, huh? And then they go on about what constitutes a happy ending and what’s supposed to happen after, how work might not be done, et cetera. Hopefully these authors take a page from how SU:F finished, because Steven Universe managed to pull it back to uplifting pretty well.

These are two dangerous women, confined together long enough to learn all of each others' weaknesses, and sharp-edged enough to exploit them.

True enough.

Dirk, unfortunately, cucks the audience from seeing the scene's "true resolution." What an asshole. I've never been madder at this guy than I am right now. I bet he didn't even provide a warranty.

Pff.

On to the next commentary:

Sketches and Commentary: Catnapped, Part Three

Catnapped is some of the most fun I’ve had while writing, because Jasprose is just so goddamn fun. Cats don’t plan, they live in the moment. She’s always existing in that moment of pushing a glass off the table.

We can all agree with that I think.

Plenty they talk about here, but I’ll just quote part of anything about characterization...

First, I actually really appreciate getting a lot at Jane's genuine sympathy for Dirk here. There was quite a bit of mutual fondness and care between the two of them – but, at the same time, they enabled each others' worst tendencies.

Hm!

Swifer remains the closest thing to a "straight man" this story has. (Not in the sexuality way. In the comedy way.)

Yep.

There was no universe where we left this story without Jasprose saying "owo what's this". You know it, I know it.

Jesus Christ, I didn’t catch that.

God, Problem Sleuth just has the worst commuting luck. He should put some of his rug money into a permanent locksmith. Checking back in with these scenes is always a delight. It probably took PS like two hundred off-screen panels to get to this point. Miserable.

Wait, that’s right, Catnapped 28 is shown before DDD 12, but AFTER Dad is shown marching up handcuffed in Catnapped 26. And yet in DDD 12, Dad and DD come fetch PS from out of his office, when the handcuffed thing hasn’t happened yet in DDD. You can’t DO that, authors! It only makes RELEASE ORDER sense, not any sort of OTHER sense? What about when people come to catch up or read this later! Come on, that’s sloppy. Unless they’re going to leave PS behind to stay trapped in his office MORE, which I wouldn’t put past them. (But, wouldn’t make sense since the bullethole from C28 is already there in DDD12.) Andrew knew more of how to be responsible telling an out-of-time-sync story, believe it or not.

Commentary ends with a few sketches, like Jasprose doing a The Mask impression, appropriately.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 6, "A Conversation Regarding Relevance"

Oh, it’s Jade time.

On alt!Callie’s starting Space rant:

I wanted to impress on everyone just how vast it is, and also to remind the audience that alt!callie has them at the same mercy that Dirk does. She can force us to listen to her pontificate endlessly if she so chooses. She’s slightly less insufferable than Dirk, if only perhaps because her text isn’t orange.

Yep, mostly.

So here she is. Jade. We find out that not only is she conscious inside her own head, she is also incredibly chatty. And not too thrilled with her current situation. I know most of the audience isn’t either, considering the fact that Jade having no agency has basically become a meme at this point.

NEVER. AGAIN. PLZ.

As Callie told us in the beginning of the chapter, it isn’t natural for people to behave like narrative devices. Even within her own thematic framework, Callie has a habit of defaulting to behaving like a person after all.

Even alt!Callie still became a story nerd, not just original Callie -- she just became a different, more insufferable type of story nerd.

Plenty more discussion I don’t need to touch on... keep in mind I’m omitting large parts of this in most cases, again, to respect the paywall.

A remark on Dave and Karkat being two emotionally-constipated early-twenties Bernie Bros, which... I mean. Fair.

She definitely does love them, and she wanted to be with them, but also...Jade has a lot of other prospects. She’s actually the one character who seems to be enjoying her time on Earth c. Hitting up interspecies raves and getting around. We just haven’t seen any of that because none of those other people she boned are main characters.

Maybe that’s why alt!Callie was so blind and dismissive of it? Offscreen experience being less in the Light, therefore less relevant to her, even though that’s the exact attitude she’s ostensibly at war with?

Anyway Jade’s consciousness is huge.

Yep.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of serious meta talk about classpects. Mostly because there’s really no use for classpects outside of the game, unless, for instance, you go around referring to everyone as the Prince or the Witch because you are a dramatic alien in a hood. It does make sense that a Witch’s powers would be more useful than a Sylph’s to a Muse.

Aaaand that’s all the classpect mention we’re gonna get isn’t it? ;P

(Yes I know, the author told us to dial it back. They ARE going ahead and prepping to answer some outstanding questions, though.)

Honestly, the Jade Situation is a tough one. To be sure, she has been sacrificed to the plot again and again, something that probably began as a coincidence and then later grew into a theme. Space players are destined to be huge, cosmic forces in the universe. Big movers. [...] But usually when we hear the story of big, god-like beings, we don’t think about the personalities behind them. What was it like for god to create the universe? Was he lonely? Did he regret it? Did he wish he could live in it instead?

And Jade WAS too powerful not to sideline, by a certain point in the plot. And before that, maybe trapped in a bit of a character arc where she had to get over some notions to step into the action.

I actually think Jade could have been okay with this. With being A Force For The Narrative. [...] But then Callie makes it personal.

Agreed. If alt!Callie hadn’t been so shitty about it in general, they could have worked things out more meaningfully; but the immense resolve and effort it took to dominate Caliborn in her origin timeline has tainted her perception ALMOST as bad as Dirk’s. Much of HS^2 is probably going to involve her gradually learning how to get over that in the background, the balance she needs to take ala the Ultimate Riddle’s lesson.

(Tangentially... it was said that it would have been nearly impossible to make alt!Callie dominate, even across ALL timelines. What if alt!Callie had her timeline’s origin explained in HS^2 by a Third Scratch at this late date with the likes of Davebot running around to do it??? That would probably make me fucking mad.)

Back to the commentary.

Admittedly these last few chapters have definitely been “girls beating the crap out of each other” heavy, and I hope that’s okay.

PFFFFF

Callie and Jade aren’t really sure who makes a decision on what is considered “just” or “heroic”. Plot twist, it’s us. We do. But also the alpha timeline does.

Hmm.

More gorgeous Xam art. Initially we were going to make it more ambiguous whether or not she actually ate the peanut butter, but we decided to have it be a decisive moment of triumph.

Really? Well, you could have made it visually clearer that the candy dropped. A lot of people visually missed that. This is a consequence of the back-and-forth artist-isnt-the-author art-commissioning going on, in part... Andrew was MUCH better at conveying what he wanted to convey BETWEEN panels than this crew, like comic book panels and their composition together; you can see that when comparing Homestuck proper’s sprite animation to that of fan adventures that used sprites, for instance. These guys are at something of a disadvantage due to their disconnect.

Commentary on the Commentary

This commentary uses "she/her" to talk about the alternate Calliope possessing Jade, while the "other" Callie (remember them?) uses they/them. This other Calliope, presumably, has a much different relationship with her gender – and her brother – than the Callie we saw discussing the subject with Roxy and John. One of my favorite things about this update (I can say that, because I'm a second person who didn't write it) was that subtle hint about how different her Caliborn must have been to allow her to predominate in the first place. I'd be really interested in fan works exploring more about her (and his) past.

Hhhhmmmmmmm.

Not sure what else to say to that, but it does make me hmmm.

Sketches and Commentary: Diamonds, Dames, and Dads, Part 1

Probably not much plot-relevant here...

Oh pff.

They had full drawings of them going in for the kiss on standby. They couldn’t resist making them.

Real talk, I have been looking forward to writing this story the most out of any other part of HS^2. Finally I get to combine my passions. Cheesy noir bullshit and old men making eyes at each other.

Pfffffff. Yes.

...the next three or four pages of this writing go on to describe how sexy this is and these characters and setting are. I can’t fault a word of any of it.

The dream team is assembled. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Wow, I caught up on all this commentary quick. See you next time.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots #Homestuck Commentary #spoiler #spoilers

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nclkafilms · 4 years

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The reality we decide to ignore

(Review of ‘Joker’. Seen in Nordisk Film Biografer, Aalborg on the 6th of October 2019, in Biffen Art Cinema, Aalborg on the 8th of October 2019 and at home on the 11th of January 2020.)

What do you get when you cross a comedy director with no previous directing experience with other genres with one of Hollywood’s finest character actors and the perhaps most famous and notorious comic book villain? When that director is Todd Phillips (of ‘The Hangover’ and ‘Road Trip’), the actor is Joaquin Phoenix and the villain is Batman’s The Joker, you get one of the most surprising film achievements of 2019. ‘Joker’ is a gritty, poignant and surprisingly profound character study that is telling us much more about the society we live in than it does about Batman’s arch enemy. As such Joker becomes a haunting reflection of a society in which virtues such as love and empathy have been long forgotten and replaced with fear, division and egocentricity.

In the film, we follow Arthur Fleck, who works as a clown-for-hire while he lives at home taking care of his ill mother, Penny. Arthur is in psychological and medical treatment for a - to us - unknown mental illness. He dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian and as we are quickly shown in a dream sequence he also dreams of being acknowledged and feeling valued; in this particular day dream: by his idol, talk show host Murray Franklin. But this version of Gotham - set in what seems to be the early 80’s - is no place for dreaming. Garbage strikes have been going on for weeks, the streets are being overrun by thugs and ill-adjusted citizens in line with an increase in the split between the top and bottom of society. In the opening credits, Arthur is attacked by a group of young people, but it is him who gets in trouble for losing a sign rather than them being punished for their attack. As Arthur points out: things are getting crazier out there. What follows is a thought-provoking and morally challenging journey to the bottom of Gotham City.

The main attraction in ‘Joker’ is Joaquin Phoenix. The character of The Joker has produced some amazing performances from Jack Nicholson and, especially, Heath Ledger, and it must be quite the role to take on for any actor. Phoenix puts himself right up there with the best, though, with a manic, nuanced and deeply human portrayal of Arthur Fleck. His physical transformation and performance alone is awe-inspiring: not only did Phoenix lose a lot of weight, no, he manages to infuse Fleck with a crippled physicality that mirrors his mental state. The way he runs, the way he laughs and the way he stares. It all highlights the state that Arthur is in.

