#like i hate the dead mother trope just as much as anyone but she needs to stay dead fr

[reverseflashes]

#imagine confronting your mother about a secret older brother you never knew #and she responds it with ''at least he is a better heir than you'' #like i hate the dead mother trope just as much as anyone but she needs to stay dead fr #justice league throne of atlantis #ocean master #orm marius #queen atlanna #i know all of orm's lines in this movie word by word is this normal #i lose it every time i rewatch this scene!!!!!!!

[eoieopda]

Hello there... first off, congratulations for the milestone. You are loved...so much so.

If I may, can I make a request for your 2k drabblepalooza... Kim Taehyung & enemies to lovers trope.

Thank you & I don't mind if you don't do this request because I'm surely gonna love everything else you put up.

aaaaah you absolute angel! tysm 😭💕

the one with taehyung and the rook

pairing: kim taehyung x gn!reader type: drabble | wc: 1.2k | rating: 18+ genre: not truly angsty, but idk ? au: chaebol, enemies to lovers summary: while others are playing checkers, taehyung is playing chess. cw: *groans* c*p*t*l*sm, toxic family dynamic implied, resentment, reference to nose drugs/alcohol/partying (not depicted), neither kth nor mc are truly great people™️ but that’s showbiz, baby!

For twenty straight minutes, you sat in stony silence with your gaze locked on the door ahead. As you did, you gripped the pen in your hand tighter, tighter, tighter. Your brain was steeped in bitterness, and you couldn’t focus on a single thing being discussed. Just the clock ticking above you, the empty chair beside you, and the unmoving cut of oak in front of you.

It was funny, really, in a fucked up sort of way. Your absence from the boardroom wouldn’t mean dick to anyone, but your presence was still expected. So, you sat.

Like always.

Second chair.

Everyone had said — correctly and for years — that you were the best suited to assume leadership when your father approached retirement. Though you were Choi Soojin’s second-born, you were the exceedingly competent and capable one. You were the least likely to take his empire and drive it straight into cold, dead earth. Everyone but you was able to accept the way shit like this worked.

Succession plans start and stop with the eldest.

That was the trump card, always. Even when the eldest waltzes into an eight o’clock meeting at half past, wearing yesterday’s suit, sweating out yesterday’s liquor, ready and able to tank tomorrow’s acquisitions by knowing fuck all about them. 

When your autonomous reaction to your brother’s appearance left you scowling, you felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You were well acquainted with rage, so you knew immediately that this wasn’t that. Quickly, your narrowed eyes flicked over to your mother, whose sights were set on you. She never needed to bother with words; you understood precisely what that understated glare meant:

Excuse yourself to the restroom and wash that look off your face.

So, you did.

Halfway down the hall to your destination, you bristled for an entirely different reason. Leaning nonchalantly against the wall between two extremely rare, absolutely invaluable paintings stood one Kim Taehyung. You hated his proximity to those masterpieces not only because he could destroy either with a single wrong move, but also because he looked like he belonged there.

He belonged everywhere, even if he wasn’t welcome anywhere.

“Skipping out early?” He hummed, head lolling to the side as he flashed you a bright, white grin. “That’s not like you, sweets.”

You made the mistake of glancing at his casually crossed arms. The top two buttons of his ostentatious — silk — shirt were left out of the loop, and the weight of his forearms against the fabric left more of his obscene — sun-kissed — collarbones on display. Before he could catch you staring, you continued your downward glance until you reached the Gucci loafers pressing prints into the hand-knotted, antique rug.

“You’re wearing shoes for once,” You countered with a sharp tick of your eyebrow. With your tone as flat as your affect, your eyes flicked back up to his. “Guess we’re both acting out of character this morning.”

Taehyung snorted, more amused than anything else. To your dismay, the short list of things he was incapable of included taking a hint. He trailed along after you when you turned to walk in the opposite direction. Unable to help yourself, you continued taking potshots with every step.

