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cienie-isengardu · 3 years

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Lin Kuei: food

RELIGION <> ORIGINS / ARCHITECTURE <> FOOD <> FOR THE LIN KUEI <> ART <> CRYOMANCERS <> LIN KUEI SOCIETY <> MONEY & MATERIAL GOODS

The continuation of the morgianesffs-blog’s awesome list of questions about Lin Kuei. I initially divided them into smaller categories and the food will be the subject of the essay.

For the formalities, the original questions:

Food. What foods do they normally eat? What foods do they like? What foods don't they like? What foods do they absolutely love so much they'll stop what they're doing to get it?

I guess the Lin Kuei take on food may be stricte pragmatic one - they eat what is available. Preferable something that will keep them in top shape but everything will do, if necessary. Self-sufficiency and the art of survival are part of training so Lin Kuei would not have any second thoughts about eating stuff that people normally would not even think about. At the same time, there is a big chance that every adepts to some degree suffered from hunger and thirst, either as a part of punishment or test for endurance or a simply lack of skill to catch (steal) the food. I doubt the clan cares to feed warriors any fancy food, even more since the Lin Kuei headquarters (Temple / Fortress) is usually located in a harsh environment in which food is hard to grow to begin with. Because of this natural disadvantage, hunting seems like a good additional food source. It fed the clan but also gave opportunity for adepts / warriors to show their skills and gain experience (or in case of coming back with empty hands, bring them shame?). MK: Armageddon had the ice beasts marauding through the Arcika region - killing them could provide: food, furs, maybe some magic ingredients and safety.

Also, Lin Kuei knew about and used portals leading to Outworld - one of old comics, Battlewave #5, outright says the clan had a hidden passageway.

So the Lin Kuei could also get food from different realms, either by stealing the necessary stuff or as payment.. I kinda think that Lin Kuei has a system of related villages that serve the clan and satisfy the material needs like food and clothes. Maybe they pay tribute to the clan out of fear or maybe it is a more symbiotic deal?

Anyway, I don’t think the clan would spoil their people with any fancy food to keep the rigorous discipline in check - albeit the clan could put on a suitable feast in honor of a respected guest/client like Shang Tsung if the occasion required it. At the same time, I don’t think it is forbidden to taste new dishes once the warriors were on mission. Especially not on a long-term kind of job when clan members must pretend to be normal human beings.

Because of that I suspect that those warriors who work undercover in various parts of Earthrealm and/or Outworld may indulge in eating all sorts of food, from expensive to the cheapest trash food. Whatever the budget / occasion would allow them, at least. And who knows, maybe the warriors like to challenge each other to eat the weirdest possible food, as some sort of courage test? Or just for personal fun? You know, like many young people do taste the freedom once they are on their own, far away from a strict “family”?

At the same time, in times when there is not enough food, I can see the best parts or full portions being given to the most useful / essential members so the position in hierarchy may influence what and how much warrior is allowed to eat. Because let's be real here, (the old) Lin Kuei does not have a good track with empathy for weaklings.

Now, I’m gonna head into headcanon-ish territory, so keep that in mind, please.

I know it is a pretty popular joke (included even in the game itself as part of “friendship” finish moves) that Sub-Zero likes ice cream but honestly, I do think that cryomancers in fact prefer cold food over anything else.

(Human hybrid) Cryomancers are said to develop their powers as an young adults(*) and growing the freezing skills with passing time (which Bi-Han being the exception to the rule because he developed ice ability earlier than usual), so the older they get, their bodies are more and more adapted to hold the toll of cryomancer nature (like temperature dropping to negative degrees?). So getting inside them anything remotely warm sounds more like torture than feeding.

(Of course, it could be the other way, as needing the hot food to keep cryomancers from freezing from inside but the drastic temperature differences are not human-friendly. First aid in case of frostbite even cautions against heating the body too fast with too high a temperature to avoid negative effects. Which is why I’m sticking to cryomancers preferring cold food over anything warm)

The cryomancer kids may be less sensitive to the difference between temperature of their bodies and eaten food / drink - though I suspect cryomancer genes should not be dismissed even at such young age - but in all fairness, I can’t imagine Bi-Han or Kuai Liang eating anything else than raw food, preferably not touched by fire or at least deep-frozen / cold and ice-creams are both cold and can provide necessary minerals / calories to keep them going.

So yeah, I can totally see Bi-Han and Kuai Liang buying dozens of ice-cream boxes for breakfast, dinner and supper like it was the normal thing in the world. And probably keeping various deep-frozen foods in the fridge and eating it raw. To Tomas, Sektor or Cyrax’s horror, whoever was unlucky to be stuck with cryomancers on an undercover mission. Okay, I lied. Bi-Han would probably just send others to do the shopping so he would not need to deal with annoying people.

Bi-Han and Kuai Liang are capable of eating and drinking hot food because they were forced to learn that. That is why Kuai Liang was capable of brewing tea and why he used such a ceremony as a sign of good will toward Hanzo Hasashi even though drinking hot tea is, by nature, painful.

As for taste, I think both Bi-Han and Kua Liang like plain flavors. Especially Bi-Han with his minimalistic nature. Kuai Liang seems more willing to taste different food and drink under Smoke’s challenge or suggestion. Ice creams may be the exception but less because cryomancers care for taste in itself and more because they are okay to eat any flavor as long as it is cold and available. Otherwise, they may just freeze various liquids (water, milk, juice) and eat them as ice creams. Something that actually could be pretty frustrating for other warriors if they left a carton of milk out of sight for a moment only to find Bi-Han or Kuai Liang freezing it and eating its content with a spoon. Because of that, the idea of coffee or tea with milk could be problematic (controversial) matter. Bi-Han accepts only Hydro’s need for milk added to coffee or tea - once Hydro gets it, the rest of milk is a fair game. And Cyrax seems to be bold enough to guard any open carton of milk or juice and keep it out of reach of Bi-Han, especially if he was the one responsible for shopping.

(Also, if Bi-Han even decided to smuggle the outside food for young Kuai Liang, I think it wouldn’t be anything sweet. More like frozen french fries just to tell his little brother how earthrealm people eat it heated up. Just imagine the shock and outrage of little Kuai Liang at the human stupidity!)

Comics!Hydro, as a close companion of Bi-Han is the most used to weird cryomancers eating habits. Because of water-related powers, Hydro likes everything liquid or with liquid consistency - soups, broths, jogurths, smoothies, everything will do. Somehow not really into meat. Also, the one advantage of such power is that Hydro can feed on water if necessary.

In contrast to cryomancers, I imagine Tomas actually likes deeply fried or smoked stuff. Because without a fire there is no smoke and I like to think Enenra draws energy from fire / heat. Except the moments when Tomas is triggered by something from his past - then the smell or taste of burnt / burning meat (skin, hair) disgust him completely. May actually not like ice creams. Otherwise, he likes Czech food or in general, Central European / Central Eastern European cuisine because its taste is one of few things he remembers from his previous life. This is Tomas’ comfort food.

For me, Sektor with his obsessive behaviour is the one that tries to balance his food and reject the idea of eating anything for fun or out of curiosity. He wants to be in perfect shape and does not care for taste at all. To some degree, he also worries about how the foreign food will affect his strength, weight or body shape when on a long-term mission. The same as Bi-Han, Sektor is the last person that should be sent on shopping. However in case of the older Sub-Zero the problem lies in his abrasive nature and how he doesn’t conform to social norms (thus standing out too much) while Sektor won’t buy anything unless he reads the whole ingredients list and all additional information put on the package. Which means a shopping trip that takes like 10 minutes at best for other warriors usually takes Sektor around two hours, at least. You send him alone to shop for food and you are going to be hungry for the next few hours.

Considering how Cyrax is the most normal (balanced) Lin Kuei, he probably has the most healthy approach to food. Will eat anything that looks good, including fast foods ‘cause why not, it is cheap, edible and takeaway. And trust Cyrax to convince Sektor to eat that damn food too (the trick is to not let Sektor read what is - or is not - inside his meal). I don’t think Cyrax has a favorite kind of food because he doesn't like to limit himself. The same as Smoke, he may miss cuisine from his homeland but the general idea is to enjoy small pleasures like eating good food with companions.

Also, Cyrax is the only one that should be trusted with a shopping list if the Lin Kuei group for some reason ends in a shopping centre. A shopping list and the control over the trolley.

(Frost, like Bi-Han and Kuai Liang is all about cold / frozen food)

(*) From Mythologies Sub-Zero: “Sub-Zero learned of his ability as a young adult [...]. The ability to harness the element of cold is one that takes years of practice. It's full potential realized only by those who've mastered it at the latest stages of life. Sub-Zero's skills have the ability to develop much faster than those of the other Lin Kuei.” The fact that Bi-Han A) learned of his ability as a young adult and those B) develop much faster than usual at least suggest most modern cryomancers get their ice powers rather as grown up.

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andthebubbles · 2 years

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allrightey it’s just over an hour before it becomes next year (well, as i finish writing this post anyway lol) and ughhh i kinda hate NYE because it always feels sad somehow

it was a fairly good year for me though, which had its roots in last year. last year i happily, suddenly got a lot more time to myself where i could do what i wanted to again! feel more gay/queer/whatever again! rediscover my interests! was refreshed and thinking about fic and fandom things! i couldn’t find a fandom for ages though, or at least, one that stuck. (i drifted through things like spiderman and merlin; basically this year has been all about revisiting old fandoms and not acquiring any new ones except for blind channel for a short while. (FAH and the renshai chronicles don’t count imo.))

anyway, i eventually decided to turn sebis fic into an original fic. this year i started working on it quite a bit, got lost at chapter 5... but since i was thinking so much about oskar and ethan (seb and lewis renamed (well actually his name’s oskari because duh i was gonna make him half finnish (and half aussie)))--well, mostly oskar tbh--i kinda started thinking about seb again.

and then eurovision happened and i thought joonas’ hair in their performance looked cool and oskar-ish. and then when i saw his instagram i thought he KIND OF looked like a finnish version of seb

and then i started thinking about seb even more

(x)

and i missed his face so damn much

and then i started losing interest in joonas because like... first of all i get turned off by shirtless men for the most part (which is nothing against him, it’s just me and my preferences). second of all, i KNOW joonas is smart, he actually has some depth, but he rarely shows it. so the apparent immaturity (i know he’s not!!!!) plus the fact he’s 4 years younger than me (and it felt like it) meant that i never could quite crush on him properly.