The idea of giving Fleck a physical condition that causes him to laugh in certain situations is clever, and Phoenix takes it to the next level in the scenes where this laughter causes him physical pain or alienation from his surroundings; his eyes convey a different story than his laugh and it is deeply fascinating to study. However, it is in the gradual change from being socially awkward and unresting to becoming more calm, more cynical and more unpredictable, that Phoenix truly manifests his qualities. The scene in which he calmly goes from panic and despair to an almost trance like dance in a worn down and darkly lit public bathroom is as beautiful as it is alarming; one of the single most memorable scenes from any film in 2019. A scene that is only made stronger by the beautiful score - but more about that later.

While ‘Joker’ is Phoenix’ film, it still boasts a high quality gallery of supporting roles with brilliant performances from Robert de Niro as talk show host Murray Franklin, Brett Cullen as Thomas Wayne, Frances Conroy as Arthur’s mother Penny, Glenn Fleshler and Leigh Gill as Arthur’s colleagues, Shea Wigham and Bill Camp as two police officers and finally Zazie Beetz as Arthur’s neighbour, Sophie. Common to them all is that they all highlight different aspects of how society - in Arthur’s eyes - is letting him down. Murray mocks him on live tv, Wayne distances him and everybody beneath him, Penny neglects him, the police hunts him and Sophie is not the girlfriend he imagines her to be. The fascinating thing here is, though, that Phillips is telling the entire story from Arthur’s perspective. He is not a narrator per se, but with him being present in every scene it is clearly his version of the story and, as such, he is highly unreliable if we are looking for the objective truth. And to be fair, I do not think that is what the filmmakers set out to do either. Here, the important truth lies both in Fleck’s imagination and reality and as such the ending is very fitting even though it has caused a lot of criticism for being a “cop out”.

In stead, Todd Phillips and Scott Silver want to give a voice to the people who are being shut out of society. The people we tend to look away from or distance ourselves from on the bus. The people who we laugh at when their weird mannerisms or actions are filmed and exposed on TV. The people who governments often find it easier to ignore or talk down to in stead of reaching out to or accommodating. The people who sadly sometimes end up causing unbearable tragedies. It’s a daring choice for Phillips and Silver to write their screenplay with this perspective but it pays off by creating one of the best films of the year.

This, of course, demands more than a brilliant ensemble as well as a daring director and screenwriter. When it comes to the quality of the crafts, ‘Joker’ is also right up there with the best of 2019. The cinematography is stunning as it really manages to show us the devastation of the state Gotham City is left in, but also in the way it centres on and helps Phoenix’ performance. Let me once again highlight THAT bathroom scene and the films use of mirrors. The film’s cinematographer, Lawrence Sher, rarely leaves Arthur out of sight whether it is in intimate close-ups or montages through the city. Equally as impressive is the production design, which manages to make Gotham feel alive and very real; dark and gritty when we are in the streets and colourful and exuberant when we are among the top of society. Additionally, you have to raise your hat to editor, Jeff Groth, who has created a tightly composed film from an excessive amount of material as Phoenix did a lot of different versions of each scene.

The most impressive aspect of the film’s technical aspect is, however, the score by icelandic Hildur Guðnadóttir. Her score is haunting to say the least with its deep and towering string sections combined with an ominous vibe that makes the score sit heavy on your shoulders as if it is the burden carried by Arthur. Guðnadóttir worked with Johan Johansson before his death and you can hear his influence, but make no mistake! Guðnadóttir is an artist on her own terms; her score has a unique sound that has landed her nominations at all the major awards and for which she hopefully will receive numerous wins too. The next strongest thing in the film after Phoenix’ performance. The score blends perfectly with the great overall sound design and it is perfectly balanced with the well-picked songs such as “Smile”, “That’s Life” and “My Name is Carnival”. I cannot count the times I have listened to this soundtrack since watching the film the first time.

I have seen the film three times now and I have been really unsure whether it was a 4,5/5 or 5/5 film, but considering it has stayed in my head for many days after every viewing, I have to say that I see it as a masterpiece. A film that I would never have expected to see from Todd Phillips. ‘Joker’ is a ruthless and brutally honest depiction of some of the deepest issues in modern society and a grim look at the possible consequences! From its core (Phoenix’ electric and mesmirising performance) it forces us to look at, to acknowledge and to reflect upon and discuss issues that popular culture and governments are normally too afraid to face and handle. In such, the entire discussion about the film in America is nothing but ironic and poignant. The film does in no way glorify violence or murder, nor does it convey unambiguous sympathy towards Arthur and his ultimately repulsive actions.

What it does, however, is that it dares to show us the person - the human being - behind the tragedies and horrific events that sadly are becoming more and more “normal” in the world today. The people in the periphery of society that we are letting down when medical centres are closed, when we don’t support them, when we expect them to behave like everyone else. That is tough to watch, and it is - of course - easier to just condemn these people as clowns or cheer on a caped crusader as he battles this evil. But in ‘Joker’ there is no Batman, there is no cartoonish villain, there is no looking away. There are only humans and their nuanced nature.

5/5

#Oscars2020 #OscarsWarmUp #OscarNominee #Academy Awards #Joker #Todd Phillips #Joaquin Phoenix #Robert De Niro

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the-astrallurgist · 4 years

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Back from the Sea: Lady Admiral

NAME: Sara Eluniia Holt

FACE CLAIM: Emilia Clarke

TITLE: Admiral, Countess, Lady, Magistra

AGE: 325

HEIGHT: 5’7″

SPECIES: Kaldorei

GENDER: Female

BIRTHDAY: September 13th

SUN SIGN: Virgo

RESIDENCE: The Blue Wolf / the Blue Mountains Estate

SKILLS: Naval Admiral, Huntress, Astrallurgist, Scribe

DRINK: Sholazar mango white rum, or any other homemade liquor from Laraanna’s experimentations

FOOD: Crag Boar Ribs

DAY OR NIGHT: Night

SNACKS: Hillsbrad strawberries, or Heaven peach slices

SONGS: Beethoven’s Silence https://open.spotify.com/track/2jrc5wSJd4NYsewjDsoNEa

PET: Quel'dorei Steed- Tassora; Direwolf- Thor'shan, Frostwolf- Kal'musha; Arcane kitten- Spark

COLOR: rich colors - Red, Blue, Purple, Green, Gold, Silver

FLOWER: Lady of the Night bloom

EYE COLOR: emerald green

HAIR COLOR: midnight blue

BODY TYPE: military fit, motherhood curvy

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Lawful / Chaotic Good

A lawful/chaotic good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act, but sometimes chooses her own way over the law. She combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. She tells the truth, keeps her word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful/chaotic good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished - and needless bureaucracy can often get in the way of that justice. Lawful/chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion, and genuinely wants to make the world a better place, even if through unconventional means from time to time.

PREDOMINANT ARCHETYPES:

PERSONALITY: ESFJ-T — The Consul

People who share the Consul personality type are, for lack of a better word, popular – which makes sense, given that it is also a very common personality type, making up twelve percent of the population. In high school, Consuls are the cheerleaders and the quarterbacks, setting the tone, taking the spotlight and leading their teams forward to victory and fame. Later in life, Consuls continue to enjoy supporting their friends and loved ones, organizing social gatherings and doing their best to make sure everyone is happy.

[ SOCIETY ]

$ Financial : wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty.

✚ Medical : fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged.

✪ Class or Caste : upper / middle / working / slave / unsure.

✔ Education : qualified / unqualified / studying.

✖ Criminal Record : yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / has committed crimes, but not caught yet.

[ FAMILY ]

◐ Marital status : married - happily / unhappily / engaged or betrothed / partnered / single / divorced / separated / widowed

◒ Children : has a child or children / has no children / wants children.

◑ Relationship with Family : close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased / Has cousins and is close to them

◔ Filtration : orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parents

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between.

♦ disorganized / organized / in between.

♦ close minded / open-minded / in between.

♦ calm / anxious / in between.

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between.

♦ cautious / reckless / in between.

♦ patient / impatient / in between.

♦ outspoken / reserved / in between.

♦ leader / follower / in between.

♦ empathetic / unempathetic / in between.

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between realistic.

♦ traditional / modern / in between.

♦ hard-working / lazy / in between.

♦ cultured / uncultured / in between / unknown.

♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown.

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown.

[ BELIEFS ]

★ Faith : monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic.

☆ Belief in Ghosts or Spirits : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care.

✮ Belief in an Afterlife : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care.

✯ Belief in Reincarnation : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care.

❃ Belief in Aliens : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care.

✧ Religious : orthodox / liberal / in between / not religious.

❀ Philosophical : yes / no / in between

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality : heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual.

❥ Sex : sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable.

♥ Romance : romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable.

❣ Sexually : adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious.

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners : male / female / agender / other / none / all.

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners : male / female / agender / other / none / all.

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none.

≡ Literacy Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none.

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

☁ Smoking : trying to quit / never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

✿ Other Narcotics : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

✌ Medicinal Drugs : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

☻ Indulgent Food : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

$ Splurge Spending : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

♣ Gambling : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[ MOST NOTABLE PERSONALITY TRAITS ]

NEEDINESS

Being affirmed and nurtured by others is a central requirement for you to feel safe. This means you can be slow to warm up to other people, which is difficult because what you most need from them is their warmth. Yet you know how to be vulnerable: to let down your defenses and accept that you need another person. This lack of pretense is a valuable trait, and ultimately more endearing than the macho efforts others make to deny their childlike sides.