“I’m surprised you showed up at all. Figured you would still be passed out in whatever bathtub Jaesang slept in last night. He was with you, wasn’t he?”

“Of course, he was.” Even without looking back, you knew Taehyung was rolling his eyes. Where else would he be?

You clenched your fists as you continued down the hall, now heading for the staircase at the opposite end. There would be crescent moons dug into your palms when you finally unfurled them, but for now, the pinch of your nails was enough to keep you from unzipping. 

You didn’t get to unzip. You had to ghostwrite your family’s legacy while the future figurehead was off snorting powder off some undergraduate’s ass. You could, however, make your resentment someone else’s problem.

So, you would.

“Anyone with eyes can see that Jaesang wasn’t this much of a fuck-up until he met you,” You mused. “So, if you’re trying to ruin us, Taehyung, you should have been more subtle about it.”

It was impossible to tell which was sharper, your heels stabbing into the hardwood steps or your tone. He took it all in stride, just like he did with everything else thrown his way. For the record, you hated that about him, too. He had nothing to get worked up over because he had nothing to lose.

“That fumbling, sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing bullshit won’t get you very far, not with an international conglomerate on the line.”

As soon as you said it, you realized just how like your mother you sounded. That thought made you want to vomit, so you clenched your jaw and continued your ascent up the steps.

Taehyung took advantage of the momentary silence, albeit not in the way you expected. Suddenly, his hand flew out from nowhere and enveloped yours in warmth.

You stopped. 

He started, “I’m not trying to ruin you.”

You turned, glare locked and loaded. It was gone the second you saw his expression. Under downturned eyebrows, his wide, umber eyes disarmed you immediately. Whatever was glowing behind them wasn’t the snark you were used to, and it was thawing that chunk of ice in the center of your chest.

It was funny, really, in a shitty sort of way. The person you were harshest to looked at you more softly than anyone else ever had, family included.

“I’m attempting to do the opposite.”

You swallowed, tried your best to look unaffected, and demanded, “Elaborate.”

“That thick skull won’t get you very far, not with an international conglomerate on the line.”

The corner of his mouth tugged upward as he mimicked you, and you could’ve sworn he looked almost — fond? Charming, even, like he did when you met him; long before he became the co-pilot of your brother’s tailspin.

Halfway between amused and incredulous, your instinct was to cross your arms and shift your weight impatiently from one foot to the other. You’d have to drop his hand to do it, though. Not bothering to unpack that hesitation, you simply stood still and waited.

Your inaction wasn’t lost on Taehyung, who once again tilted his head to the side. Cute, you caught yourself thinking. He looked conflicted, like he had to flip a coin in his mind before he could decide how to proceed. 

Eventually, he did.

“Your brother has a longer fuse than I expected. Seriously, I thought he’d have exploded by now.” Taehyung heaved a put-upon sigh as if his own deviousness was exhausting. “It’s been months of this playboy shit — and even though I’m dragging him down as quickly as I can, he still hasn’t hit rock bottom.”

Then, he shrugged. “Hopefully, I’ll claim the knight before the king checks himself.”

You blinked because you didn’t know what the fuck else to do with this admission.

“My money’s always been on the rook.” Taehyung winked, squeezing your half-frozen heart along with your hand. “Best piece for the end game, after all. Once the board’s been cleared out a bit, they’re damn near unstoppable.”

With a roll of your eyes, you scoffed, “What, is this you flirting? Actively sabotaging the incoming chairman? My own flesh and blood?”

With a wolfish grin, Taehyung leaned in and whispered, “Depends. Is it working?”

“Yes,” You stated matter-of-factly. “Yes, it is.”

#jade’s drabbles #jade’s requests #2k drabblepalooza #bts #kth #bts drabble #bts imagine #bts scenarios #kim taehyung #taehyung drabble #taehyung imagine #taehyung scenarios #taehyung x reader #taehyung x you #taehyung x y/n #btshoneyhive #micdropnet #btsafterdarknet #alongtherbbonwoodtrack #re: the one with taehyung and the rook

[rhaenyra-first-of-her-name]

This is kind of a long rant against HotD and not structured at all so you might want to avoid it if you like TG or Alicent. Or even Daemon, sorry, I don't like him much either.