MEANWHILE, SEB KEPT LOOMING (bc seb always seemed as perfect as one could be (or, perfect enough, even all the way back in 2012 when i started properly watching f1) and more mature to me because he’s 2.5 years older--but even that aside he always said some ridiculously profound things, even when he was younger, he’s kinda like an old soul reincarnated in a young body; on top of that he’s FUNNY and cute and etc etc (and the best, most flexible, versatile fic character one could ever ask for...!))

and then yeah, i wandered back into f1 bit by bit.

f1 is a weird fandom for me, i left in 2014 sometime (and properly by 2015 sometime, perhaps?) not because i lost interest in it and naturally drifted away; rather i made myself leave because the media naturally likes to comment on things and make a narrative. everybody loves a story. stories are the things that draw people in and make them stick around waiting for more. the problem is when it’s about non-fictional factual things which can’t always fit a narrative, but they get shoved into it anyway. and the even bigger problem is when it was mostly negative stories about seb in 2014 and he was unfortunately, stupidly, the only thing that could make me happy at the time

but ANYWAY. now i just figure that there are people being paid to worry about these things, about seb and f1 and whatnot. i’m not paid to do anything, and i don’t have to do anything either, so i’m not going to worry, i’m just gonna sit here and enjoy the seb content and ignore what i want to ignore. because when you like something or someone you’re supposed to enjoy it, right? not stress yourself out. so~

(i dumped this pic here on the off chance someone actually read this post and made it all the way to the end, and actually knows where i could reblog this ^ pic/give me a link to a post so i can reblog it. that would be greattt, i tried to find it through google but i couldn’t XD)

#nobody has to read anything under the cut #it's just a huge ramble about the year's fandom-related activities i got into #idk i just felt like writing something because it kinda feels like coming home... kinda maybe #feels like that until we might drift away again? :P #untracked f1 #seb #joonas #me.txt #oskar #sebis!seb

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shinygoku · 3 years

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Thunderbirds (2004)

A review by me, CutCat! This is 8-ish pages long!

Spoiler for the end of the film warning: Alan is in International Rescue. What a twist!

Totally Turbulent

Soooo, Tbirds ‘04 is one of those Infamous Adaptations, at least among those who enjoyed Thunderbirds (’65) and of more recent times, Thunderbirds are Go (’15). It’s one of those Bad Live Action Adaptations to a near sacred property, making it dubious contemporaries with Dragon Ball [Evolution], Avatar [The Last Airbender] and suchlike.

But wait, is it really That Bad?? Why is it as divisive as it is? What caused the film to be the way it is, and quite unpopular at that?

First I’m gonna make a long story very short by saying that a Live Action Thunderbirds movie was on and off production for many years, and that the script we ended up with is apparently better than another one that was pitched... but there are reports of cooler scripts further back that never made it, for various reasons. It’s almost a story of it’s own right but I’m only going by 2nd hand information at best, so I’d rather just link them at the end for Additional Reading if y’all felt so inclined.

With that out of the way, we have the Takes from the Andersons to look at. Sylvia had a very favourable reception to it:

"I felt that I'd been on a wonderful Thunderbirds adventure. You, the fans, will I'm sure, appreciate the sensitive adaptation and I'm personally thrilled that the production team have paid us the great compliment of bringing to life our original concept for the big screen. If we had made it ourselves (and we have had over 30 years to do it!) we could not have improved on this new version. It is a great tribute to the original creative team who inspired the movie all those years ago. It was a personal thrill for me to see my characters come to life on the big screen."

Whereas Gerry had a considerably blunter response at the opposite end of the scale:

"the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

As for me, a mere fan of predominantly the TAG series with limited but fond memories of the 90’s TOS reruns, I’d been inclined to ignore it and write it off as a DBE or TLA lost cause. But the combined effect of me deciding to check out unpopular media for myself, namely Dragon Ball GT and the live action Super Mario Bros. movie, and thoroughly enjoying both; and the other effect of TAG finishing but my fixation reawakening with the need to consume More, I dived deeper into the fan base than I had dared to before, in which I found more reasons to watch it and make up my own mind fairly.

Find out what I thought, and a review of the movie itself, below the Cut! ✂

Stormy Story

Ok, enough teasing, I see good things in the movie but not enough for it to be a secret masterpiece, not by a long shot.

1/3 Stars from Me. That’s Poor. (Compare with 2/3 being Good, and 3/3 being Excellent)

My main beef is unfortunately kinda the crux of the whole story, so while there were aspects I really liked, it had permanently set the bar low, and other issues were not helping matters. I’ll go into the problems after I sum up the plot.

[sitcom harp music]

14 Year Old Alan Tracy is stuck in a stuffy school with only his nerd friend to confide in. Something’s eating him up, and it’s jealousy over how his family are International Rescue, the secret rescue workers whole pilot the Thunderbirds, impossibly cool craft with capabilities vastly exceeding standard technology. Even when he’s allowed out of school and back to the Island, his envy and barely repressed resentment over not being a member himself causes him to go off and sulk and to try taking Thunderbird 1, the hypersonic jet plane, for a joyride.

His father and the leader of International Rescue, Jeff Tracy chews Alan out for almost compromising the need for the organisation to remain secret, lest their advanced technology falling into the wrong hands. Alas, said wrong hands are already working against IR: The Hood, a diabolical, cold blooded criminal with psychic powers and a grudge against Jeff. After successfully tracking the location of Tracy Island, he launches a missile towards Thunderbird 5, the Space Station where IR monitor potential disasters to prevent as much damage as possible, manned by John Tracy.

With TB5 crippled and John injured, Jeff and his other three older sons all scramble to the disaster zone via Thunderbird 3, the Rocket Ship. But with Tracy Island largely unmanned, The Hood moves in and aims to use the Thunderbirds to rob bank vaults while simultaneously smearing International Rescue’s good name. As the only Tracy brother left on Earth, it’s up to Alan and his 2 friends, Fermat and Tin-Tin, to foil the Hood and save his family, proving himself worthy in the process. He is also assisted by IR’s London Agent, Lady Penelope, and her driver/butler/lockpicker, Parker.

...

Ok, so that’s a summary you may read on the back of a DVD box, maybe it’s a bit long but whatever. Do you see what’s wrong with the story? The massive rift in the formula that should be within a template set by the hugely popular TV Series?

Critical Crux

For me, the main issue with the movie is that the Tracy family are thrown under a bus, or perhaps it’s more like being locked in a closet, in order for Alan to rise up and be The Hero. A show that was about each of them having different roles and personalities to the others, and the movie sees the best way to adapt the premise is to reduce 3 of them to cardboard cutouts who aren’t allowed to do or say anything meaningful, with the exception to this getting the dubious honour of getting a missile and exploding space station to the face.

I can’t clearly express how much this pisses me off! It’s downright insulting and baffling as well. They had pre established characters right there for the taking but go NO! Let’s make OCs to fill this newly created void instead and make the main Message of the film Friendship Teamwork.

Why does every child-skewed media hafta have the Friendship message? It’s a good one, sure, but nothing said in this film about it was fresh or original. Y’know what I see far, far less? Not just in Kid Flavoured Media, but all sorts? The importance of Brotherly Bonds between actual brothers!! I don’t subscribe to the massively misunderstood message version of ‘Blood is thicker than water’, but a story with the siblings actually pushed and stressed and coming out stronger at the end would have ruled!!

[For what it’s worth, the actual saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, i.e. the bonds you choose to forge are more important than happening to be born to certain people. This correct message is still compatible with literal siblings though!]

The other, somewhat lesser Large Issue with the movie is simply that we don’t see much in the way of Rescues with the titular Thunderbirds. We only get the tail end of the Oil Rig in Act 1, and then the ‘Birds are used predominantly to get to London and save 1 Monorail Car with TB4.

Watsonian Woes & Doylist Dilemma

When looking at Media, there’s 2 main angles to consider; Doylist and Watsonian. Doylist is the “real life / meta” angle, the structure of the story or interests of the author being in the plot, that kinda thing. Watsonian is the reason given within the story.

All stories have Watsonian and Doylist reasonings, the trick is to blend them in and not use a weedy Watsonian reason for something stupid happening.

Why bring this up? Because it’s still part of the Huge Problem I have with the film; the Doylist reason for all of IR being incapacitated so easily is so Alan can shine without fighting for focus in a large group. I don’t like it, but let’s go along with it for now.

Believe it or not, but I can accept that a Movie format isn’t going to be the same as an ongoing series. There’s way less time and you gotta hit certain beats. Ideally you also condense the essence of the show into the film while being more than just a long episode. They didn’t hit this note in my opinion...

But other than ‘It has to happen for he story to work’, there’s no damn reason for all the Non-Alan Tracys to be cooped up in the crippled TB5! They put all their eggs into one basket when a considerably more sensible choice woulda been to have a small crew, and the others remain on base. Because even without factoring in a worst case scenario where another missile hits them while in space, killing them all, which totally could have happened for all they know, there’s also the part about them being International Rescue! They gotta be ready to respond to other disasters should those develop. TB1, 2 and 4 were still available for use!

If I was Jeff making the boneheaded decision, I would have taken a second to think about it and have 1 of the Bros come up in 3 with me. Seeing to John shouldn’t be something 4 people are needed for, it would just get more crowded and the oxygen would be used way faster! Considering they all come close to asphyxiating, 2 less people would mean things weren’t so damn close to the wire! (Granted, the movie also has them falling into Earth’s atmosphere and burning up as a hazard, but the whole crew being there doesn’t affect that.)

Jeff! You’re the patriarch and supposedly most experienced dude in the whole movie! Why didja run into that trap with both eyes open? Stressful situation, sure, but in the Rescue Business you need to be able to listen to the cold, clinical angle. You’re risking more of your sons’ lives making such a rash judgement!!

Character Conundrums

This is the part of the review where I begin to really emphasise the differences between TOS and this movie. I’ll hold off TAG for now in the interest of fairness.

The movie is a mixed bag when it comes to the individuals within it. Some have been refreshing updates to stuffy 60′s tropes, but several draw the short straw, feeling even stiffer than their marionette precursors.