INDEPENDENCE

You don’t set out to be different for its own sake; you are more easily guided by what interests and moves you. You are more concerned about what is right for you than about the pressure to fit in. In sex you are more aware than others of impulses which are not entirely conventional. You know the value of selective irresponsibility, of forgetting occasionally about being ‘good’.

SENSITIVITY

You have delicate, sensitive perceptions; you can be deeply moved by appearances – the right light in a room, or good food, or the texture of a piece of clothing. Expressive, intelligent language has a powerful hold on you; your mind works better when it is inspired and provoked by vivid imagery. It can be sad to live in a world which is often so ugly and not properly looked after. But you know that things can be otherwise, and you have the ability to appreciate the world at its best.

your archetype is:

((When I took the following quiz, it was a split between two answers.))

the realist.

Traits: practical, understanding, honest, brutal, logical, creator, intelligent, sensible, down-to-earth, reasonable

The realist is most commonly used to symbolize the highest possible outcome in a dire situation. They are the ones who have everything planned, and hand out reality checks as if they were pamphlets to those who need them - which, quite honestly, is everyone who isn’t a realist. Although they can be harsh (brutal truth over merciful), they are nurturers and care more than they let on. Realists tend to do things that will lead to the best outcome, and use their knowledge of reading people to manipulate situations and problems in order to get out from between a rock and a hard place.

the chosen one.

Traits: authentic, brave, bold, intuitive, natural, passionate, stubborn

The chosen one is most commonly used to symbolize the light side, and the heart of the story. Unlike the warrior, they barely ever choose to fight on the front lines of a battle. Although they will stand up for what they believe in, they do it in a way that is diplomatic, so that they don’t create more conflict than there already is. They do not feel the need to be credited in their achievements and victories, and would rather have their confidantes and comrades have the eternal glory and spotlight. They are content with the happiness of those they care about, and place friendship over all else. The chosen one is always picked for the role, hence the name. Their fate was placed upon them from birth, and due to their hero complex, and need to help the meek, they follow instructions, and do what needs to be done.

FLOWER PERSONALITY

DANDELION:

Scrappy and tough, you’re a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of person. You don’t give up easily and you often thrive in situations that others would find discouraging. You have an instinct to serve others and see yourself as most useful in times or places of crisis, but you may over rely on your toughness and forget how sensitive you really are.

Like you, dandelion holds steady, even in unfriendly environments. It provides gentle liver stimulation and digestive support, aiding your body’s natural detoxification processes.

Called “the little postman” in Persian because of the belief that dandelion brought good news, dandelion has unfortunately acquired a reputation as a pesky weed. Its liver and digestive benefits have been known for centuries, with reference in Arabic texts dating to the 10th century. Dandelion is a bitter herb, a characteristic that contributes to its digestion-supporting properties. When roasted, dandelion root has a coffee-like flavor that once made it a popular coffee substitute!

NETTLE:

Truly a nurturing and supportive friend, you’re the kind of person that just isn’t for everyone. But those who take the time are rewarded with your gentle disposition, and the kind of friendship that does a person good no matter the difficulty they’re facing. When out of balance, you can become more prickly than supportive or nurturing, though—a sign that you need to shower yourself with the same kind of nurturing you so freely give to others.

Nettle is a deeply supportive herb that has been used for centuries as a tonic to support your body’s well-being.* A traditional springtime tonic whose alluring “green” taste is a reflection of the rising green of spring, nettle gently nourishes the whole body.

Nettle’s genus name, Urtica, comes from the Latin urere, meaning “to burn,” an obvious reference to nettle’s nasty sting. Nettle is widespread around the world, and evidence of this very old plant was even found in Neolithic stilt dwellings in Switzerland dating back to the third millennium B.C. It has long been enjoyed for its gentle support for the whole body, as well as for its refreshing, green taste.

SLIPPERY ELM:

Let’s just say you’re a vocal person. Sure, that might mean you’re chatty. But it also means you’re the one humming in the hallway, singing in the shower, speaking your mind, standing up and shouting if need be to get yourself heard. You’ve got a voice and you know how to use it. Inclined to speak up for the voiceless, defend the defenseless or simply bring joy to the joyless, you may have a tendency to overuse your voice.

Smooth and silky, slippery elm is balm for the voice and friend to everyone who uses it. Long a champion for tired vocal chords and taxed throats, slippery elm’s slickness make it an ideal companion for those who are prone to use (and sometimes overuse) their voice.

Slippery elm or Ulmus rubra (Latin for “red elm,” so called for its lovely reddish bark) is a beautiful, native North American elm tree Introduced into Western herbal traditions by Native Americans. It’s the inner bark of this tree that is actually called “slippery elm” due to its, yes, slippery, smooth, and slimy-in-a-good-way properties.

#Lady Admiral #the astrallurgist #character sheet #aesthetic #a wolf's journey

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angels17324 · 5 years

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The Violet Paladin (Keith x Reader) Ch. 2

Word count: 1963 Update schedule: Every Monday [Masterlist] [Ch. 1]

We made it to the other side unharmed, there was a planet near us, but not much else, and the other ship didn't follow us.

"The lion seems to want to go to this planet. I think it's going home," Lance tried to explain as we flew into the planet's atmosphere. We all huddled closer to Lance... Mostly for the stability of the chair.

"Is it just me or is anyone else having second thoughts about flying through an unknown wormhole?" Hunk asked.

"It got us away from the alien warship didn't it?" Lance questioned back. "I don't know if you've noticed but we're in an alien warship!" Keith retorted "What you scared?" Lance smirked.

"With you at the helm? Terrified," Keith glared.

"Cadets!" Shiro warned in a commanding voice. "If we're going to get through this we're gonna have to work together," He told us.

"There's a castle over there," I pointed out. We flew closer until we landed. "The lion would tell us if the air was unbreathable right?" I questioned before following the others.

"Only one way to know, but let's be careful still," Pidge said. We walked out and onto the ground, the lion suddenly roared loudly... very loudly... Jeez, I thought I listened to music too loud. However, it seemed to have opened a door for us, we walked in.

"Hello!" Hunk shouted.

"I thought the steps would have been bigger based on the size of the lion," Pidge analyzed.

"Well someone had to have built the lion and the castle so they wouldn't be much bigger than us if they're still around that is," I responded. Looking around it looked abandoned. That is until a light scanned us. Shiro tried questioning the light before a path lit up for us.

"Hello?" Hunk kept calling out as we walked through the hall. We reached a large room with a podium in the middle. Two pods soon rose from the floor, I looked at them amazed. The first pod opened to reveal a girl who looked not much older than me.

"Father," She cried out as she almost fell, Lance, catching her. "Who are you? Where am I?" She questioned.

"I'm Lance, and you're right here in my arms." He tried flirting.

"Your ears, they're hideous what's wrong with them?" She asked I cupped my ears feeling slightly offended. Before she grabbed Lance and pulled his arm behind his back and pinched his ear. After Lance explained how the blue lion brought us, she had more questions than answers, but we found out her name was Princess Allura. She went to the control panel when the other guy emerged, and immediately attacked Lance, I almost felt bad for him, but it was kinda funny to watch them explain a battle that never happened.

"It can't be, we've been asleep for ten thousand years!" Allura shouted. Allura told us about Zarkon, which Shiro informed us that he was still alive for over ten thousand years and that he was looking for Voltron.

I looked around at the technology they have, for being over 10,000 years old it looks thousands of more years beyond the current speck of our tech back home. A flashing red alert brought me back, and I looked to see another one of those ships we had just escaped.

"Let them come, by the time they get here you six will have reformed Voltron, and destroy his empire!"

"Princess there are six of these lions, how will we find the other five?" Shiro asked Allura lead us to another room where a platform lit up, and then a star map appeared around us.

"The black lion looks like it's in the same location as the blue," Allura told us how the black lion is in the castle. Then she went on to explain the Lions mirroring their paladin's quintessences... still, don't understand what that is, but I am curious to know which one fits me.

"The black lion is the decisive head of Voltron, and takes someone who's men will follow his command," No real surprise there that the black lion is Shiro's "The violet lion is a creative one ever changing, its pilot must be adaptable and creative. As the heart of Voltron always between the mind and body and balancing everyone out," She smiled at me.

"The green lion has an inquisitive personality, and need's a pilot of intellect and daring," The green lion is Pidge.

"The blue lion-" Lance interrupted her.

"Let me guess, best/ most handsome pilot of the bunch,"

"The yellow lion is kind and caring, its pilot puts the needs of others above his own," Hunk is now the yellow lion.

"The red lion is temperamental and the most difficult to master, the pilot needs to rely more on instinct than skill alone," Keith is the red lion.

"Wait, this guy?" Lance asked.

"However I, unfortunately, can’t find the red lion at the moment, the castle might need some tune up after 10,000 years," She explained.

"Alright team, we don't have much time," Shiro said. "Pidge and I will take a pod and go for the green lion, Lance and Hunk take the blue lion and go find the yellow lion, Keith and (Y/n) go for the purple lion as fast as possible, and if you find the coordinates for the red lion go get that one as well," Shiro explained.

"I'll load pods with the coordinates, and send them to the blue lion" Coran left with us following shortly after. "Now make quick work of your missions we can only keep the wormhole open for about two of your earth hours,"

"Wait, what!" we all called out moments too late as we'd already flown through the wormhole. I sighed a bit not knowing much other than Coran said it was a peaceful planet. Keith piloted the pod towards the planet.

"You pilot way better than Lance," I said trying to make small talk, no response, "Not much of a talker?" I tried again, still no response... "You know this will be a really boring trip if you don't at least try to talk." I tried a third time, still no response so I just gave up until we landed.

"Let's hurry," He finally said hoping out shortly followed by me. I walked around trying to sense the lion or something and I felt as if I were being pulled in a direction. "Hey, do you even know where you're going?" He asked. "Not really."

"Are you trying to get us lost or something?"