I was always skeptical of HotD even before it started but I had never expected that it would be so much worse than the source material which is, mind it, a very pro greens, biased, misogynistic spiral by some dead maester.

I don't enjoy F&B as a book and the Dance wasn't remotely my favorite part of it. Like the whole Dance of Dragons reads like a misogynistic spiral sometimes but HotD just took a biased source and dialled it to a 100.

You would think they would try to do the opposite bcoz the source is acknowledged to be biased but nope, they just had to make it worst. The Greens get to be whitewashed, they can literally not commit to any actions (Alicent committed treason by mistake, Aemond murdered a child by mistake, like wtf? Wtf are these fucking uwu passive characters and writing. Fucking commit to treason if you are gonna do it. Who half asses treason? Book Greens would gobble up Show Greens for breakfast. The Lannisters would have a laugh.) The Blacks are villainized and all the Velaryons are sidelined (which is worst with the show changing their race intentionally and then doing this).

Like the Greens have no redeeming qualities, just the narrative framing them as the good guys on their sides and I always hate how the narrative is trying to shove it down my throat. I can't stand it.

Like I don't even like Daemon but the show is stripping all the depth from him. I seriously don't like him but it's like the show can't stand anyone on the TB to have anything good or significant.

They literally showed Aegon to be a rapist onscreen and want me to root for him? Wtf are they smoking? The amount of cognitive dissonance you need to like TG is too high. Ik the show doesn't expect much from its viewers but it's like they expect the viewer to be stupid.

Show Alicent is so passive, they make me prefer the book Alicent and I hate the Evil Stepmother trope. The show acts as if Rhaenyra wasn't supposed to be the Good Mother and Good Stepmother counterpart to Alicent.

And F&B and George isn't subtle about who won the Dance. It's the Blacks. Rhaenyra might have died but her fraction won the war, her sons and descendants sat on the throne. Daenerys is her direct descendant and she brought the dragons back from death (especially given that the Dance was the main reason for their downfall and even the Targaryens' powers thanks to TG).

TG has the same fate as all the usurpers in the series- Maegor, Larys Strong, Robert Baratheon - the end of their line. Alicent 's line all dies before her eyes. The current Higtowers have nothing to do with Alicent and her line, they're not even worthy of remembrance and mention in the main series so far. Margaery is a half Hightower and despite the Tyrells' obvious efforts to make her queen and have one of their own on the throne, no one remotely mentions the only Hightower Queen ever. Imagine how embarrassing is that. You know if Alicent was a decent queen in any right, it would have been mentioned by now, the Tyrells aren't one to not use every advantage they have given that their Bannerman have more royal blood than them, which was again mentioned in the series.

Anyway, Alicent 's line dying and going to oblivion for all purposes is their ultimate defeat. I can't stand the TG stand trying to make it anything else.

And yes Rhaenicent is just queerbaiting and terribly at that. As a queer woman, I don't want them as any sort of a representation. An evil step mother aged down for a pairing where she plots treason and murder for Nyra and her sons? No, God, Daemon is a better option than that and I can't believe they made me say it.

Also, Laena was right there if they wanted to have a sapphic pairing.

When I said I wanted more morally gray female characters, I didn't mean totally irredeemable ones. There is a fine line in what characters, or crimes, you can redeem, starting a civil war out of personal greed and misogyny is not one of them. And yes, TG are all misogyny even if Alicent plays the uwu victim of patriarchy all the time. And funny how she never does anything to help any woman, not even her daughter Helena; does nothing against the man who actually harmed her and actively wants to put her rapist son on the throne instead of the rightful heir but her stans act as they or she is some kind of feminist when Alicent is no woman's friend.