Alan - Hoo, boy. The plot follows Alan.... for the third time if you’re factoring in the Supermarionation movies, which was quite the baffling choice as Puppet!Alan is quite the obnoxious jerk. But whatever, new movie, new canon, new Alan. While the Alan of the 60′s was a bizarrely whiny brat of a character considering he was supposed to at least be in his early 20′s this Alan at least makes more sense to be annoying. But yes, he starts off as a sullen jerk with unclearly defined jealousy towards his own brothers and seemingly a lack of grasping the stakes behind International Rescue, viewing being one of the crew as a Cool Job rather than a gruelling, life-risking ordeal. Over the course of the movie (mostly Act 3) he becomes less of a berk and a better team player, even going as far as to save the Hood personally.

Jeff - One of the stronger characters in the movie, even with this poor choice I’ve gone on about already, haha. You get the real impression the job means the world to him, but still secondary to his sons. An update and improvement to the sometimes stodgy and holier-than-thou character from the 60′s, plus his proactive role makes him way less of a backseat driver.

Lady Penelope - Best character and a splendid update to the 60′s Socialite. This Penny is always a delight to see, although her ability to change clothes offscreen sometimes pushes plausibility, haha. She and Jeff also have very natural and endearing chemistry, so for this iteration at least, I’m up for shipping them, something I can’t say for TOS.

Parker - Remarkably true to the beloved puppet version and another highlight. His interplay with Penelope is some of the best dialogue in the whole movie, and was written by Richard Curtis in an uncredited role, or so I’ve read.

The Hood - A shockingly sadistic and cold blooded so-and-so. His Psychic powers have been given a huge boost, and the depths of his spite generates all the tense scenes the movie has to offer. His performance may be the best in the whole film, simultaneously over the top while also completely deadly.

Tin-Tin - Y’know, Tin-Tin is a funny character, in how she’s very different in all versions. I enjoy her in TOS, but her potential as an engineering assistant, mathematician and member of IR are quickly discarded to make her a secretary, which is further demoted to bringing coffee. Ahh, The Sixties! One of her other defining features was the sometimes bickering sexual tension with Alan. Movie!Tin-Tin is still the implied love interest [and the same age] with him, but she’s also an Action Girl extraordinaire, with abilities bordering on metahuman. She can trek through the jungle without slowing down, she can dive underwater for prolonged sequences, and has a variation of her Evil Uncle’s Psychic capabilities, but used for good. Notably, the Kayo of TAG takes significantly more from this Tin-Tin to the original, sadly sans Telekinesis.

Fermat - The only OC I’m gonna dignify with a section here lol. He’s basically mini-Brains, complete with the way he t-ta-tal- -distinctive speech patterns. But yeah, as the hypersmart and nerdy pal, I feel that his role is pretty superfluous, though his performance in the movie got me to soften up, he’s a good kid. Just one who, like, is part of the deal breaking issue I have with the whole film. In a way I think he’d have made a better lead than Alan lmao

Brains - Not much to say here, he’s also a dude in distress for a majority of his screentime. Seems to be older than his TOS self and a bit less subservient to Jeff, but also a father ....or Fermat is his clone. They never make that clear. He’s hit on by the Hood’s Female Scientist and it’s played for comedy, more on that later.

John - In TOS, his role was infamously minimal, as Gerry Anderson took such a strong disliking to the John puppet and the TB5 model that he exiled both into space with a few token shots per episode. So in comparison, this movie is far kinder to John! He has a nice, genuine chat with Jeff, without any mission to initiate said videocall. The movie is also quite mean to John in how he gets bombed by the Hood, his space station in tatters, his arm hurt and then near suffocation with Jeff and most of his brothers. Ahh, the conundrum of being John.

Scott, Virgil and Gordon - No, they don’t even get their own paragraphs in my review. Their lack of presence and importance in the movie is my giant gripe (have you noticed yet?) and it got to the extent that I feel they could have been combined into one character to save casting money. They get maybe 5 lines each, if that. I literally can’t tell Scott and Virgil apart (I know they have name tags on their uniforms, but in most scenes I couldn’t even read that) other than knowing 1 of them is taller. Which that one is, is a mystery.

The only one with a slightly distinctive appearance and air is Gordon, which is another can of worms because he seems to be the designated Doubtful Jerk Brother and that drives me mad!! In TOS he wasn’t as main a character as Scott, Virgil or Alan, but he was still a defined person with his own abilities. And his personality was as a slightly mouthy but the most lighthearted character! Why didn’t they carry that over?!

And yeah, Scott and Virgil are pretty much the Main Two of the brothers in TOS, so their roles being reduced to 1 token act during the oil rig rescue each [Gordon didn’t even get that!] is all the more mind boggling.

Hood’s Minions - Can’t be assed to write their names out, I refer to them as Heavy Dude and Science Woman. Heavy Dude is the Heavy, and his character consists of Dumb and somewhat Sadistic Muscle. Science Woman is first objectified (we see her ass first. Yes, really.) but then it’s ‘revealed’ that as she has Austin Powers level teeth, she’s uuuuuglyyyyy and her otherwise genuine attraction towards Brains is played for laughs with this angle. And that’s still female on male sexual harassment, which doesn’t fly with me. Eeeesh. Bad writing! She does Science Things for Hood.

The Rest - Kyrano and his wife are in this. Wife is Original but basically Grandma’s role, though she doesn’t even get a single word to say. Rip. Also the Hood has a few more generic mooks from somewhere, but seemingly only for part of the movie. Kyrano didn’t do much in the show except get bullied by the Hood and little has changed.

Tone Trouble

I feel like the movie has a bit of an issue with balancing a consistent Tone. Again, let’s look back at TOS. It was a Family Show, designed to not just appeal to little kids, but to also keep their parent and other adult amused. Maybe some of it was also the result of the times, but striking to me is that they allowed the characters to get pretty hurt, complete with red paint being applied to look like realistic blood. Some of the criminals, including the Hood himself, would be very vicious, how he treats Brains in Desperate Intruder comes to mind. There was even firefights resulting in death, like the memorable climax of Operation Crash-Dive, where Gordon has to shoot a saboteur in the back, into the open sea below the compromised plane. He then proceeds to hold the cut wires together with his bare hands. Don’t try this at home, kids!

So while I can understand some of that being removed from the Movie (and TAG), there’s still the irritating going down to a perceived kid’s level for the majority of the film, which is probably also a large reason for the massive structural change. But then, there’s shockingly dark implications here and there, and the haunting sight of the crew trapped on TB5 floating lifelessly in the dark, asphyxiating. But then, again, we have goofy choreographed fight scenes with juvenile stock cartoon sounds. And then, we have Hood force choking Alan?! It has been mostly consistent until Act 3, then the tone goes up and down more than the flying machines.

Revamped Rockets

I’m mostly talking about the main craft here, though I know the Pod vehicles got modified too, I’m not sufficiently a TOS Pod Buff to go over them.

TB1 - Looks real nice! Maintains and even enhances the sleekness, and the idea of a glass cockpit is much better than having 1 tiny window and a dinky TV screen to see by. Oddly dark inside the cockpit considering how much glass there is, though. Probably my fav of the Movie Fleet.

TB2 - Oof. Looks bad, man. Like, really ugly. What have they done to the glorious design that was the Original Big Green? The unofficial mascot from her importance and unorthodox style? They turned her into a stubby, too glossy, chunky bar of green soap. The thick ass legs are a good idea but it sure ain’t enough. Also, she carries 3 smaller pods insteada 1 big one.

TB3 - Like TB1, pretty much the same design but streamlined a little. Docks with 5 sidewise instead of like pen going into its lid.

TB4 - I’m mixed. I like the idea of giving her a glass canopy and extendable arms, but the movie’s version is so boxy she looks more like a small yellow Greenhouse with the rear half of the old Four, haha. The arms also look a little stiff, can they bend? Now, if there was a sleek, glass hulled, variable armed, demolition charges-loaded Four, that would be my favourite possible version ;3 Four is my fav craft in TOS and TAG, for what it’s worth.

TB5 - I say it’s quite a visual improvement over TOS and the odds and ends jumbled look that had, though I do appreciate a bit of Chunkiness. This one really needs to have better defence too, TOS 5 may’ve been able to tank that missile lmao

FAB1 - I know that she would have been a Rolls Royce in the film, but BMW said no, so that’s not a point against the movie. And failing the classic image, it’s cute that it’s a Ford Thunderbird, though I’d have preferred one with those 50′s/60′s stylish fins personally lol. Her ability to fly is new here unless you count the Dream Sequence in Are Go (’66) and the water mode was also seen in that before this, and she gets the job done, though we don’t get to see as many gadgets and gizmos in the course of the film.

Unlikely Uniforms

I really don’t understand these. Why are they off white with minimal accent colours? What was wrong with the blueness of their suits and the broad stripe of a secondary colour? I sure ain’t saying the 60’s costumes were practical or even that fashionable, but they were very distinctive and striking!

Not only that, but for some strange unexplained reason, their uniforms all correspond not to their own speciality, but to which craft they’re currently piloting. Even if they’re all in the same Bird...! So like, four out of five are wearing identical looking red accented suits while locked in TB5. I already find the elder brothers to be the Similar Squad, and their microscopic name tags don’t help!

Why don’t they wear their own coloured uniforms all the time? Then ya don’t need the name tag at all! And the silly implication from the way there’s apparently a whole set of Craft Specific uniforms is that there’s piles of clothes that ain’t getting used in all of them, like the tiny TB4 probably having 6 whole sets on board at the end of the film.

Between that, no blue and the outfits looking like Generic Sports Wear, the only nice thing to say is the THUNDERBIRDS down the sleeve is a cool touch. Which should really say International Rescue or IR...

Mingled Misc.

Yeah, The conflation of Thunderbirds and International Rescue is a tad irritating but it’s actually something I can overlook. It’s not a dealbreaker and it makes sense the Dumbass Public would misunderstand and call them the wrong thing.

Jeff refuses Alan early access into IR and cites “No shortcuts”. Then at the end he echoes this when he is making Alan an official member, saying he did it with no shortcuts. The whole faffing scenario was a giant shortcut!!! Fuck training and being a suitable age, am I right?!

Amazingly I didn’t cover this already, but when Alan shortcuts his way onto the team he’s made pilot of ... TB4. That’s why he’s in yellow accents in the pic. Gordon is seemingly the main pilot of TB3 instead, but the movie doesn’t deign to make that clear. While I appreciate that the 14 year old with no Astronaut training isn’t put in charge of 3 instantly, I resent the careless removal of characterisation. Obviously movie Gordon never served with WASP or won the gold medal in swimming or had a massive hydrofoil crash to nearly kill him but ggggghgggaaahhhhhhhhh

Also what’s with the implication that Four is the Babby’s First Machine? She’s a highly specialised craft that would require different training to flying or Space shit! How dare you?! The most charitable link is that Alan stood around in 4 as Tin-Tin did most of the work herself, but I guess it coulda as some level of experience.