"You can always go back to the pod," I told him, while still walking. "Besides I feel-" I screamed slightly as I fell through the floor. I landed in the middle of a cavern with a glowing light down the hall.

"Are you okay?" Keith asked I could almost feel a smirk from him.

"Fine, just go back to the pod or something I'll meet you when I get out," I said before walking towards the light, I heard him say something but not what as I already walked in pretty far.

I turned to an opening and saw the violet lion in a similar state to how we found the blue lion.

"Wow..." I said slowly walking up, I placed my hand on the forcefield which disappeared after just like with the blue lion she knelt down to let me in. "You're gonna have to help me," I said as I sat in the seat, she pulled me forward and almost as if I could hear words she showed me what to do, and I flew out. After I had met up with Keith we were the first group back, shortly followed by Shiro and Pidge. Then finally Hunk and Lance who seemed to have been through hell.

"You made it." Allura seemed happy.

"Yeah, just barely that was a nightmare. I almost puked out there. I felt like Hunk," Lance groaned.

"Imagine how I felt. I am Hunk!" He said.

"Yeah, we had a tough time too," Pidge smiled at Shiro.

I chuckled a bit, "Us too." I looked over at Keith who just shook his head.

"Have we found the red lion yet?" Shiro asked getting back to business.

"Allura just located it, There's a bit of good news and bad news. Good news is, the red lion is nearby, Bad news is it's on a Galra ship orbiting Arus, oh but good news again we're Arus!" Coran said.

"They're here already?" Shiro said I swear I heard a bit of fear in his voice.

"Yes, it seems my calculations were off, finger counting is more of an art, not a science," Coran said.

A large screen suddenly appeared in the room which what seemed to be a purple furry creature like being was this a Galra I thought.

"Princess Allura, I am commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I come on behalf of emperor Zarkon, lord of the known universe." He stated everyone, gasped, " I am here to confiscate the lions. Turn them over to me or I will destroy your planet." The transmission ended.

"Alright let's not panic," Shiro said.

"Not panic? That scary purple alien thing is driving his ship right towards us, and we only have five lions,"

"Only four working lions," Pidge noted.

"Thank you, Pidge. Four working lions and a castle that's 10,000 years old!" Hunk continued.

"Actually it's 10,600 years old. You see my grandfather-"

"Not helping Coran," I said.

"See? Now is the perfect time to panic," Hunk said.

"Wait, this castle has a particle barrier we can activate,"

"Girl, you've already activated my par-"

"Lance!" Shiro scolded.

"The particle barrier won't hold against the ion cannon forever, the Galran technology must have advanced since we last fought them,"

"Panic now?" Hunk asked.

"No. we just gotta figure out our plan of action and figure it out quickly," Shiro said.

"I say we pop through a wormhole and live to fight another day," Lance said.

"I second that. Yes. We tried to find all the lions, right?" Hunk tried to get everyone on board. "We only have four lions, we can't form Voltron. I mean we can form a worm and go through that wormhole Lance was talking about."

"Alright it's settled, Allura you're with me, one of you take the old guy," Lance said.

"We can't just abandon Arus. The Galra will keep destroying planets and capturing prisoners until we stop them," Pidge said.

"Okay. If we run, then maybe Sedak will follow us and leave Arus alone as we did with Earth, we form the snake worm thing, and fly out of here,"

"Sendak could destroy the planet and come after us anyway," Keith told him.

"Staying is our only option."

"Here's an option: Shut your quiznak!" Lance shouted.

"I don't think you're using that word correctly,"

"What do you know, Mullet?"

"We're staying!" They got in each other's faces, honestly, if I didn't know better I'd think they were five.

"Leaving,"

"Staying!" Pidge shouted.

"Snake!" Hunk shouted.

"Idiots," I muttered.

"Guys stop!" Shiro shouted. Everyone separated from each other, with Shiro and I in the middle.

On one hand, I had agreed with Pidge and Keith, we needed to stop the Galra on the other I agreed with Lance and Hunk, although probably not for the same reasons, we don't know exactly what you're up against.

"Princess Allura these are your lions, and you've fought the Galra before what do you think we should do," He looked at her.

"I... don't know," She seemed conflicted.

"Perhaps your father can help," Coran said. The two left and I just hoped they'd hurry in whatever they were doing or we'd be in big trouble.

[Next] If anyone wants to be added to a tag list please message me.

Tag list~

@somebodytouchedmysaeran @ittie-bittie-tittie

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rebelsofshield · 4 years

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Nic’s Episode IX Treatment

So in 2018, I started a very short lived project where I asked Star Wars fans what their dream Episode IX script would be. It didn’t really end up taking off due to my own busy schedule, but I had a lot of fun doing it and it was a blast hearing other fan’s theories and wishes.

I wrote a Star Wars Episode IX treatment of my own for fun. I figured with The Rise of Skywalker out now, it might be fun to see where I envisioned the franchise going in the future. I wrote this in 2018 before in any of the casting was announced and before the Palpatine reveal, so it’s very different from the finished film. Happy to hear thoughts and feel free to message me your Episode IX ideas as well! What would your dream version of this movie have been!

Episode IX -Once and For All

Opening Crawl:

A galaxy divided! Lead by the Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and his mysterious knights, The First Order tears across the galaxy. No world is safe. Planets burn. Standing in opposition, General Poe Dameron leads a sprawling Resistance with the help of Commander Finn and Rey, the last of the Jedi. Together, they hope to free the galaxy from falling once again into tyranny. In an act of evil, The First Order has attacked the neutral world of Mornio. To save its innocent people, the Resistance rushes to its aid…

Synopsis: The Skywalker legacy comes to a close as a galaxy in the midst of a massive civil war heads towards a climactic final battle. Rey, Finn, Poe, Rose, and Kylo Ren are forced to face their pasts and destinies.

We are six years after the events of The Last Jedi.

Central Cast at the start of the Film:

Main Cast: Rey- As the new final bastion of the Jedi, Rey must not only fight for the freedom of the galaxy but the preservation of the Order itself. Rey has fashioned the traditional lightsaber into a Pike-Saber and has been studying for years the texts taken from the last Jedi temple. She fights on the front lines of the war and finds herself becoming a legend in a way she never anticipated. Rey finds herself drawn to individuals who are powerful in the Force and finds herself trying to take on the teacher role while she is still learning. Finn- Finn is now a key figure in the ground corps for the Resistance. With his familiarity with the First Order and experience in infantry, Finn has quickly become one of the most important members of the Resistance. However, he soon finds that he is also a legendary figure to the First Order as well and it becomes clear that he may be the secret weapon that may win the war. Poe Dameron- Having given up his days of being a pilot for a life of military leadership, Poe is now a general in the Resistance military, carrying on Leia’s legacy. Poe still struggles with a need to have his feet on the ground and with his emotions. He also finds himself head over heels for Finn and having trouble figuring out how to balance his emotions for Finn while carrying out the mission. Kylo Ren- Now the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Kylo Ren balances his own newfound power with his still volatile emotional and mental state. Having found that his new absolute power leaves him wanting, Kylo has become obsessed with ancient Dark Side secrets in the hopes of discovering something that justify his actions in life. He is joined for the first time in the series by the remainder of the Knights of Ren, Luke’s former pupils. He has taken up residence in Darth Vader’s palace from Rogue One. Think a sort of Gothic Romance character. Overwhelmed with secrets and emotions and held up in a castle.

Supporting Cast:

Rose Tico- Rose is now the leading engineer and ship designer for the Resistance. She has become good friends with Rey and leads active recruitment efforts for the Resistance for rescued planets. Lando Calrissian-Lando meets up with the main crew at Leia’s funeral. He has a deep regret for having sat out the war, claiming that one war was enough for one lifetime, but that he should have been there for Han and Leia. Tyla Calrissian –Lando’s daughter and current head of the Mining Guild. Tyla is one of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy in that she controls all of the mining companies. Her profits help steer the war.

Ichon- An alien that Rey meets after the opening battle. He is Force-Sensitive and unsure of how to take care of himself and this new power within him. He looks up to Rey and see her as a potential teacher and mentor. General Hux- Hux is vying for power to usurp Kylo Ren as the ruler of the First Order. He has begun to see Kylo and Force-Users in general as being antithetical to galactic order and not worthy of their place in the galaxy.

Ambro Ren- The second most powerful/senior member of the Knights of Ren. Has a long standing rivalry/mentorship with Kylo. More of a Snoke loyalist. Sees Kylo as being a detriment to Snoke’s longterm vision. Played by Michael Mando (?)

FN-4928-A young Stormtrooper that Finn befriends while undercover

Act I: Discoveries (45 minutes)

We open up in the midst of a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance above and on the surface of a tropical planet, Morneo, with a diverse alien population and large coral like plants. Poe, Connix, and Rose are leading the orbital battle against the Resistance fleet while Finn and Rey head up the ground battle. Rey makes a dramatic reveal, maybe kind of like Wonder Woman, of her new staffsaber and it becomes clear that she’s an icon to the Resistance as she saves a platoon of soldiers and locals lead by Finn. Poe and Rose organize an attack in which a hidden portion of the Resistance fleet slingshots around Morneo using the planet’s gravity to their advantage. This sends the First Order fleet into retreat and the Stormtroopers on the ground are forced to surrender. After the battle Finn encounters a dying Stormtrooper that recognizes him and speaks his name. This forces Finn to realize that his reputation has grown amongst the First Order and he may be instrumental to their defeat. Rey makes a connection with a local alien, Ichon, who approaches her after the battle. He may be Force sensitive and is unsure how to approach the situation. Rey is overwhelmed by this and retreats. Rose recruits new warriors from the planet to join them in the fight. One of the aliens shows Rose a stockpile of old Imperial technology including a gravity well. This excites Poe as he realizes that it may be key in helping to trap the First Order fleet. As Poe excitedly begin to explain this to Rey and Finn he receives a communication from command. Leia has passed away. We skip to Leia’s funeral which is held on a planet that has grown to double as both a refuge for people displaced by the war and for the Resistance. Chewbacca and 3PO give a respectful but humorous eulogy, but Poe and Connix deliver the final lines. At the funeral, 3PO introduces Poe and Rey to Lando. Lando, who is remorseful that he has stayed out of the conflict for this long, offers his assistance in joining the Resistance and mentions that his daughter Tyla, who is currently the leader of the Mining Guild, may be able to be won over as an ally. We cut to Kylo Ren having taken up residence in Darth Vader’s former palace on Mustafar. Kylo having sensed that his mother has passed and growing frustrated with his position as supreme leader has become obsessed with attempting to find purpose in his life and finding where Vader’s rule failed. He spends much of his time attempting to commune with old artifacts. Here we learn more about the Knights of Ren and their relationship to Kylo and Snoke. One Knight of Ren in particular, Ambro Ren, a Snoke loyalist, begins to piece together what really happened to the former Supreme Leader. Hux and Kylo fight via hologram. Hux wants him to take a more active stance in the war effort, which is a sentiment echoed by some of the Knights, who were off fighting the war during the events of The Last Jedi. Ambro Ren, who sees Kylo’s inaction and instability dangerous to the goals of the Knights and the First Order, begins to speak with Hux about potentially overthrowing Kylo.