And canonically, which are the books btw, not the badly written fanfictions (I am so sorry, this is an insult to fanfiction tbh) of the producers: GoT and HotD, Nyra had her mother's sigil on her flag, not Aegon the Rapist+Usurper.

(Can't believe the show tried to make some kind of gotcha moment with Alicent in that green dress. Idk why the characters even stood up. They only do that for the ruling monarch, not the consort and Alicent literally did nothing to deserve that kind of reaction. She just wore a green dress so what? Once again, the show is giving TG credit for doing nothing.)

On the last notes:

Cole is an incel.

I can't believe people ship Aemond and Luke. The former is his murderer and a war criminal while Luke was just a child. Leave my baby boi alone.

Otto is a cunt. Idk why Alicent stans don't crucify the man who arranged her marriage (and the bane of her existence) more.

Daemon is somehow better than all the men in TG which is an accomplishment especially since I dislike his character.

Once again, Aegon is a drunkard rapist.

Helena deserves better than her family.

I never liked Jaehaerys I and this is all kinda his fault. For the best king ever, he singlehandedly roped his daughters and all the Targaryen women of all their rights. Rhaena I should really have been the queen.

Viserys I, you tried but you should have done better. Aemma would have been so disappointed.

#anti hotd #anti alicent hightower #anti alicent stans #anti team green #anti TG #anti daemon targaryen #anti daemyra #too sorry #rhaenyra targaryen #team black #pro rhaenyra #pro team black #ash rambles #I am so sorry for how disjointed it's #I just wanted to write up everything I thought about this show and damn it got long and kinda messy #narrative framing #hotd 's terrible writing #and cognitive dissonance

[kennahjune]

Hear me out:

My favorite Stranger Things trope is Found Family. Like yeah sure everything else is awesome but found family hits different. Especially to someone with a somewhat dysfunctional family.

My favorite found families, however, are any that include Mike and Steve. (Especially one or the other with Hopper adopting them.)

So hear me out: I combine them.

No not literally. Just the tropes. Give me Mike and Steve finding a family in each other.

Like— yeah, sure. Mike has the Party, and his actual family (or— at least— he has Nancy (somewhat)) and Steve has Robin and Dustin but— it’s not the same. They love them, don’t get them wrong, but they don’t always understand.

Maybe Dustin does a bit. His moms not always there and his dads dead but— Claudia tries. And that’s the difference between Dustin and Mike/Steve.

But everyone else? They don’t have a full grasp on how hurtful parental neglect can actually be. They don’t realize how much of a toll it can take on a child’s mental health and self-worth.

Mike and Steve do know. They’ve experienced it firsthand, in fact.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out Ted Wheeler cared very little about Mike (or any of his kids, really). Mike’s convinced that Ted doesn’t even know his birthday or middle name (April 7 and Quincy (Karen thought it was cute at the time)).

And as much as Mike loves his mother, Karen Wheeler isn’t much of an exception. She gets a pass because of Holly, but that’s just about it. She’s not really there for Mike other than when she deems she needs to be.

We don’t even know anything about Steve’s parents outside of the fact that they’re literally never home. Like— 4 seasons and not once do we meet Mr. and Mrs. Harrington? They’re either dead or Steve lives on his own.

Now give me emotionally-constipated Mike slowly leaning on Steve for help. Because Steve worked things out, right? Steve managed to get his emotions and attitude under control, and maybe he could help Mike.

That’s really all I want. Mike and Steve being each others support systems because they get each other. They understand the neglect and emotional-constipation and the inability to express your feelings because when you do try they’re pushed aside and forgotten about. They understand each other in the sense that they’d do ANYTHING to protect those they care about. In the sense that they’re traumatized kids with no authority figure to help them through it.

Now give me Joyce Byers and (begrudgingly) Jim Hopper. Both of who recognize this and try to subtly step in.

Joyce is immediate with it. She’s practically raised Mike and she’ll finish the goddamn job if she has to. She’ll take Steve to, don’t fucking test her.