Ford Sponsorship - Gets a bit much! It’s one thing for all the cars to be Ford, but them seemingly owning the News is like an unpleasant look into a world where corporations run everything.... hahahaahaaaaaa........

Marvellous Music

Something the movie really excells at is the tunes! The remix of the Thunderbirds March is good in it’s own right and very welcome, and the new music is all solid. Special mention to Busted’s outro song for slapping so hard even people who hate the movie leave warm youtube comments about the song. I have a habit of listening to it set to TAG footage myself, haha

Sincere Summation

Look, I’ve come off negative in this, but I honestly have a lot of respect for a lot of the parts of this picture. Hood, Penelope, Parker and Jeff are fantastic, the physical models and sets have a lot of care and loving detail poured in, the music is all bangers and other little nods and homages to the show shine brightly. The director got a lot of good work in and I hold him no ill will.

I think the problem is in the Writing and probably Studio Mandates, I’m not 100% sure, but things often get snaggy when the studio you’re working under gets bought out by a bigger company partway through. Again, I’ll refer to the info I’ve seen instead of trying to relay it in my own words.

And they made a real bad call snubbing Gerry as a Creative Consultant. Some of his venom towards the film may be from that, as well as his alleged preference to Team America: World Police as a theatrical homage. And I’ve seen that before and wouldn’t really say that’s true to the spirit of Thunderbirds, but yeah...

I’d be interested in any future Thunderbirds Movies, if that’s ever on the cards again. I’d probably be even more up for continuation of the TAG series, or newer new Captain Scarlet with International Rescue involved. Either way, I want new footage of the Birds taking off again, be it puppet, people, CGI, or something new~

Extra Reading

https://securityhazard.net/2017/05/19/thunderbirds-2004/ Full movie review, warm reception. Contains photos of set pieces and costumes.

http://groovyfokker.blogspot.com/2013/02/thunderbirds-arent-go-unfilmed-versions.html Insight into some of the past issues developing a Movie, but gets some basic information wrong (Since when is Gordon the youngest and TB3 orange??)

Thanks if ya’ve been reading the whole thing! <3

#Thunderbirds 2004 #Thunderbirds #Thunderbirds TOS #Thunderbirds Movie #Movie Review #can't really tag it with TAG because I deliberately kept that minimal lol #I care so much about Tbirds so I had much to say #I hope the links don't mess up it appearing in the tags :v

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rahirah · 6 years

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The whole "And If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed" counts as a chapter or scene, right? "Splendid news, Mrs. Mears. Bloody Vengeance Inc. is going to take your case." Commentary, please :)))

For reference: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478957

Ok, this one is too long to do a blow-by-blow in a Tumblr post, so I'm gonna talk about it more generally.

For those of you who haven't read the series this story is a part of, it's a long-running AU which branches off of canon after "The Gift." I started writing the first story in it immediately after "The Gift" aired, so Spuffy wasn't even a canon thing yet. At the time, I was pretty certain that Spuffy would never be a canon thing; at most, I thought, there would be a lot of pining and UST, and maybe, in the very last season, Spike would get the crumb he was hoping for.

But I didn't care about that; something doesn't have to be canon for me to ship the hell out of it. And I was fascinated by the concept of an evil demon trying to be good. What would it look like, I wondered, if Spike and Buffy did get together in a working, functional relationship? What changes and compromises would both of them have to make? How would it meet both their needs? What would the pain points be? Of course, the easiest way to do it would be to slap a soul into Spike, but I felt that the show had already thoroughly explored that avenue with Angel, and I wanted to do something different. Plus I have never been one to do things the easy way, and one of the recurring themes in my writing in general is free will and choices. So I set myself the challenge of writing a story about how Buffy and Spike forge a relationship that works for both of them, and doesn't cheat on characterization – that is, Spike, having no human soul, is still "evil" in Buffyverse terms, and his motivations and behavior reflect that; even when he is doing good things, he is not doing them in the same way, or for the same reasons, as a human would. *

ANYWAY. In this AU, Warren Mears and Co. still killed Katrina, but Warren went to jail for it. However, when his inventions came to the attention of Wolfram & Hart, they got him released on a technicality, and brought him into their R&D department. Warren took the opportunity to get his revenge on Buffy and Spike by zapping Buffy into a W&H pocket dimension, where W&H was collecting Buffys from many dimensions for nefarious purposes. Unbeknownst to Warren, Buffy has just discovered that she's pregnant.

This scenario generated four stories: "The Lesser of Two Evils," which details what happens when Willow and Spike confront Warren and try to force him to bring Buffy back; "In A Yellow Wood," which is about Buffy's adventures in the pocket dimension, "If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed," which deals with the fallout of the first two stories, and "To Grandmother's House," which wraps up the arc with Buffy's final decision about the fate of her baby.

I wrote these stories all out of order: "To Grandmother's House" first, "The Lesser of Two Evils" second, "In A Yellow Wood" third, and "If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed" last. I knew the general course of the arc all along, but writing it inside out and backwards, over ten years or more, posed some interesting challenges. "If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed" was not part of the original arc plan – in fact, it grew out of feedback I got for "The Lesser of Two Evils."

TLOTE/IAYW are deliberately morally ambiguous stories. Spike, Willow, and Buffy all do questionable things – perhaps flat out wrong things – under severe emotional stress, and the consequences of those actions echo for a long time through the years to come. While I hope that readers find their motives understandable, and even sympathetic, I didn't necessarily expect that every reader would agree with or approve of their actions. Most people who've sent me feedback seem to enjoy the ambiguity, or at least find it intriguing. Not all of them, however.

One particular reader had...issues. Over the course of several conversations, I found out that while they were a Spuffy shipper, they had very particular requirements for the kind of Spuffy stories they liked. They had to be either A) totally canon-compliant, angst-ridden stories where Buffy hated herself for giving in to Spike's sinister attraction, or B) stories where Spike was a Romance Novel Bad Boy With a Heart of Gold, and there was a tacit agreement between writer and reader that hey, we both know this is totally OOC for both characters, but we're just here for the porn, amirite nudge-nudge wink-wink.

Reader In Question had started in on my work with the assumption that it fell into the latter category, but the more they read, the less comfortable they got, because, as I mentioned above, I was in this for serious. I sweat blood over characterization. And I was starting to convince them that maybe a relationship between Buffy and soulless Spike COULD work. And they didn't WANT to believe that. So they absolutely had to interpret my work as a dystopian take on Buffy's slide into total moral decay, with this particular arc as the nadir of her fall.** They left me some despondent feedback on TLOTE, wondering what Warren's dear mother would think of this turn of events. I'm not sure if they intended to shame me (or Buffy) for our evil ways, but I thought it was an interesting point. And it planted the seed of an idea.

Over the next several years, as I worked on IAYW (and let me say right here, the less-than-enthusiastic feedback Reader In Question sent me on TLOTE made me work my ass off on IAYW. Though I obviously don't agree with their overall interpretation, I thought they had some good points, and I wanted to be sure that IAYW addressed those points) I mulled over the thought: What WOULD happen if Warren's dear old mother confronted Buffy and Spike?

A lot would depend upon what Warren's dear old mother was like. There were two obvious ways I could go with that: she could be an innocent victim, or she could be as much of a monster as Warren was. But I didn't want to do anything obvious with this story. Fic-wise, I always like to take the road less traveled if I can, but in this case, I have to admit that I got a perverse pleasure out of taking Reader In Question's finger-wagging admonition and using it as inspiration for a story that's, well, not exactly what I imagine they were hoping to inspire. I decided that I was going to make Mrs. Mears a little of both.

The next question was, what did I want to have happen when she shows up?Again, the obvious thing would be to have Buffy feel guilty. But I had already dealt extensively with Buffy's feelings, and her reasons for making the decisions she made, in IAYW and TGH. Yes, she feels guilty; she's not sure she did the right thing. She's not even sure there was a right thing to do. But that particular subplot plays out over the long term in this AU, culminating many years later in a completely different story arc, and I couldn't bring it to a premature resolution here. Besides, I knew that Barbverse Buffy would never return to the uncompromising system of morality that Reader In Question wanted her to,*** so there was no point in writing a story where she Learns Her Lesson, Dusts Spike, and Is Very Sorry. ****

So I decided that this story would focus on Spike, and his reaction to Warren's mother and her loss of a son. And that opened up a lot of possibilities. I was to some extent constrained by the fact that I'd already written quite a lot of stories taking place after this one in the timeline, so there were certain things I couldn't do. But I've always found that if you ask yourself, "What would X logically do in this situation?" and follow that through, you can avoid Idiot Plot Syndrome. Let your characters be smart. What would Spike do, confronted with the mother of the man he'd killed? What would Mrs. Mears demand of him in recompense?

What I wanted to do in this story was to answer those questions in a way that people wouldn't expect. I was able to bring Spike's ambivalent feelings about his own mother into play, and provide a way for him to get some character development around coming to terms with her death and his part in it that I might not otherwise have been able to do. And I was able to draw parallels between Warren and his mother, and Spike and Anne Pratt, and come up with some really intriguing takes on how and why Spike can do the right(ish) thing even when his reasons are kinda-sorta wrong(ish). It gives some background, hopefully, on how Buffy can make the ultimate decision she does in "To Grandmother's House," and not feel that she's tobogganing head-first down the slippery slope of Utter Moral Decay. And I got to write Zombie Warren, who was gruesomely, deliciously horrible. And I got to give Mrs. Mears the last word.

By the time I finished the story, Reader In Question had long since left fandom, and they probably wouldn't have read it even if they were still around. But I feel I have to thank them for it anyway. And that's why I always say that even though I don't necessarily like getting critical feedback, it can be the most useful feedback you can get if you look at it in the right way.

__________

* I could write a whole nother essay about the challenges of writing an evil-trying-to-be-good vampire, but that is beyond the scope of the current post.

** Eventually, they practically begged me to tell them that I was deliberately writing Buffy and Spike out of character, and that I didn't really think a relationship between them could work. Alas, I could not oblige them, and they stopped reading my stuff.