Finn lets Poe, Rey, and Rose know that he is leaving to attempt a revolt in the First Order. This is hotly debated by the team especially Poe, but Finn convinces them that it is what he needs to do. Rose talks to Poe about letting Finn go. She tells him that Finn will always do what he thinks is right and that you can’t hold him back from doing it. She also tells Poe that she knows how he feels about him, but she’s known for a while that Finn only has his eyes on one person. Finn packs his things and Poe wishes him off. He gives Poe a one way encrypted commlink to communicate with the Resistance if needed. Poe warns him that he knows that this will be tough and that it’ll probably bring about a lot of old experiences and bad memories. Poe kisses a surprised Finn as he leaves. Finn isn’t sure of what to make of it.

Ichon, who joined up with the Resistance, approaches Rey in her chambers to try and discuss what just happened to him. He feels something inside him he doesn’t recognize. Rey isn’t sure how to teach him. She tries her best to talk to him but finds that she is lost in her words and is just as new at this as he is. Maz Kanata leads Finn to the First Order world enslaved world of Onderon. Finn convinces Maz to speak to her allies in the outer rim and to bring help for whatever battle may lie ahead. Finn slips into the ranks of the Stormtroopers using a stolen suit of armor and is quickly deployed.

Act II: Where are We and Where are We Going (50 minutes) Lando organizes a meeting between Rey, Rose, Poe and Tyla. It doesn’t go well. Lando and Tyla don’t have the best relationship in the world. We learn that Tyla more or less won control of the Mining Guild after Lando bungled control of it for so long. Tyla doesn’t see the benefit in taking sides in the war if the Mining Guild can profit off both sides and feed customers on Canto Bight and elsewhere. Rose makes a plea for Tyla to see the damage that remaining neutral to the war is doing to the galaxy, but she is mostly brushed off. During the conversation, Rey sees Tyla move a datapad subtly without touching it and senses that Tyla may be Force-Sensitive and approaches her after the meeting. Tyla brushes her off. Kylo is plagued by visions in the Force he does not recognize and begins to suspect that they may be from Vader. He becomes obsessed with the visions to the point where he begins to shirk his duties as Supreme Leader leaving the Knights to host meetings with Hux and the remainder of the ruling council on their own. Ambro proposes his plan to assassinate Kylo. The Knights are beholden to Snoke’s vision, not that of Kylo. Rey and Poe share their frustrations with one another about the state of the war. Poe pulls up a map of the galaxy and talks to her about how the war is going, which isn’t well. The First Order is still running off momentum from the initial attack all those years ago and the Resistance is just too unorganized and scattered to mount a single attack. He worries that without Leia they may be lost. He wishes he could be more like Finn or Rey and be a symbol people could rally behind.

Finn is deployed with a large amount of Stormtroopers into a battle on the fungal world of Felucia. They land into a massive D-Day like conflict between the First Order and the Resistance/local milita. We follow Finn in the battle almost exclusively and his struggles to keep his cover while not actively killing members of the Resistance. He ends up using his energy to save wounded soldiers and protect Stormtroopers. This ends up earning him a reputation with the other soldiers. One, FN-4928, takes a liking to Finn and sticks close to him once the fighting has calmed down. After the battle, Captain Phasma, now a cyborg, arrives to oversee the rest of the campaign. Rey returns to her chambers and is visited by the Force Ghost of Luke who helps guide her in her worries about training new Jedi in Ichon and Tyla. Luke apologizes for not being able to be the teacher she needed, but he sees within her the ability to be something he could not: the future of the Jedi Order.

Emboldened Rey approaches Tyla at night. She finds her in a combat training session with several sparring droids. Tyla is a real bad ass and knows how to handle herself with a blaster pretty damn well. Tyla explains that when she was younger the other members of the Mining Guild were always jockeying for power. Assassinations weren’t uncommon so she trained herself from a young age to defend herself. Rey mentions how the Mining Guild may bring her life power and stability, but there is a yearning in her that Rey recognizes. Rey mentions how she used to be lost and alone, but the Force guided her and has given her a purpose in life. Part of that purpose may be teaching people like Tyla. Tyla is convinced and leaves the Mining Guild decision to a vote with a bewildered Lando acting in her stead and decides to train with Rey and Ichon. Poe leaves a flustered 3P0 in charge of rigging the vote in their favor. Rose and Rey have an emotional goodbye as they wish each other luck on their missions. Rey says that Rose’s hope inspires her.

Finn marches through the jungles of Felucia with the rest of his squadron. One night, Finn sneaks away from camp to send a message to Poe confirming his survival and status. FN-4928 finds him and quickly learns his identity. Instead of turning him in, he swears loyalty to his cause, which makes Finn feel uncomfortable.

Rey takes Tyla and Ichon to Ach-To. She tells them of the legend of Luke Skywalker and how he was both just a man and something much more. Together she helps them center themselves and commune with the planet. Rey reads to them from the ancient Jedi texts and helps the two of them tap into the Force and their potential.

Finn and his squadron participate in an assault lead by Phasma on a Resistance bunker. The troopers make short work of the defenses. Inside, they discover that the crew were in the midst of sending a distress signal to the Refugee planet. Believing they have found the Resistance’s base, Phasma informs the Knights of Ren. Kylo is finally visited by the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. Anakin tells Kylo that he has failed to learn from his past and that he walks a path not unlike his own. It was a path that brought him nothing but pain and suffering, but the Light still found him in the end. Kylo rejects this and claims that Anakin was weak and he sees through his lies. Anakin attempts to reason with him but Kylo pulls some unforeseen Force whosawatsit and banishes Anakin’s spirit. Kylo storms off. We see illuminated in silhouette the Force Ghosts of Anakin, Leia, and Luke. They hold hands. Anakin tells them he tried. Luke says he knows and he’s sorry. Leia says that they’ve done all they could. The fate of their family is in the hands of another. Kylo approaches the Knights of Ren. Infuriated, he demands action. They are to attack the refugee planet with their entire fleet and banish hope from the galaxy.

Act III: The War to End All Wars (45 minutes) Finn sends a warning to the Refugee Planet that the First Order knows their location and is prepping an assault. He confides in FN-4928 that he isn’t sure of what to do and that he had hoped that he would be farther along in his plans to free his fellow troopers by now. 4928 tells him that he believes in Finn and he knows other troopers will follow him if he were tell them to. Knowing that the First Order is on its way, the Resistance preps for what could be the climactic battle of the war. Rose and Poe prep the team for their plan. Rose will deploy the salvaged Imperial gravity wells to trap the First Order fleet in transit so that the Resistance can ambush them. Rey, who is still on Ach-To, calls Poe about what they should do about getting Finn out of the fleet. Poe says that they have to prioritize taking out Hux, Phasma, and the First Order leadership, but that he can’t stop Rey from conducting “Jedi business.” Rey, Tyla, and Ichon depart Ach-To.