And then Hopper who “hates” them both because of Mike and El and how Steve used to act. But he recognizes the blatant neglect in their lives and while sure— it may or may not be a little too late to make up their childhoods, it isn’t too late for them to know that someone cares. That Hopper cares, no matter how horrible he is at showing it.

Maybe throw Max into the mix as well.

Max understanding Mike and Steve on another level. She understands the neglect and shattered hope that they carry with them. Recognizes that hateful flash in Steve’s eyes when anyone brings up his parents. Billy used to get the same flash when someone mentioned Neil. Recognizes the way Mike seems to close in on himself when people ask him about himself. She does the same thing because she doesn’t know how else to react. Recognizes the refusal to talk about their own emotions—subtly changing topics to keep it out of conversation. Because she does the exact. Same. Thing.

And you know what? Give me Steve, Max and Mike spending a summer together. Give me the three of them leaning on each other for support and advice. Max and Mike looking to Steve for how to open up. Steve looking after the 2 of them and the 2 of them looking out for Steve.

I’m dubbing them the No Parents Trio.

Over and Out.

#dustin henderson #max mayfield #mike wheeler #steve harrington #stranger things #found family #everyone adopting steve harrington #the wheelers #joyce byers #No Parents Trio

[mermaidsirennikita]

Haven't seen Malcolm's list yet (though I plan to) but as someone who watched QC I feel like even season 2 of Bridgerton failed when it came to better research and SCREENTIME for the Sharmas. QC has some really blatant issues that I wish they hadn't put in (or explored in the way they did re: Danbury's marriage), and the real-but-actually-fake monarchy backdrop further adds to the confusion, but its one "strength" of sorts was that it was tighter than Bton season 2 in terms of side plots. The side plots make even less sense to me now because you could not pay me to explain to someone what the point of Benedict's art school thing was, or the poorly done Eloise one, or the Featheringtons. I feel like this can even be traced back to season 1 because aside from all the blatant problems, Simon felt like he was sidelined in the last episode and I don't know how to explain why, other than to give significance to Daphne 'understanding' him? Anyway, thanks for the Tom Jones rec

I ended up watching QC with a friend through venues that are comfortable to me. And I’ll be honest, I thought it was kind of complete dog shit and I don’t really get the praise and passes it’s been receiving. Obviously everyone is free to like and dislike what they wish. But….

—the pure manner in which Lady D’s husband is portrayed. Darkest skinned person on the show, and much like Simon’s father, he’s not only a horrible person but depicted as grotesque. She doesn’t want to huge his “giant babies”, they give the actor (who’s a handsome guy irl) fake teeth and weird makeup to make his skin look ashy. He flaps around desperate for white approval when he’s not raping his wife (the darkest skinned woman in the show) in a manner the show plays as comical. Then he dies trying to rape her again. Wow.

—both black female leads end up essentially alone and they hate their kids and are depicted as cold mothers. But hey, they’re strong and dignified TM so who needs love? Not them! I know everyone was laughing at the way Charlotte skimmed over her son sobbing about his dead daughter but it seemed to me a stark contrast to sweet mom Violet who’s just so horny right after her son goes on his honeymoon

—they did an entire episode going over things we’d already seen, but this time with FARMER GEORGE TM torture porn. I found the depiction of his mental illness both laughably under-researched (some theories re: George in real life surround him suffering from bipolar disorder… speaking as someone who has that, actually, I can tell you the show’s version doesn’t have any kind of bipolar disorder I recognize; his symptoms are basically what the plot requires).

—homeboy was barely present in the back half; romance show? What romance show?

—the much promoted gay love story ends in one party alone and the other either gone or dead for no reason

—why did anyone love each other? They would speak a few random sentences and then trope trope trope it’s fine you know what we need? More Danbury rape

I’ll be real, I didn’t see a tighter show. A tighter show would’ve cut the entire present day storyline, which did nothing, and everything to do with Violet (but I guess we needed a white woman to bemoan her horniness to Lady Danbury who’s Beyond That Now).