*** I don't even believe canon Buffy stuck to that kind of rigid moral code – she tried to, but one of the things that makes her a complex, fully realized character is that canon Buffy is perfectly capable of double standards and hypocrisy where her friends are concerned, not to mention just plain changing her mind about things over the course of the show. For every decision I have Barbverse Buffy [or Spike, for that matter] make, I can point to something in canon and say "This is why I think she could do that."

****Although... I do have an alternate ending to "To Grandmother's House" plotted out in my head, where Buffy [either accidentally or on purpose – just as in the main story, it's ambiguous] doesn't stop Giles in time. I consider the Barbverse to be a low-probability AU, and I watch out for times and ways in which things could go spectacularly wrong, just so I can be sure to avoid them in a believable manner. Or write stories about them going wrong, and the characters dealing with them.

*****

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #writing #fic discussion #asks #barbverse #thenewbuzwuzz

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aloneandunreal · 4 years

Text

october 8, 20

oh wow, i haven’t posted in here in AWHILE. i know i said i’d post after i started school or whatever, but i forgot and got busy and i guess didn’t have the time to really write anything. but i think i want to kind of... talk about something now i guess? just to get it out. obviously i could talk to my friends or rant on the internet, but i don’t know, i just feel like i’m probably being dramatic and annoying. plus all of this took place in the past, so why am i still so pressed about it? but before i get into that, i guess i’ll speak a bit about how school is going and my insecurities (as usual).

welp, school started and it’s interesting to say the least, especially considering it’s online. i’ve gotten used to it, but getting called on in class is always really awkward and so are the damn breakout rooms... god, my heart sinks when i have to do that stuff. the other day in my english class i had to present a video i made about myself to the class and man, that was so nervewracking. in my head it felt like a life or death situation. speaking of english, it’s been kind of... tough i guess? i mean, not really, i just don’t know how to feel about the teacher. honestly none of my teachers have stuck out and i haven’t stuck out to them (i never do). i’m taking my first AP class, AP psych which has made me insecure. i’ve wanted to major in this since last year but had never taken classes because i had decided too late. anyway, i just found it interesting. so, i decided to take the classes this year, to see if this is really what i wanted to major in for college. it is interesting, yes, but i also feel kind of dumb in the class. it’s a big fast-paced (as expected for AP) but i just feel like i’m not retaining any of the information. my teacher teaches us like 50 new vocab words every day and it’s just... ugh. especially when he gives out quizzes (that i get mixed scores on... usually B’s or C’s). whenever i get a “bad” grade, i get really upset about it because this is what i want to major in! how the hell am i going to major in this subject if i can’t even have a good grade in the class or on assignments? sometimes i think i know what’s going on, but then the quizzes come along and it’s just...ugh. it makes me feel real bad, that’s all. i feel too dumb for this major. i wish i hadn’t decided so late what i wanted to do. and i had such high hopes for it, i wanted to get my phd and everything... yet have a B in a high school psych class. most of it is memorization, okay, but i’m TERRIBLE at memorization type things. i’m trying really hard in this class and i don’t know if it’s paying off or not. i still find it interesting and am still going to pick it as my major, but this AP class is just making me wonder, what if i’m not good at this at all? but at the same time i don’t want to pick something else to major in.... first of all i don’t even KNOW what i’d major in! there’s no second option! anyway, yeah, i’m just really insecure and sad about it. my grade in the class fluctuates a lot, but normally it’s a high B. which isn’t a bad grade per-se, but at the same time, how am i gonna major in this if i have a B? that means i’m not that good at it, right? i don’t even know. sometimes i wonder if it’s because of this situation (online learning) and/or my teacher’s style of teaching but honestly i’m just going to blame it on myself. i don’t know if i’m smart enough for it. but after all of this talk about majoring in psych, getting a phd, etc, i don’t want to throw that all away now. as i said, i still want to major in it, and of course find it interesting. the only question is: am i good enough??

other than that, my classes have been fine. i’m taking french 3 honors which has been... ok. it’s a little nerve-wracking because she makes us talk in french a lot and the class is kinda confusing but i think i’ll be ok. she’s a new-ish teacher, replacing my old french teacher who moved a couple years ago, and she seems nice but i don’t know if she’s the best teacher. everyone else in the class seems confused too so... i definitely don’t think it’s just me. then i’m taking sociology which is really interesting and i like the teacher - probably one of my favorites - though i kind of have something against her now because she’s forcing us to speak in class now FOR A GRADE. hopefully she changes her mind. then i have probability and statistics which has been ok so far. my teacher is really nice and the stuff we’ve been doing has been alright so far. a bit hard, but not insanely hard.

anyway, that’s how my senior year is going. not the worst, but not the best either. i wonder what things would be like if everything was normal... it’d be way different. it’s weird how i’m starting to forget how things used to be. this quarantine stuff used to be weird, but now it’s turning into the norm, whereas my “old” life before all of this is starting to become distant. i don’t know how to feel about that. i’ve talked about this in previous entries but i still want to live that indie-film teen dream... it’s not happening, though, even after all of these years i’ve been in HS. definitely won’t happen this year with all that’s gone on. but aside from that, i’ve been definitely stressed about college and all of that stuff. i’m really anxious to go and don’t know what to expect. well, first of all i need to get INTO schools which is a whole other thing. i’m working on it, but it’s really overwhelming (the common app). i really wish i could have finished my junior year and things were normal, because then all this college stuff would be done (or at least most of it). i still need to do my SAT - which first of all i probably won’t even include in my application to schools because it’s optional, but my mom still wants me to take it. other than all of this crazy “applying to schools” stuff, i also am of course insanely nervous about college. i’ve probably talked about this in previous entries, but i guess i’ll mention it again. i’m not AS worried about the academic stuff (well, still am) but not as much as the SOCIAL stuff. i’m HORRIBLE at socializing, and it makes me SO anxious. i can’t do normal people things, so how the hell am i going to go to college? let alone if i will even be GOING.. who knows what corona will be like around this time next september. ugh. it’s just really stressful all of this college stuff..... i don’t know if i’m ready, but at the same time i WANT to go. i don’t even know.

anyway, that’s all that’s going on with school right now. i’ve had some really, really bad days the past couple of weeks which hasn’t happened in AWHILE. obviously i have bad thoughts, but lately it’s just been real bad. i’m okay now, though.

this is already long enough, but now i’m going to finally talk about what i originally came onto tumblr for. as i’ve said, there’s likely no one reading this, and this is just for ME to read in the future. ok, anyway, yadda yadda, here we go on another big rant (what’s new).

i became friends with this girl... we’ll call her angel, in 6th grade i guess. we didn’t really become “friends” until 7th grade but 6th grade was when we met. she was a bit of a weirdo, and was particularly obsessed with this one girl who obviously found this creepy. angel would always obsess over this girl, calling her so pretty, always wanting to be with her etc etc. angel and i were kind-of friends i guess, as well as with my best friend at the time. an average friendship.

seventh grade was where things really picked up, i guess. i don’t exactly remember when; but it was probably because we had a lot of classes together. i don’t exactly remember when we started talking, but we did. she was a bit weird but i was just happy to have a friend at the time, i was feeling very lonely and unwanted. she had been dealing with mental health issues a lot and it was obvious because she told me. even in 6th grade i remember she’d wear a huge hoodie on the hottest of days to hide her self-harm. anyway, she was really not doing well. i remember one day she said she saw this post online that said to draw different colors on your wrist to show what you struggled with or whatever (eating disorder, depression, etc) and she put the colors for almost all of them. she glorified mental illness a lot and it was obvious. we were in 7th grade, though, so i don’t really hold that against her because i likely was doing the same thing. what i don’t condone (at least now) is the other things she did.

first, it started off a little creepy but nothing that totally freaked me out. she’d call me pretty all the time, tell me she wanted to look like me, be as thin as me (keep in mind i thought i was fat and definitely was on the verge of an ED as well, if i didn’t already have one), have the same hair as me, etc. it was nice getting that attention since i was so insecure, but then all of a sudden she’d begin to insult me. “your nose is big”, “your chin is long” and she’d also roughly touch me; pinch my cheeks hard and would touch the “fat” on my body to i guess make me feel bad? to make herself feel better? it was of course a jealousy thing. anyway, this made me feel real bad about myself since i already was dealing with insecurities. but then she’d go right back and start complimenting me again. it depended on the day i suppose. i don’t know if this really happened since i blocked this out of my mind, but i remember she pinched me so hard she left marks. she’d play it off as a joke and i’d just let her.

angel joined me and my best friend at the time at recess sometimes, and she’d also call my friend “skinny” and “so pretty” and how she could be a model. basically the same stuff she told me. my friend wasn’t as bothered by it. anywho, angel and i became better “friends”. she’d text me literally 24/7, and sometimes i’d have to lie to her to get her off my back. she’d force me to go on facetime with her for hours even if i didn’t feel like it, etc etc. i stayed friends with her because i was lonely and “she wasn’t always bad!” i’d think to myself. my parents didn’t really like her and when they found out she self-harmed, they really did not want me being friends with her. my dad called her a “slicer”. i know he didn’t mean any harm, and was only looking out for me, hoping i didn’t do the same thing, but it still made me angry. angel was my friend. still, i listened to my parents and began ignoring angel; it was the only way i could get her to stay away. or at least that’s what i thought. she would harrass me all the time, begging me to talk to her again. i would just not answer, or if we were at school, look at the floor and not say a word. it made me feel awful. and then something happened that truly was a disgusting thing to do. she came over to me one day, and begged me to be her friend again. i kept my head down. then when nobody was looking, she raised her sleeves to show her scars, and said “if you keep ignoring me, i’ll cut myself”. i didn’t know what to do, so i didn’t do anything. i was terrified. i didn’t want her to do that. but she wouldn’t, right? it was just a tactic to get me back. well, i was wrong. i remember she came back the next day and showed me her fresh wounds and i felt awful. it was all my fault that she did that. so, i began talking to her again. i guess because i didn’t want her to do that again. looking back, that’s horrendous and disgusting. but i was naive. always was.

so angel and i were friends again i guess. she hogged me from my other friends, but thankfully i’d push back a little bit and hang with my other friends. there were other smaller instances, but things that still impact me, such as when she told me i had a big nose and a long chin. yep, now those two things are huge insecurities of mine. not blaming it on her, of course not, but it was definitely a factor.