On the refugee planet, word has spread that the First Order is about to attack. These people, who have already lost their homes and loved ones, begin to panic. Poe sees the fear in the people around them and with encouragement from Rose gives a rousing speech about the importance of what is occurring here. The people on this planet represent everything the First Order does not: chaos, freedom, diversity, ingenuity, and hope. They have a chance to bring that back to the galaxy and make the losses of those that came before mean something. R2 and BB-8 broadcast this around the planet. Poe leaves unsure if his speech worked at all. Rose gives him a pat on the back. She’s proud of him. She leaves for the gravity wells. Poe leaves with what little military he has, but he is soon joined by hundreds of ships from the planet. The fleet, which is made up with a wide array of diverse and crazy looking ships (alliance, alien, Maz’s pirates, even some prequel ships, feel free to load up with cameos), preps for launch. The attack begins and both fleets engage. It’s easily the biggest space battle ever done in the franchise. The First Order seems to have the upper hand but Lando arrives on the Millenium Falcon co-piloted by Chewbacca and Nien Nunb and accompanied by Tyla’s Mining Guild forces. In the midst of the chaos, Rey slips her ship into the star destroyer Finn is on. Finn and 4928 begin their own broadcast on First Order frequencies, but they are attacked by Phasma and her men shortly into it. In the middle of the fight Phasma is about to stab Finn with her spear, but 4928 pushes Finn out of the way and is impaled instead. The image of a trooper sacrificing himself for Finn is broadcast across the fleet by Finn’s holorecorder. It causes general chaos throughout the troopers and infighting. Ships erupts into mutinies and TIES switch sides. Finn and Phasma duke it out once and for all. Kylo leads his men, who are preparing to betray him, into battle in the hopes of stopping the Stormtrooper uprising. Just as the Knights of Ren are about to go all Julius Caesar on Kylo, Rey and her team enter. A massive battle breaks out between them with each team leaning into their respective skills. Ichon uses some neat ass weaponry kinda like a yo-yo from his native planet that he combines with limited force abilities. Tyla is like a John Wick-Jedi with a blaster. The duel is a claustrophobic and brutal battle that travels through the corridors of the ship. We flash back and forth between the space battle and the duels. Rey and Kylo have a very intense battle as their respective teams clash. We allow for some dialogue here about who should carry the future of the Force and about the darkness and light in each of them. Ichon is killed by the one Knights of Ren. Horrified Rey leaves herself open and has her arm cut off by Ambro. Kylo holds her at saberpoint and asks for her to surrender. Hux sees the battle collapsing around him and decides to take things into his own hands. He seals himself inside his command chamber and begins barking direct orders. First he has every First Order ship prioritize fire on the gravity wells. The First Order loses multiple ships but they manage to succeed in destroying the wells and killing Rose in the process. Several Resistance pilots, such as Snap Wexley, are killed as well. It looks for a second that the First Order may retake the battle. Next Hux turns his guns to the star destroyer containing all of our heroes. After the first blast the entire ship turns into chaos. The battle continues in a ship that’s clearly about to fall apart. Kylo calls Hux and demands answers. Hux claims that Kylo and Force-Users in general are a danger to the First Order and galactic stability and that he is taking charge for the good of the new Empire. Ambro shouts that this wasn’t the plan. Realizing that he has been betrayed, Kylo uses the Force to snap all the necks of the surviving Knights at once. Kylo leaves for the bridge. Rey tries to stop him and tells him to try and leave the ship and that Leia’s son does not deserve to die like this. Kylo tells her that she was wrong about him and he leaves. Finn defeats Phasma and takes her captive. The surviving members of Rey’s team make their way to the hanger bay. They along with Finn are rescued by Lando and company aboard the Millenium Falcon. They escape. Kylo cuts his way to the bridge and collides the collapsing star destroyer with Hux’s command cruiser killing Hux. The battle swings to the Resistance’s side. Phasma, the current highest ranking member of the First Order, is ordered to call a surrender of their forces. Some of the ships turn tail and run but most prepare themselves for surrender. A few days have passed. A massive memorial wall has been erected on the refugee planet. It is inscribed with hundreds of names of those who have been lost in the battle and war. The names when pressed reveal a short hologram. Rey presses Rose’s name and an image of her with Paige appears. She inscribes Ichon’s name. She regrets that she doesn’t have a holo to add to the wall for him. She wonders if she failed him and if she’s cut out for this. Tyla arrives and assures her that without Rey, she would still be sitting behind a desk somewhere, not aware of the power that’s inside her. Rey awakened the Force in her and can do it for countless others. The two embrace knowing that they have a long path ahead of them. As they leave, Lando touches the wall and sees a brief hologram of the party on Endor. He smiles. Finn welcomes several Stormtroopers to the ranks of the refugees. They feel awkward and Finn helps to find ways for them to feel at home and useful to their former enemies. One of them tells him he’s sorry about his friend that died, and Finn says that Rose was like her sister and died like a hero so others could live. Poe approaches him and says that he’s proud of him. He keeps finding hope where there is none. Finn goes to mention the kiss to Poe, but he stops him. Poe says that he’s known for a while where Finn’s heart lies, and that he should follow it. Finn goes to Rey and kisses her. She returns it. We pan out of a world that is slowly coming back to peace. We cut to: A cloaked figure walks across a barren world. He is burned and walks with a cane. He has a robotic leg. He removes his cloak and takes a drink of water. He sits down and looks at the desert sky. A glowing hand reaches out and touches Kylo’s shoulder. He reaches for it. The End.

#Star Wars #Episode IX #personal #My Life #fan fiction #?

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sol1056 · 5 years

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let’s just leave this here

so let’s see how quickly I can get through a bunch of these, just so they don’t languish for the next month... here we go. behind the cut: why the opening never changed, why DW is deploying Josh again, a few about Iverson & Hedrick, is a reboot possible, staying in fandom vs leaving... and some others in the same vein.

why did they keep the same opening for all of vld seasons, considering the line-up was never supposed to come back to the original from s3?

Every indication is that originally, the team would return to the original lineup. Keeping the opening was probably meant to remind audiences of that inevitability. Or you could believe LM, who said the opening cost 20K to make, and thus was too expensive to do more than once. She’d rather spend that money on a vacation.

So I've heard that Josh Keaton is doing damage control for S8. Do you think Dreamworks sent him in because they know that he's the one guy that no one can get mad at? After what some of the fans have done to him this past year [...] I’m amazed that he's willing to stick around and try to make his fans happy for as long as he can. I can see why people say "We don't deserve him."

Josh has somehow managed that sweet spot between charming the fandom and gaining its trust. Doesn’t hurt that he’s got the chops, voice-wise, to take written dross (no, really, some of those lines are horribly clunky) and spin it into gold. More than anything else, he comes across as genuine, and that adds a certain credibility to his words.

But... Josh doesn’t really have a choice. Playing Shiro is what catapulted Josh upwards, and the last thing he can afford to do is piss off DW by refusing to play ball. He’d only be damaging himself (and his reputation among potential employers) if he didn’t snap to attention when called. Plus, I think he really does sincerely love the character, but it’s got to be a tough spot for him right now.

When you get down to it, the only one on VLD’s (former) staff who seems to believe Shiro belongs in the story and should be respected as part of the story... is Josh. Who else can Shiro’s fans look to, if Josh stops speaking?

So, yeah, Josh is it. And I bet he knows that, and knows it’s just part of signing up for such a major role. This is part of his job.

So I came across a pic of Mitch Iverson from SDCC 2018 where he and Tim Hedrick weren't in the panel ... and [Iverson] was wearing a SHIRO BLACK PALADIN top ... while the EPs & Hamilton were in the panel promoting S7, Iverson supported Hedrick & his story, and Shiro.

Hedrick was actively involved in every script as the story editor, and reportedly conceived of Shiro as an astronaut returning after his capture by aliens. Iverson got his start thanks to Hedrick, thus it makes sense that Iverson would be simpatico with Hedrick’s vision of the story.

On top of that, by SDCC Iverson already had his next gig lined up. He continued to write for VLD, so he had to be subtle... but a t-shirt was a good way to make his sentiments clear. Can’t blame the guy, seeing he probably knew what was coming and chose a quiet protest of his own.

As an American, how would you take it if someone, that is, Iverson, called himself a redneck? From what I know thats derogatory term & for people not exactly inclusive & supportive of minorities. He also retweeted an art of Allura with a quote: ‘Laters’, which I found in really poor taste...

Redneck is another slur adopted by the in-group. My guess is that if you called Iverson a redneck to his face, he’d be offended. But if you introduced yourself as a redneck, and then called him one, it’d be different. And yes, as a term, redneck has a complex history, and it changes subtly in terms of how each generation defines/uses it.

As for retweeting things in poor taste... eh, most people don’t have any training in social media. Jokes are the hardest; it’s so easy for them to go so wrong. Until VLD, I’d bet Iverson was lucky to have a few hundred followers. How many follow him now? It takes time to find your footing in striking the right balance of humor and dignity.

Sometimes the best course is to ignore the stumble. They’ll either learn, or they won’t. Either way, it’s their problem, not ours.

Will Tim Hedrick be allowed to continue the voltron universe the way he planned it?

I doubt it. He’s got a new project. If you’re now an EP finally getting your name at the top, would you really want to go back and fix someone else’s story? Sometimes it’s just better to leave it behind, and make sure the next thing you do is something you can have pride in.

...why do you keep saying the last episode Tim Hedrick wrote was The Feud? A lot of people keep repeating it, like it was his last 'fuck you' to the showrunners. But official sources all say 'The Journey Within' was his last episode.

All we can say for certain was that tJW is the last Hedrick episode broadcast. That doesn’t mean it was the last one written.

Here’s why a lot of us peg tF as Hedrick’s last written episode: the story editor credit. Hedrick's the sole story editor on all his other episodes; tF is the only one in which both Hedrick and Hamilton share credit. The simplest explanation is this episode was edited in that window during which Hedrick had one foot out the door, and Hamilton had one foot in. iow, Hedrick put it into the queue, edited half, and moved on. Ergo, last written.

I can’t believe how they just managed to anger literally everyone no matter your favorite character or ship.

I recall a quote from early on, where LM said they had a feeling they couldn’t please everyone. The problem (which I noted at the time, and has remained true) is that the answer isn’t to just piss off everyone.

It’s to figure out who you want your audience to be, and to write the best damn story you can for that particular audience. If you end up with a story only old-timer DotU fans love, and kids are lukewarm about, fine. If the reverse is true, fine. You can’t please everyone, especially in a reboot/remake. So you pick your battles, and write your story accordingly.

Looking around social media, most people I'm seeing are either rightfully upset, or they're hyperfocusing on the one single scene they liked because they just don't have the energy to deal with the show's bullshit right now. How can they fuck up the last season so badly that it seems like the general reaction is disappointment and denial?

I think there’s a common cause for the fandom reactions: exhaustion.

In American broadcast television, a 26-episode season runs from September to May, then a summertime lull, during which people digest and discuss. Binge-watching is changing this, but it seems one thing hasn’t changed: no matter how fast we watch a show, we still require processing time.

What did we get? A half-season, two months’ break, another half-season, two months’ break, a full season, three months’ break, and a final full season. If every season had provoked a spike equal to S1/S2, we might’ve been begging DW by June to just freaking chill. Fandom had barely begun to process one season and a new one was already landing on our heads.

On top of that, S3-S6 weren’t exactly walks in the part, post-release. In terms of controversy, S7 dwarfed them all. That made an awful lot of people (across the entire spectrum, from almost every sub-group in the fandom) disengage. Those who remained dialed back on their expectations (”as long as X happens, that’s all that matters”), or they hung in there, insistent it would turn out alright.