I don’t have a really great opinion of either of the previous seasons, but they for sure had better leading men (I am begging people to stop comparing Farmer George to Nick Hoult) and at least they weren’t incredibly depressing and quite as rape heavy. Season 1 did have a pivotal rape, but it didn’t have like…. Five comical rapes.

Mr. Malcolm’s List and Tom Jones walk circles around this franchise. Fuck, so did season 1 of Sanditon.

#not gonna tag bc i don’t need that in my life rn #the best part was when lady d the hottest woman on the show fucked the boringest man ever #while wearing a Burger King hat #not bc it was like good but bc I laughed very hard #again people can enjoy what they wish but i just really don't understand the response here #i kind of regret watching it but if i'm gonna dislike something i'm gonna watch it first to see if like... #i'm right #and sometimes i've been pleasantly surprised--i thought i'd hate MML

[lemonhemlock]

https://at.tumblr.com/lemonhemlock/can-i-talk-about-my-own-personal-experience-with/fz6m7yybgypb

Thank you! I feel like I need to say this but this is my own personal experience with shippers on hotd twitter! This is my experience with the shippers of certain ships not the ships themselves! Ofc this is not all the shippers but the select few who I have interacted with! I also don’t hate any of these ships at most I’m neutral towards them so ship whoever you want! Lastly shippers on here and on twitter are very different!

Sorry if I get some of the ship names wrong!

Damyra (daemon x rhaenyra) - so damn annoying that whole phase y’all had with posting gifs and pictures of daemon and rhaenyra sex scene on the beach slowed down to show nanoseconds of rhaenyra trying to prove she enjoyed it that was embarrassing af. You all also have the worst takes ever please never get into writing. When someone criticizes anyone in your ship especially daemon y’all act like your mother was insulted like damn clam down. You don’t even like rhaenyra. Come after anyone who dislikes daemon and criticizes him and anyone who doesn’t picture team black as a perfect family. Is a lesbian ship really where you draw the line?

Aegond (aegon x aemond) - actually pretty chill. Pretend they don’t see the tl fighting everyday. They don’t get involved in shippers fighting. Majority of aegond shippers I have seen also ship other crack ships and are usually at the head of starting them and creating them. I don’t I have ever seen a aegond shipper fight for aegond in a ship war or shippers war and I haven’t seen any other shipper is hostile(?) or aggressive towards the ship or shipper other than saying ‘ew incest’. Horny af. Actually have good takes. Also write nice fics I just finish they would actually finish them and publish them instead of posting tiny sections of it like bestie been waiting since November where’s the damn fic/jk. Very unhinged.

Helemond (helaena x aemond) - seem nice and chill. Have nice theories. They have good takes. But dear god stop fucking getting into a fight with alysmond shippers every other day why can’t you all just stick to your own damn ships. Like block those damn alysmond shippers and move on with your day!!!! Seen SOME NOT ALL shippers hate on alys. Their super nice.

Alysmond (alys x aemond) - love their theories. Their the mostly the theory makers and theorists of team green from what I have seen or maybe I just follow theorists who ship this ship 🤷‍♀️. Have nice fancast for the characters not shown yet. Always on the front line defending in team wars. Unhinged mfs and not in a good way. Need y’all to calm the fuck down and stop getting into ship wars with helamonds. Both of you mfs ruin the damn experience. Jumping every damn crack insect ship (not aegond yet) like mind your own damn business. I don’t what y’all trying to do by picking fights with other shippers every other day. Their nice when their not acting insane.

Rhaencient (alicent x rhaenyra) - they always getting jumped by crazy ass team black stans and daemyra shippers. Are pretty nice but a bit annoying. You’re not above anyone else just cuz you ship a non incest ship from a show filled with incest. Annoying as the alysmond shippers. Actually rhaencient and alysmond shippers tend to be the same. What did alicole ever do to you?? Private qrt a alicole shippers post which talks about the similarities between them and tropes that work with them and talking shit about the ship isn’t cute get a life. Your ship isn’t above anyone else’s. Their nice and pretty sweet when their not acting insane.