as i mentioned, i was really not happy with my body and myself. i hated my body. thought i was so fat, at 108 pounds. so i’d starve myself at lunch. it was the only time i could successfully do it. angel saw me doing this one day, and got really upset with me for whatever reason (even though she had an eating disorder as well). i never understood why she did/said this, but she told me that if i kept on doing this, she was going to tell the guidance counselor (that i was starving myself). this freaked me out, because i didn’t want my parents to know. i kept doing it, praying that she’d forget, which she did.

there was another time when we were walking in the hall one time, and i mentioned that i was in an enriched english class. now, keep in mind, i’ve been called dumb and looked down upon my whole life. so this wasn’t anything new. still hurt, though. anyway, basically i told her i was in an enriched class and she looked at me like i was crazy, “no you’re not” she said and laughed, “prove it” i got really flustered, because i WASN’T lying. so i proved it to her by asking the teacher if i was in her enriched class to which she confusingly said yes to. angel was surprised i guess. these small instances still make me feel bad about myself to this day. something so small can truly impact you.

other than that, i can’t remember much. i blocked a lot of it out except for those things. i shoved it in the back of mind, telling myself it wasn’t a big deal. for years. after seventh grade we drifted apart but were still mutuals. and still are to this day. i don’t have anything against her.. i guess not. but she truly was a terrible person, and i pray to god she’s changed. of course she wasn’t in the right mindset, but that doesn’t excuse her doing those god awful things to me (and other people as well). i never realized in 6th grade that, like the girl she was obsessed with then, i would be the new obsession. a lot of it adds up now, the way she’d compliment me and then put me down. all jealous, manipualtive things. she was of course a weirdo to everyone, but i was friends with her because i was naive and nice and alone. i think she has friends now, and nobody thinks she’s as weird as they used to. i don’t really know what’s up with her now. i don’t hold anything against her... but should i? i don’t even know. anyway, the only reason i’m speaking about this is because i needed to get it out for once. but i felt too uncomfortable telling a friend. plus, i feel like i’d just be dramatic and should just get over it - this was five years ago. i don’t know if i ever will, though. i just can’t help but think about the things she did and how i would STILL so easily fall for something like that again. which is sad after all of the toxic friendships i’ve had throughout the years.

either way, that’s the end of angel. there’s probably things i could speak about concerning her, but i either forget or just don’t think it’s worth mentioning. we were twelve and thirteen, and i still wonder if i’m just being dramatic. we were just kids. she didn’t know what she was doing. but did she? either way, angel was sick in the head. she probably forgets all of this, or blocks it out of her mind, maybe even makes it seem like she’s the victim. i don’t know. i just wanted to get that out.

of course throughout the years there’s been a bunch of toxic friendships i’ve been apart of, or just people who have taken advantage of me. but that would make this terribly long. and it already IS terribly long.

but, i am now thinking, why do i glorify seventh grade so much? i always miss it so much, but once i truly think about it, it was an awful year. my anxiety was insanely bad, i was starving myself, i hardly had friends, my “best friend” was toxic (and of course i stayed with her), was getting groomed that summer (before & during 8th grade), was s*xually harrassed by a boy at my school (which is a whole other thing), angel was obsessed with me, etc. so i don’t know why i make it seem better than it actually was. but i still miss it, god i hate myself for that. why? why do i miss all of the terrible times in my life? i’ll never understand why. i know i sound like i’m overexaggerating, but i’m not. all of these things have happened. why would i lie? it’s not like there’s anyone else reading this. i just need to let it out somewhere, which is why i’m doing it here. some day i want to speak about the boy in 7th grade who s*xually harrassed me, but it definitely makes me very uncomfortable and ashamed. i’m going to need to let it out some day, though. i’ve never told anyone except for my mother, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. boys will be boys, right? it was five years ago, anyway. but i’ll speak of that in another entry (perhaps). i know nobody is reading this but i hope, if anyone does, they don’t think this is an attention thing. everything i write here is true. it’s for me, but of course i’m posting it online in public so anyone can see it.

so, anyway, i suppose i’ll end it here. that’s all about angel and about what’s going on currently in my life. i don’t know when i’ll write next, but goodbye for now. i hope things get a bit better; with the world, with myself. so, future ava, if you’re reading this, are things better now?

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cosmosogler · 7 years

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hey guys. i had bad dreams and a lot of trouble sleeping!!! i woke up a bunch of times and every time i was tangled up in my pjs. my pants had somehow become backwards at the waist.

when i did get up i reached up to stretch and my shoulders, like, clicked back into place with an audible snap. i can’t tell if that hurts or not.

i was a little slow to get moving. while i was checking facebook this morning snoopy pooped next to my desk. i was pretty annoyed about that, especially since this was right after i’d fawned over her for a while. i’d only stopped because she got up to get water and i thought she was done being petted.

i showered and spent a long time in there just thinking. i don’t know what i was thinking about. i guess i was thinking about thinking in the shower. either way, it was a while.

then i made a quiche i’d bought yesterday. i think it may have made me sick. the cashier at the grocery store hadn’t put it in my freezer bag... along with the eggs. something in there doesn’t smell quite right but i haven’t found it yet. no, it’s not the eggs.

i was doing something but i don’t remember what it was!!! at 10:40 ish, or 11, somewhere in between there, i started packing for school. i decided i should probably dole out my trail mix rations finally since i’ve had the jar sitting in my pantry for 6 weeks. i love trail mix. not sure why i never took the time to separate it into servings. i even just enjoyed the process of measuring out 1/2 cups and putting them in bags to put in my lunch box over the next two weeks.

i biked over to campus but i was very leisurely about it. just didn’t have the drive to pedal as fast as i could i guess. good thing the physics building is downhill. i don’t quite have the stamina to stand on the pedals but i am trying to practice a little bit. getting pretty good at sharper turns at least, and i can hold my arm out to signal for a whole second now instead of just kinda... waving it and grabbing the handlebar again real fast.

and no part of me has gotten snagged in the pedals or chain in a week so that’s good!!!

once i got to my office i had a little trouble getting started with my work. i think it took 40-45 minutes... i again do not remember what i was doing other than browsing the internet. fatigued.

i did work for an hour before i stopped for lunch. i finished studying my class notes and adjusting a few things to account for understanding the material a little better. i wish i’d been more careful about transcribing what the professor had written previously... i left a few frustrated notes about how i couldn’t hear what he said, or his handwriting was too bad to make out, or how he’d written half an equation on the board and not ever finished it. but a few things i could have made better note of- like the slant of the tensor indices. i didn’t realize that was important until much later.

i do ask him to clarify sometimes, if i can’t read whether a word says “sine” or “mmnmnn”. and his Vs look like Ns. that REALLY trips me up because we use both of those a lot.

but i can’t ask every time.

i talked to suzanne about having all the grad students upload their class notes into an online database so we’d all have all the information we’d collectively written down. she said that’s actually a great idea and we have a scanner in the department for people who write in real old fashioned notebooks (like me).

might run it by luis and taylor later... one of them could probably help me set up some kind of dropbox or google doc collection.

my lunch was pretty great. i had a sandwich and a banana and had a terrible stomachache but felt a little more settled after the banana. i had to try real hard not to puke though for like an hour.

after that i finished my classical assignment due tomorrow. it took about an hour too. and another 40-ish minutes sprinkled through the rest of the day making small corrections as i discovered why i shouldn’t include a factor of 2 here and there.

suzanne watched me try to explain one of the problems to harrison and corrected me a few times when i got confused by terms i’d heard her use when she explained it to me. it got me flustered at the time because harrison looked like i was making it worse but at the same time i’m glad i had to articulate what exactly the problem was asking for and get my course adjusted right away as soon as i made a mistake.

still not quite sure what “geometric analysis” means, especially in comparison to, i think it was, “numerical analysis.” both of those involve popping variables into equations and making substitutions and getting an answer.

at about 2:30 i walked over to the union with suzanne and jennica in the rain. i was half under suzanne’s umbrella so when we got inside half of me was immediately cold and soggy. one sleeve of my shirt was just soaked but the rest was lightly sprinkled or just dry.

i’m wearing one of my favorite shirts today. it’s soft and gray and loose and it says in big white letters “DON’T BOTHER ME I’M BUSY” and there’s minions posing.

not sure what the minions are doing there but their frozen screams of karate rage match my mood at all times so i will allow it.

i’ve had this shirt for years. i wear it like literally every laundry cycle.

anyway i sat with my two classmates and talked about sand while they ate wendy’s. i don’t quite remember what started the tangent, but it involved me telling a joke about body surfing with my brother and getting slapped around by the waves and dragged along the beach haha.

when we walked back it wasn’t really raining any more. i originally didn’t mind the rain until it got ice cold over the span of three seconds. but anyway i got right back to it!!! i think. i mostly ate trail mix for a little bit and goofed off with harrison and talked about the classical homework. suzanne wants to work on the last two quantum problems tomorrow so i let that assignment be for now.

i compiled all the questions we’ve been assigned in classical so far and their solutions. i printed out just the questions from the first assignment to take home with me. i meant to work on it tonight but i ran out of time. that took forever though. i joked about it to harrison. i said “it’s so great to be working on a project that is not really doing actual practice problems.”

he said “yeah, i love dicking around instead of working.”

i said “that’s what it’s all about!”

i was kinda bummed that doing the homework took so long... and none of us had ANY energy at all. luis didn’t even come in. taylor came in in the mid-afternoon but then didn’t actually sit and do any work. rebika left before that. jennica was... riding up and down the hallway in an office chair flopping her arms around like a terrifying crab woman.

we’re tired.

eventually i was getting ready to leave when jennica wanted to talk about pirates for like 15 minutes. we ended up on pseudo-politics. not actually talking about any issues in particular, but rather how we approach them. i started getting pretty dark thoughts so i hopped on my bike and went home.

i mean, they weren’t any darker than the joke i’d made earlier.

taylor had said something. harrison replied, “who are you, my mother? if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”

i laughed and said “absolutely. of course, the joke is that i would have done it without all my friends. jumped off the bridge, i mean.”

we talked about how high the bridge was, and if it was over water or not. there were a couple “it doesn’t matter how high it was as long as you believe in yourself” comments because taylor was involved with the conversation.

anyway i offered to make muffins later in the week and then i went home at 6:30-ish. at 7:00 i started making TEMPEH TACOS!!!!