So either you’re exhausted from not being able to fully disengage with the final season still in the wings, you’re exhausted from convincing yourself this one specific thing would be enough, or you’re exhausted from defending what turned out to be indefensible.

Frankly, disappointment and denial is a fairly soft landing, compared to what might’ve been. But any way you cut it, the fandom’s worn the hell out.

Do you think LM and JDS are gonna address this or are they just going to ignore the complaints, wash their hands and move on?

They don’t need to do anything. They don’t work for DW anymore. If someone has to address the complaints, it’d be DW or DW’s chosen spokesperson. I guess you could call that washing their hands, but the simple fact is they’re not on the payroll. They’re not responsible for VLD anymore.

do you think it's possible for dreamworks to rewrite season 8? i've never heard of a show doing that before and i'm afraid that we'll be stuck with what we got, but damn, i really hope that we will get to see the characters get the endings they deserve, if nothing else.

I’m not sure why anyone would bother. S7 was rife with problems; S3-S6 meandered back and forth. If I were to do a soft in-series reboot, I’d go back to the end of S2. That’s the clearest break, story-wise.

But if you’re going backwards 50+ episodes to the 26th, just keep going and start over. More to the point: not a lot of creators would sign on to inherit problems not of their own making. Same reason new directors on a property will want to rework the script in some way (if not start over from scratch).

Do you think this is truly the end of Voltron: Legendary Defender? I know that a lot of the cast and crew wanted to continue on with a sequel, and there's so many possibilities and things they can do in that universe, not to mention that Voltron is (or rather, was) a money bank...

Your guess is as good as mine, really. Hopefully we’ll get at least hints when the SACanime panel rolls around in early January.

There's a change petition for the "original s8" to be released ... [people] believe that LM and JDS are NOT the ones who ruined the last two seasons and that it was "exec meddling." Like, no, sorry, exec meddling appears to be what made it good in the beginning.

If we consider Yoo an exec by virtue of being CEO of Studio Mir, then I kinda wish he’d meddled a bit more.

...I'm wondering if the original version exists, completed. In one post, you said DW picked Tim over L/J so surely that got animated? What do you think? Be real. I don't want to get my hopes high thinking there's some buried treasure out there to find.

Ah, no, sorry, I wasn’t speaking in the sense of VLD but in the overall corporate sense. Here’s how the scenario often plays out: manager A and employee B do not get along. The longer they clash, the greater the chance A will find an excuse to fire B. The project is literally not big enough for the both of them.

B could resign, quit, or do a preemptive strike: go over A’s head and ask for help. If B leaves the company shortly after, it means the higher-up said: “I’ve heard A’s side, and I think A is right.” The exec might offer a good reference, or blame it on a no-fault bad fit. Doesn’t matter; the exec’s chosen A’s side.

Now, consider what actually happened: B gets transferred off the project, and gets a major promotion -- basically up to the same level as B’s former manager. Either B has some of the most amazing dirt ever, is phenomenally good at twisting reality to seem like the wronged party... or the higher-up reviewed the situation and decided that of the two, B was the one worth keeping.

Having decided that, the exec made an offer B couldn’t refuse, which would be to run a show that’s practically tailor-made to fit B’s dream job. That’s what I meant by losing the battle (how VLD would go) and winning the war (being the party seen as in the right, by the execs).

The only way for A to turn things around is to have a blisteringly successful final product. It could literally kill two careers with one stone: the (former) employee, B, who spun such a good story, and the exec(s) who believed B.

Given the numbers I’m seeing for S8... that exec did choose wisely.

ETA (sorry forgot this part): There might be pieces, but it really depends on what version control is in use (if any). For that matter, even if there were saved copies, who’s to say those didn’t get, whoops, deleted at some point? I’d put my bet on there being nothing, now, except what we got. Sorry.

I could understand if you never want to have anything to do with this show ever again.

Oh, jeez, I was here before VLD and I’ll be here after. Once we all get over our mutual exhaustion (and the holidays, bloody great timing, there), it’ll be time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Fandom’s got a lot to do, putting things back together in all the shapes that’ll make us happy. This is the best time to be in a fandom, if you ask me. Everything’s just getting started!

#vld #voltron #come for the sugar stay for the salt #wrapping up a bundle of asks #sol thinks about stuff

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

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Let’s remember what the left critique of Obama’s administration is. Leftists argue, roughly, that while Obama came in with lofty promises of “hope” and “change,” the change was largely symbolic rather than substantive, and he failed to stand up for progressive values or fight for serious shifts in U.S. policy. He deported staggering numbers of immigrants, let Wall Street criminals off the hook, failed to take on (and now proudly boasts of his support for) the fossil fuel industry, sold over $100 billion in arms to the brutal Saudi government, killed American citizens with drones (and then made sickening jokes about it), killed lots more non-American citizens with drones (including Yemenis going to a wedding) and then misled the public about it, promised “the most transparent administration ever” and then was “worse than Nixon” in his paranoia about leakers, pushed a market-friendly healthcare plan based on conservative premises instead of aiming for single-payer, and showered Israel with both public support and military aid even as it systematically violated the human rights of Palestinians (Here, for example, is Haaretz: “Unlike [George W.] Bush, who gave Israel’s Iron Dome system a frosty response, Obama has led the way in funding and supporting the research, development and production of the Iron Dome”). Obama’s defenders responded to every single criticism by insisting that Obama had his hands tied by a Republican congress, but many of the things Obama did were freely chosen. In education policy, he hired charterization advocate Arne Duncan and pushed a horrible “dog-eat-dog” funding system called “Race To The Top.” Nobody forced him to hire Friedmanite economists like Larry Summers, or actual Republicans like Robert Gates, or to select middle-of-the-road judicial appointees like Elena Kagan and Merrick Garland. Who on Earth picks Rahm Emanuel, out of every person in the world, to be their chief of staff?

Centrism and compromise were central to Obama’s personal philosophy from the start. The speech that put him on the map in 2004 was famous for its declaration that there was no such thing as “blue” and “red” America, just the United States of America. A 2007 New Yorker profile said that “in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative.” Obama spoke of being “postpartisan,” praised Ronald Reagan, gave culturally conservative lectures about how Black people supposedly needed to stop wearing gold chains and feeding their children fried chicken for breakfast. From his first days in office, there simply didn’t seem to be much of a “fighting” spirit in Obama. Whenever he said something daring and controversial (and correct), he would fail to stand by it. For example, when he publicly noted that the Cambridge police force acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. for trying to break into his own home, he followed up by inviting the police officer and Gates to sit down and talk things out over a beer. A disgusted Van Jones has characterized this as the “low point” of the Obama presidency, but the desire to be “all things to all people” had always been central to the Obama image. Matt Taibbi described him during his first campaign as:

…an ingeniously crafted human cipher… a sort of ideological Universalist… who spends a great deal of rhetorical energy showing that he recognizes the validity of all points of view, and conversely emphasizes that when he does take hard positions on issues, he often does so reluctantly… You can’t run against him on issues because you can’t even find him on the ideological spectrum.

Adolph Reed, Jr., who as early as 1996 had described the politics of “form over substance” being practiced by a certain “smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics,” warned in 2008 that “Obama’s empty claims to being a candidate of progressive change and to embodying a ‘movement’ that exists only as a brand will dissolve into disillusionment,” and his presidency would “continue the politics he’s practiced his entire career.” Reed saw the devotion Obama inspired as a kind of “faddish, utterly uninformed exuberance” and said that Obama’s “miraculous ability to inspire and engage the young replaced specific content in his patter of Hope and Change.” (When Obama did get specific, Reed said, he often “relies on nasty, victim-blaming stereotypes about black poor people to convey tough-minded honesty about race and poverty,” talking frequently about “alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black communities.”)

Obama supporters think all of this is deeply cynical and unfair. But those who want to argue that Obama was the proponent of a genuinely transformational progressive politics, his ambitions tragically stifled by the ideological hostility of reactionaries, have to contend with a few damning pieces of evidence: the books of Pfeiffer, Rhodes, and Litt.

Granted, these men are all devoted admirers of Obama who set out to defend his legacy. But in telling stories intended to make Obama and his staff look good, they end up affirming that the left’s cynicism was fully warranted. Litt, for instance, seems to have been a man with almost no actual political beliefs. Recently graduated from Yale when he joined the campaign, he was never much of an “activist.” Litt was drawn to Obama not because he felt that Obama would actually bring particular changes that he wanted to see happen, but because he developed an emotional obsession with Barack Obama as an individual person. Pfeiffer feels similarly—he fell in “platonic political love.” Litt’s book begins:

On January 3, 2008, I pledged my heart and soul to Barack Obama… My transformation was immediate and all-consuming. One moment I was a typical college senior, barely interested in politics. The next moment I would have done anything, literally anything, for a freshman senator from Illinois.

He describes the beginning of his brainless infatuation: “[Obama] spoke like presidents in movies. He looked younger than my dad. I didn’t have time for a second thought, or even a first one. I simply believed.”

Litt’s memoir is remarkable for its lack of interest in actual policy. He mentions climate change in one or two sentences (p. 111), but seems to have spent most of his White House years preparing jokes for various black tie events like the Alfalfa Club Dinner and the Al Smith Dinner. (Litt’s rule for writing speeches for dinners of rich donors: “Jokes about money are acceptable… Jokes about power are not.”) Litt helped the president record videos for BuzzFeed (to get in touch with millennials), and Between Two Ferns (to plug the floundering healthcare.gov website), and to tape a birthday message for Betty White. But he was particularly in his element in preparing Obama’s annual comedy monologue for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD). The WHCD, now thankfully gutted of its significance, was mocked outside Washington for the icky chumminess shown between political elites and the press corps. But Litt obsessed over it, and anecdotes about it take up page after page of his book. (An incident in which one of the president’s comedy PowerPoint slides failed to display correctly is told with dramatic flair over two full pages.)

This is the Washington of the Turkey Pardon and the Easter Egg Roll, where photo ops and symbolic gestures matter far more than such comparative trivialities as “what the actual policies of the administration are.” In fact, Litt even says that during the second term, he felt as if he was being given “the political equivalent of a vegan cookie” because the speeches he was writing focused on things that were “all nutrition, no taste” like “help[ing] more students pay off loans” and “insur[ing] more people.” He wanted to make jokes about Republicans, not try to talk to the American public about housing policy. In fact, Litt, Rhodes, and Pfeiffer all subscribe to a politics of gesture, where if you want to address some crisis you give a grand speech about it. One of Rhodes’ proudest moments is writing “the Middle East speech,” and describing a moment of political difficulty, Litt writes: “We needed something to break through. That something was a speech.” These three men are speechwriters, so we can forgive them for being preoccupied with descriptions of things rather than the things themselves. But this tendency to prioritize “getting the words right” over the actual experiences of human beings ran through the whole Obama presidency. Ordinary people were a kind of alien species—Litt says they referred to them as “real people (RPs)” and tried to litter speeches with “RP stories” to make them relatable. “In Washington you never stop hearing about the details of policy but you rarely see its effects.” This is only true if you rarely bother to examine the effects.

There may not have been much Change, but there were plenty of speeches about it. The economic situation of the average Black family may have been catastrophic under Obama, but he did give “the historic race speech.” The United States may have bombed an Afghan hospital, burning dozens of patients alive in their beds (their families each received $6,000 in compensation), but Obama gave a very powerful Nobel Peace Prize speech about how the pacifism of Martin Luther King needed to be balanced with a recognition that using force can be morally necessary.

…My colleague Luke Savage has analyzed how pernicious the influence of The West Wing was on a generation of young Democratic politicos, and sure enough Litt says that “like nearly every Democrat under the age of thirty-five, I was raised, in part, by Aaron Sorkin.” (More accurately, of course, is “nearly every wealthy white male Democrat who worked in Washington.” The near total absence of women and people of color in top positions on The West Wing may give more viewing pleasure to a certain audience demographic over others.) Litt says in college he “watched West WingDVDs on an endless loop,” and Pfeiffer too describes “watching The West Wing on a loop.”

Luke describes the kind of mentality this leads to: a belief that “doing politics” means that smart, virtuous people in charge make good decisions for the people, who themselves are rarely seen. Social movements don’t exist, even voters don’t exist. Instead, the political ideal is a PhD economist president (Jed Bartlet) consulting with a crack team of Ivy League underlings and challenging the ill-informed (but well-intended) Republicans with superior logic and wit. During the West Wing’s seven seasons, the Bartlet administration has very few substantive political accomplishments, though as Luke points out it “warmly embraces the military-industrial complex, cuts Social Security, and puts a hard-right justice on the Supreme Court in the interests of bipartisan ‘balance.’” It has always struck me as funny that Sorkin’s signature West Wing shot is the “walk and talk,” in which characters strut down hallways having intense conversations but do not actually appear to be going anywhere. What better metaphor could there be for a politics that consists of looking knowledgeable and committed without any sense of what you’re aiming at or how to get there? Litt says of Obama that “he spoke like presidents in movies.” Surely we can all see the problem here: Presidents in movies do not pass and implement single-payer healthcare. (They mostly bomb nameless Middle Eastern countries.)

Their West Wing-ism meant that the Obama staffers completely lacked an understanding of how political interests operate, and were blindsided when it turned out Republicans wanted to destroy them rather than collaborate to enact Reasonable Bipartisan Compromises. Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff and reelection campaign manager, spoke to a key Republican staffer after the 2008 election and was shocked when she told him: “We’re not going to compromise with you on anything. We’re going to fight Obama on everything.” Messina replied “That’s not what we did for Bush.” Said the Republican: “We don’t care.” Rhodes and Pfeiffer, in particular, are shocked and appalled when Republicans turn out to be more interested in their own political standing than advancing the objective well-being of the country. Rhodes nearly has a breakdown when he is dragged through the conservative press over some Benghazi nonsense. He found himself in “an alternate reality that was insane,” and can’t believe Mitch McConnell turns out to be so “staggeringly partisan and unpatriotic” that he doesn’t care about Russian hacking.

The Obama Democrats, guided by the “let’s just all sit down in a room together and work out our differences” temperament of Obama himself, seemed desperate for Republican approval and shocked when the right proved unreasonable. In 2012, long after Messina had been told explicitly that Republicans were not going to be friendly under any circumstances, Obama invited congressional Republicans to the White House for a screening of Spielberg’s Lincoln, in order to show how political adversaries can cooperate for the common good. “Not one of them came,” Rhodes laments. Obama held out hope that a party willing to destroy the entire planet in order to preserve the privileges of the super-wealthy would come to his movie nights and work things out amicably.

The Obama administration bent over backwards to show that it was pragmatic and moderate and sensible, even inflicting cruel harm on families to show their toughness. Here is Tyler Moran, who was a deputy immigration policy director on Obama’s White House policy council:

There was a feeling that [the White House] needed to show the American public that you believed in enforcement, and that [we weren’t pushing for] open borders. But in hindsight I was like, what did we get for that? We deported more people than ever before. All these families separated, and Republicans didn’t give him one ounce of credit. There may as well have been open borders for five years.

We deported tons of people and separated families, and Republicans wouldn’t praise us!

This same bizarre naivete is evident in Obama’s dealings with Benjamin Netanyahu, as recounted by Ben Rhodes. Rhodes says it was obvious that “Netanyahu wasn’t going to negotiate seriously” about a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and that Netanyahu “rejected any effort at peace.” Israeli settlements continued to be constructed in brazen violation of international law. Yet, Rhodes says, “despite Netanyahu’s intransigence, [Obama] would always side with Israel when push came to shove.” In 2011, the Obama administration vetoed a UN Security Council resolution declaring the settlements illegal, even though they plainly were and Obama himself had previously acknowledged as much.** Rhodes says the Palestinians were finding “little more than rhetorical support from us.” They barely received even that. Rhodes relates a stunning anecdote in which Obama meets with a group of Palestinian youth. One nervous boy summons the courage to tell the president that his people are being treated as Black Americans were once treated. Obama does not know what to say in reply. Incapable of directly criticizing Israel, he mutters something about how he believes in opportunity for all. But moved by the boy’s testimony, he decides later to act. What does he do? He adds a line to a speech he gives to Israelis, in which he tells them that Palestinian families love their children just as much as Israelis love theirs. Does he condemn the racist Israeli state? He does not. Does he actually do anything for the boy? Of course not.

Rhodes and Obama are frustrated, then, at criticism “for not being sufficiently pro-Israel, which ignored the fact that he wasn’t doing anything tangible for the Palestinians.” They gave Israel billions of dollars in military equipment, they refrained from tangibly aiding the people Israel oppresses, and Obama went before AIPAC in 2012 to say absolutely nothing in support of Palestinian rights and instead declare:

In the United States, our support for Israel is bipartisan, and that is how it should stay…. I have kept my commitments to the state of Israel. At every crucial juncture – at every fork in the road – we have been there for Israel. Every single time. … Despite a tough budget environment, our security assistance has increased every single year… We’re providing Israel with more advanced technology – the types of products and systems that only go to our closest friends and allies. And make no mistake: We will do what it takes to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge – because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat… No American president has made such a clear statement about our support for Israel at the United Nations.

Obama swore to AIPAC that he will always fund Israeli missiles before the Detroit school system (if this isn’t “declaring allegiance to Israel”—which Ilhan Omar has been called anti-Semitic for talking about—then pray tell, what would be?) As with the Republicans, Rhodes cannot understand how Democrats can give in on everything and yet still be rejected. How do they not understand? They’re being played for suckers. Of course they’ll still call you anti-Semitic even if you would give the lives of your children to protect Israel’s right to an apartheid state. Of coursethey’re not going to stop building settlements just because you have declined to challenge them on anything. That’s how political power works: If the other party senses you’re weak and won’t do anything to pressure them, they’ll walk all over you! Throughout the Obama staffers’ books, you can hear them crying: But it’s not FAIR! We played nice and they took advantage of it! Gentlemen, that’s how this game works!

…The left can learn a few important lessons from examining Pfeiffer, Rhodes, and Litt. First, these are not the sort of people you want in government. You need people who (1) have clear moral vision (2) have thick skins and (3) do not care about the goddamn White House Correspondents’ Dinner. You need people who understand that politics is about gaining power and then using it to make people’s lives better, not about giving uplifting but empty speeches and walking with purpose down Washington hallways. They also need to avoid accepting political reality as “fixed.” The people who defend Obama suggest that his hands were tied—power was arranged in such a way that he could not act. But the question is: How are you going to change that arrangement of power? If it’s true that “X bill will never pass this Congress,” then how are we going to get a different Congress? The Obama administration was reactive. They played the hand they were given, they had a very narrow sense of the boundaries of the “possible.” They did not understand that being uncompromisingly radical is actually more pragmatic.It’s essential to stop fetishizing credentials. Obama wanted to “hire the best qualified people no matter their politics, and send a message of unity.” That led to him hiring actual Republicans. Unless you’re a Republican, don’t do this. “No matter their politics”? No, politics matter. Your politics are the sum of your vision of what ought to be done. If a president wants to get something done, they need a team of people who also want to get that thing done. That should be elementary, but there just wasn’t that much politics to the Obama movement. Everything was about a guy.And I suppose that’s the final lesson here: Cults of personality are bad. Movements need to be about the people, not a person. The West Wing view of politics is that you just need to get the smartest, most competent, most qualified, most virtuous people into government. But that means nothing without a substantive vision for change and an understanding of how you mobilize an authentic popular movement to make it happen.

#yes to all of this #*#essays

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