they were so good. oh man. i only exploded one thing too. i actually ate the entire meal even though it was way too much. i cleaned up the dishes bloated and happy and everything smelled like limes. because i’d put like a quarter cup of lime juice in with with the crumbled tempeh. which was only a big enough serving for one person.

i bummed around on the internet for a while after that, and then at about 9:30 i got back to work for a little bit. i made a complete rubric for the labs i gotta grade, so hopefully now it will be faster and more cut and dry. at about 10:10 i started writing here.

looking at my to-do list... i didn’t get as much done as i would have liked. things always seem to take twice as long as i plan for, even when i feel like i’m allocating a generous time slot to relatively minor things. like giving myself a full hour to finish half a classical problem that specifically asks for no (dynamical) equations. all i had to do was draw a triangle and do some trigonometry with suzanne.

being a master avoider has some downsides. like even when i want to focus on a project my brain is sneaky about avoiding it. which is why i spent 80 minutes putting together an easy reference for doing the practice problems instead of actually doing practice problems.

at least i recognized all the questions and had a vague idea of how i would go about solving them. i’m really, really hoping it doesn’t take twelve hours to do one old assignment like it did the first time around.

looks like grading will have to slide this week. i can do it for a little while every day but there’s no way i can get it all done on monday and get enough sleep to do my best on the exam on tuesday night.

i don’t WANT to screw around all the time. but it seems like that’s what keeps happening.

and no matter how much work i get done i should always have gotten MORE done.

something good about me today was MY AMAZING, FANTASTIC COOKING PROJECT. IT WAS SO GOOD YOU GUYS. IT WAS SO GOOD!!! it’s not quite what i remember making back at home a few months ago, but it was great in its own way and i think making the tacos either way will do it for me! maybe a little less lime juice next time. maybe that’s what was overpowering the earthy nuttiness of the tempeh. i even sauteed the onions for a little bit to take the edge off and that helped a lot toward making the crumbled tempeh taste more complete and less like a collection of onions and chili powder and limes.

oh! and i came up with a great way to avoid the Onion Tears. i put my fan next to my cutting board and had it blow the fumes out the window while i chopped. snoopy sat on the ottoman and watched me.

i think cooking a nice, for real meal for myself every now and then does a lot toward lifting my mood. i wish i had time to do it more often. even just putting my freezer stuff in the oven instead of the microwave can do a lot for the texture even though it takes four times as long.

i’m not sure how i got so good at this. maybe part of it is that my own food just tastes better because i know how much work i put into it. *i* went out and bought the stuff. *i* chopped up all the onions and the tempeh and boiled it. *i* set aside the serving i wasn’t using for leftovers later. *i* spent 35 minutes putting everything together. part of the flavor is just feeling good about making this thing for yourself.

but even the stuff i’d make at home mom seemed to like at least.

part of it might be that i know what a lot of things taste like and how much god dang chili powder i love to have on everything. and it’s kind of easy to judge from the smell how much, comparatively, of that thing i should put into my pan. i have a decent sense of smell. raised by dogs and all that.

and half the fun is realizing you don’t have something and improvising with what you do have. and seeing what happens when you do that.

and dumping piles and piles of chipotle rub you stole from your mom’s pampered chef set on everything.

by “stole” i mean she said “you can have this one and i’ll order a new one. and then another new one for myself.”

i wish i had more cooking vocabulary. i don’t have anyone to talk to about it and i don’t really know... what kinds of words to use when i do talk about it? like until a few hours ago i wasn’t really sure what the difference between “saute” and “fry” was. still not quite sure why “broil” is different from “bake.”

kind of feels like when i was at home and i didn’t have anyone to talk to about physics for eight months. and kind of feels like when i like a tv show and don’t have anyone to talk to about it for years. you get out of practice.

anyway it’s 11:15 and i’d like to be in bed real soon so i can start getting up early like a normal person again. if i get up at 8 the sun’s been up too long already and i’ve woken up like five times because it comes right through the window directly into my eyeballs.

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jellyfishline · 7 years

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All the space questions >:)

dude okay you better be ready for a trip this is gonna be looooong

Planets: Life

Mercury: What’s your full name?

Maegan!! and yes, it really is spelled that way idk ask my parents

Venus: What’s your first language?

English!

Earth: Where’s your home?

also Earth! but specifically Illinois, America’s least-interesting state.

Mars: What’s your sexuality?

eeeergh gay-ish? kinda bi? idk It’s Complicated

Jupiter: Do you have any siblings?

just one! my big bro

Saturn: Any pets?

nope :(

Uranus: What’s your hobby?

what isn’t my hobby lol. I write, I sew, I knit, I crochet, I cook, I garden, I read, I draw, I paint, I own more video games than any person rightfully should, I have an unhealthy obsession with interior decorating–basically if you name it and it doesn’t involve a lot of hand-eye coordination or depth perception, I probably have tried it at least.

Neptune: When’s your birthday?

April 1st. yes really.

Pluto: What time is it right now where you are?

uhhhh… 6:49 PM.

Moon: What are you currently studying/hope to study?

as in, college? technically my major is undecided, but being totally honest: I really wanna study acting.

Stars: Experiences

Sun: Have you ever had alcohol?

yes!! I’ve never been drunk tho

Sirius: Have you ever failed a class?

um…. yes…..

Rigel: Have you ever gone on a rollercoaster?

twice, when I was little. the first time was really fun! the second was… less so :p

Deneb: Have you ever been out of your home country?

nope!

Arcturus: Have you cried out of something other than sadness?

all the time. it’s kinda embarrassing lol

Betelgeuse: What’s something you can never forget about?

oh gosh. lots of stuff. I can never forget my grandmother’s old house, or the songs I listened to as a kid, or my favorite movies, or my favorite foods. I have a lot of memories I guess!

Aldebaran: What’s something you care desperately about?

my girlfriend

Canopus: Have you ever broken a bone?

nope!

Bellatrix: Have you ever been forced to lie/keep a secret?

not that I can remember? not anything really huge or important, anyway.

Alphard: Have you ever lost a friend?

yeah. a lot of them, honestly.

Vega: What’s something you’ve done that you wish you hadn’t?

ugh. um, I wish I didn’t screw up so many friendships in such dumb ways, I guess.

Constellations: Favourites

Centaurus: Favourite holiday?

uh, it’s probably a tie between Christmas and Halloween. really though I’m always up for an excuse to decorate stuff and have fun.

Orion: Favourite month?

I’m a pretty big fan of March and October

Cassiopeia: Favourite book?

I have lots of favorites. one of them is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Delphinus: Favourite study?

I’m kinda obsessed with history. like, I’d love to be a historian if I didn’t have to do so much schooling to do it.

Hercules: Favourite instrument?

I love all sorts of music, but I’m very fond of violins, cellos, and woodwinds. I also love the ukulele, which I can play!

Gemini: Favourite song?

I have a lot of these too, but one of them is Home by Gabrielle Aplin

Pegasus: Favourite place to be?

I love libraries and art museums. I love the library of my parents’ house, where I’m typing this now. I love little small soft spaces that I can curl up in. I like to make little caves out of blankets in the winter time that I can hide in.

Libra: Favourite colour?

purple and gray.

Phoenix: Favourite thing to wear?

probably my big green sweater. it’s so soft and long and perfect for snuggling!

Aries: Favourite movie?

right now I’m gonna say The Iron Giant, but again, I love a lot of movies.

Cygnus: Favourite weather?

soft cloudy breezy days with a hint of rain. loud pounding thunderstorms in the morning. sunny spring days with warm afternoons and crisp winds.

Hydra: Favourite sound?

windchimes and bells, especially small, cheerful ones. they sound like magic to me.

Galaxies: Love/Friends

Milky Way: Who’s your oldest friend?

if we’re talking friends that I still regularly keep in contact with, then I’d say probably my best pal Shana. I’ve known her for… five years? six? wow it’s been a while.

Andromeda: Do you consider yourself social?

yes! mostly! I’m very social but I’m a big fickle about who I spend time with.

Black Eye Galaxy: Do you believe in love at first sight?

yes and no. I don’t believe you can be in love with someone without spending the time to get to know them first, but I do believe that there are people who you just sort of click with immediately, and all that complicated getting-to-know-you stuff feels so much easier with them than with other people. there are people who are fascinating to watch and to listen to, people who catch your eye the moment you see them. I wouldn’t call it love exactly, but it’s something.

Cartwheel Galaxy: When was your first kiss?

um. no comment lol.

Cigar Galaxy: How’s your flirting skills?

oh geez. I’m so bad at flirting. like… so bad. the worst. mostly I just aggressively compliment people and stare at them and hope they don’t hate me?

Comet Galaxy: Have you ever had to leave a relationship because someone changed too much?

uh, not really. usually it’s more that people automatically leave me when they change, not that I don’t want them around anymore.

Pinwheel Galaxy: Would you date the last person you talked to?

I AM dating the last person I talked to lol. unless you count telling my bro that I didn’t care if he used the TV, in which case, ew no.

Sombrero Galaxy: Do you have a crush right now?

yeah….

Bode’s Galaxy: Have you ever had a secret admirer?

if I have, they’ve been very stealthy about it!

Sunflower Galaxy: Would you date/make friends with someone out of pity?

no? I mean, if someone is lonely/doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends I might make an extra effort to talk to them, but I wouldn’t ever spend time with someone JUST out of pity, that’d be insulting and unpleasant for both of us

Tadpole Galaxy: Would you deny a relationship/friendship?

why would I?

Whirlpool Galaxy: Have you ever cried over a breakup?

if friend-breakups count, then yes.

Other stuff: Wishes

Comet: What’s your big dream?

to get my own books published someday. to move out of my parents’ house. to get a job I love and don’t hate.

Asteroid: What does your dream life look like?

I live in a small and extremely comfortable house with my wife. we have a few kids and a bunch of dogs and maybe a cat or two. I have plenty of time to spend on all my hobbies and a garden out front that I’m always struggling to remember to water. my job is creative and exciting and not horribly stressful. also we live on a farm and I get to pet goats all the time because this is a dream so I get to have whatever I want. I bake bread every single day and I never have to vacuum the carpets.

Meteor: What’s something you wish you could tell, but can’t?

I wish I was better at articulating my thoughts in general. there’s a lot of little day-to-day thoughts I have that I’d love to tell people, but I’ve never been good at telling people what I’m thinking or why.

Nebula: If you could undo one thing in your life, what would it be?

only one thing? hmm… I’m not sure there’s really anything I’d change. everything that’s happened to me is part of me now, and if I changed it… I’m not sure I’d recognize myself.

Shooting Star: If you could bring back one thing, what would it be?

I’d make the books I loved as a kid stop being out of print.

Pulsar: What do you hope to do in the next 10 years?

I guess I hope I’ll make a little more progress towards my dream life? finally graduate college probably and make a few more friends, maybe finish a book or two.

Supernova: What’s one thing you want to do before you die?

I want to travel the world. all over Europe and Asia and just… everywhere I can.

Quasar: If you could spend the rest of your life with only one person, who would it be?

oh gosh that’s way too hard of a question! I love all the people I love too much to decide. plus, with only one person we’d definitely get sick of each other after a while.

Wormhole: What’s something you wish would happen, but know won’t

that all of the political bullshit currently ruining my country and my mental health would shut up and go away immediately

Black Hole: What’s the last thing you want to see?

like, the last thing I want to see before I die? or like, the last thing I want to see as in the thing I least want to see ever? as for the former, I don’t know, and as for the latter, idk but I feel like all the above political bullshit comes pretty close

#jellyfishrambles #do you regret asking yet lol #wowww this got long #shit this took me a whole hour to write

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winterscribe · 7 years

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That Vampire Hunter D thing I’ll eventually write coherently

So now that I’ve FINALLY found the Vampire Hunter D Fandom I’m working up the courage to share some of my headcanons (my stupid anxiety makes it irrationally hard) The problem is a lot of my headcanons require at least basic knowledge of the fantasy world that I started when I was 14?Ish? And the Ocs I created. Like I decided to yank D out of his post-apocalyptic hell world and put him into this peaceful world populated by non-assholes, or in some cases, slightly less homicidal assholes… ok the number of assholes is much less than on the frontier, and even the homicidal ones usually need a good reason to be homicidal. None of this “I’m gonna experiment on thousands of individuals and put my son through a living hell for shits and giggles” - LOOKING AT YOU DRAC, LOOKING AT YOU!

Anyway it’s really long and rambly so READ MORE-

Anyway I’m gonna make a series of posts explaining the basics, who’s who, How D got there, basic worldbuilding, that kinda thing. I’ll go through and link ‘em as I finish them. And I’ll make a masterpost because there are a few tags on my blog about the world and D’s family.

Now, since this world was started when I was 14 there are some things that are a little...odd. Names that Stuck and I can’t change because I’ve been calling it that for over 5 years, plot lines that involve characters from a different franchise but i haven’t figured out how to replace. Seriously I have GOT to figure out how to replace Fucking LOKI. FFS I haven’t liked that character for 2 years WHY is he STUCK THERE

I’m currently worldbuilding and planning a few novel’s based on Avaleara’s life, but the first 2 would be before she met D so I don’t think anyone would be interested. I’m gonna write certain scenes though, like Avaleara and D’s first kiss, the emotionally overwrought scenes that bring them together, stuff like that. But hey, if you like really overthought worldbuilding and sprawling sci fi/fantasy worlds, lord knows i could talk about Rev’haros for hours, so feel free to hit me up.

Story

D’s Part of the story line starts when Avaleara was punted through the barrier between universes by her uncle’s failed experiment and ended up on the frontier. By sheer happenstance, she landed right in front of D, who pretty much ignored her because she wasn’t trying to kill him and he needed to get to a job. Avaleara decided “Hey, there’s a fifty fifty shot he’s heading towards civilization, Im’ma follow at a respectful distance” Now, while Avaleara is decidedly Alien in appearance (aprx 6 ft tall, really dark purple skin, has horns, bio-luminescent markings, ALIEN) she has interacted with humans before, has even been to an Earth before, (Multiverse ftw) she has a pretty solid glamour already prepared, so while D knows what she looks like cuz he saw her, she can blend in on the frontier.

Except yah’ know, she doesn’t speak the language cuz the only Earth languages she knows are Japanese or English from circa 2000. Her trying to figure out the frontier dialect is like someone who speaks old English plopped down in the middle of modern day- She can sorta kinda figure out the gist but dear god is it difficult and makes her headache. On top of that since she comes into town a few hours after a Dhampir, well people don’t want shit to do with her, so she keeps vaguely wandering after D. I haven’t figured out the turning point yet, but eventually D interacts with this strange woman trailing aimlessly after him even as he cuts through an incredibly deadly forest and other such frontier horror ‘scapes that should have gotten her killed but didn’t. Because it’s D, he has a better grasp on “ancient” Japanese (Also I headcanon that his mother was of Japanese descent because Tony Thornburg) So they can communicate better.

Eventually they sorta travel together (Again I need to flesh this out) for a few years. About a decade of sorta traveling together (though niether of them will admit it, and certainly won’t admit that they enjoy eachother’s company) Dracula decides to be an asshole. For Hand Wavy reasons he comes up with a test for D and Left hand, that involves poisoning D. (IDK i’m kinda toying with the idea that Dracula had another success that was better than D, and decided to get rid of him, buuuut that would mean another character and i think it really goes against canon so idk if i’m gonna go that route)

The thing about Avaleara is that she is really possessive (part dragon) and fiercely protective of those she’s attached to. So Drac didn’t count on being hit with 900 pounds of sheer protective RAGE. Seriously Avaleara is the kind of person who, if she has something to protect, she will get back up no matter what she gets hit with. Spear through the heart? Bitch please she has two and you just handed her a weapon. Cut off an Arm? Regenerative powers and a history of being tortured so she doesn’t even flinch at the pain? Fire? She’s been burned alive before and it awakened her latent dragon genes. Water? She was born with an innate gift for controlling it. (so i kinda gave her every power I ever thought was cool, oops. HI MARY SUE)

She doesn’t kick Drac’s ass, but she does seriously wound him which is enough to startle him and, since he’s already accomplished poisoning D, he retreats, firing off a psychological attack as he goes. At that point Avaleara has one of two options. Use the last of her strength to fight off the attack, or draw the poison from D into herself (I had a reason for this but it's in a notebook buried in a box somewhere. God I hate moving) Another thing about Avaleara- if it's a choice between saving her life and saving someone else's, she will save someone else's. Every. Time.

So She saves D’s life, but falls into a coma fighting both the poison and Drac’s attack. At this point, her father, Maruketsukai (there’s one of those names I can’t change) appears, because her family had been keeping an eye on her but hadn’t pulled her back home cuz reasons. D does not trust the guy that appeared in midair. D owes Avaleara a debt because she saved his life. D also wants to know how the fuck she managed to wound the Sacred Ancestor. D is a stubborn bastard who will recklessly enter a portal to another universe because he owes someone a debt. He will also stand guard at their bedside for 5 years while they are in a coma because they saved his life.

(I think this is still in character- I mean he wouldn’t do it for just anyone, but shit this person fought Dracula and lived. For Him. yeah he’s gonna stick around and make sure they’re safe before he fucks off.)

His protectiveness earns him the undying loyalty of Avaleara’s family. Like, he’s obviously straight up ready to cut his way out of the room if they so much as breathe wrong in her direction. Ordinarily death threats aren’t the way to endear yourself to your in laws but Maruketsukai and Nikara are… not ordinary.

During the 5 years that Avaleara is in a coma, D learns a lot about her world, her family, and her past. Like the fact that she’s second in line for the throne, and that a previous lover had betrayed, kidnapped, and tortured her and that she had extreme PTSD and massive trust issues because of it. That’s why they had left her on the frontier, because for the first time in two thousand years, Avaleara had sorta trusted someone, or at least, didn’t seem overly paranoid about them, and they wanted to see what would happen.

D spends a lot of time with Takashi and Mizuki, because they speak Japanese. Takashi is the son of Sesshoumaru and Kagome. (Yes from the anime Inuyasha. I did mention this started when I was 14 right?) That’s why he speaks Japanese. Also He drags Avaleara and Mizuki to Earth occasionally which is why Avaleara has a human glamor. Its interesting for D to meet another half breed who is so blase about it, but Takashi grew up in La’ Shevare, where genetic modification for the express purpose of interspecies breeding has been a thing for several million years. Pretty much no one is a pure blood. But since he’s also the nephew of Inuyasha and has listened to his father express his regret over how he treated his brother, he at least partially understands where D is coming from. Sorta. Academically. Ok not really but he tries. And totally has a talk shit get hit policy when it comes to D. Like call Takashi a half breed, make fun of his heritage, whatever, so long as you don’t make fun of his parents, he don’t give a fuck. Call D a half breed, make fun of D’s heritage, prepare for at least 3 broken bones. Probably more. Seriously. He’s 45 years older than Avaleara, held her in his arms as a baby, grew up with her and fell in love with her sister. She’s Family. He was helpless when the man she loved broke her and twisted her into someone else, was helpless during her recovery because she wouldn’t let anyone in to help her. The moment D popped up, planting himself between Avaleara and any perceived threat, was the moment he became Pack. And you Do Not Fuck With a Dog Demon’s Pack.

Eventually Avaleara wakes up, except thanks to the psycological attack, and her previous ptsd related issues, Avaleara first thinks D is a hallucination. It takes awhile for it to set in and stick that he’s not. D sticks around, convincing her that he’s real and she’s not going insane, and just being really patient when she freaks out and thinks she’s seeing things, because hey, it was his asshole dad who did this to her so he kinda feels responsible. Plus he’d still really like to know how she wounded him.

It boils down to - Avaleara has spent the last 2 thousand years studying a variety of fighting techniques from all over the Rev’ Haros System, a system whose recent history spans back a few million years. D may know all the fancy vampire tricks, but 10,000 years is a drop in the bucket, a single lifespan of a person from Rev’ Haros. The whole system is so much more advanced than even the vampires at their peak, just because they’ve had the time to develop so far. The average person could go toe to toe with greater nobility if they had to, nevermind the people who are actually trained. Not to mention their fighting styles are so different, so alien to anything on Earth, that Dracula was at a significant disadvantage from that alone.

Avaleara happily agrees to train D in some of these styles. He doesn’t plan on sticking around long enough to learn them all. But he does, and she happily teaches him everything she knows until he is literally the only person who has a prayer of killing her. Shes very proud. Their sparring matches are epic and terrifying.

#vampire hunter d #god i'm so nervous putting this out there #like this has been my brain child for YEARS but i was never gonna share it #I love these characters ok #i poured my heart and soul into #Avaleara #please be gentle

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