Alicole (alicent x criston cole) - I never see you anywhere! Do you exist on twitter? Never seen anyone get in a shipper war with alicole that isn’t one-sided. Can’t say much on this ships shipper cuz I haven’t interacted much with them.

Lucemond (lucerys x aemond) - drop dead

Crack ships - its always aegond mfs with the most open mind. You wanna see more crack ships look for the aegond shippers majority of the ones I have seen have no problem with crack ships and tend to rt and spread the crack ships.

Alimond and aligon - never seen them and also DO NOT COME TO TWITTER!!! I cannot stress this enough it is not the place for you. YOU WILL get jumped there if you come!

😂😂😂😂 Well, that's certainly elicited some giggles. What can I say, anon, it's a wild world out there. Take care & always keep a foot out in the real world.

This only tangentially related (non-asoiaf), but I just finished reading these posts a friend sent me, so, I suppose it can get much worse? (even when it comes to shipping) Though I'm honestly somehow always surprised at the general innovation of awful.

#ask #anon #you're not above anyone else just cause you ship a non incest ship from a show filled with incest ☠☠☠ #I DIED #lucemond is so crazy popular tho #like to me that is a horror trope #would make a cool statement from the magnus archives #jon reads it and immediately feels the need for a cigarette break #shipping discourse

[kamil-a]

GOWLANTHROPOLOGY, or “Winning At Gender”

DISCLAIMERS BEFORE WE START- 

-i am not finished his route yet. this isnt a roundup of the character/route, this is mid-route impressions only. 

-theres a lot of other things i could wander off to talking about but im trying really hard to limit my scope to one thing, for time and effort and brain capability and coherence’s sake.

first of all i want to establish something that anyone who even briefly interacts with this game probably knows very well. Im going to try to keep this to canon facts as much as possible without interpretation:

Alice is constantly comparing herself to the "perfect" (her word!) women that are her mother and sister.

both of these women are dead.

while she isnt able to access the knowledge that Lorina is dead, currently, she does openly talk with nightmare about how grief affects the way you talk about a person- only the good parts remain in your sight, theyre not there to offer their opinion anymore, etc.

okay, we're letting “my opinions” back in the room now!

so we see that, within the worldview of hnkna, the perfect woman is a dead woman. the “perfect” status that alice wants to achieve is impossible for her so long as she is alive because the perfect woman comes to exist at all by being eulogized.

“okay but kam we know this. where are you going with it. where are you gowling with it, even.”

lets get this down to a thesis statement. I tried really hard to make the text here blue, in honor of umineko, but it was destroying my other blockquotes etc that i put for ease of reading, so please just imagine that the bold text is blue (like in the umineko manga, i guess):

gowland badly wants to "win at being man" the same way alice badly wants to "win at being girl". however, while winning at girl is, within the worldview of this work, impossible, winning at man IS POSSIBLE within the worldview of the work and in fact we see other characters do it all the time.

as a product that needs to sell copies, winning at man HAS to be possible because this is a dating sim with a target audience of not just straight women but straight women who want a particular set of tropes to be in play. i’m not saying this as a value judgement just an observation- this game was made to appeal to a particular audience!

So as the route goes on, gowland keeps asking alice to affirm him on two things- first, if she can become "aware of him as a man". second, if she can "be wary around him" the way she can be "wary" of other men she knows.

brief interlude- until the game says it outright i am going to assume that the WRITERS think he is cis. EDIT: he is, in fact, cis, as ive been informed. but for a character who 

1. (im not sure yet if he actively did this in game or if it was a writing decision that just goes unquestioned, but it IS changed) changed his role name from something female-gendered (duchess) to male-gendered (marquis), and 

b. has a girls' first name he explicitly hates being called by ( because of the pun it makes with his last name, but still), 

i headcanon that he is a trans man. and i think that this adds some more really interesting layers.

okay. back to masculinity. 

lilich: gowland your GENDER lilich: babe does this horsie make me look masc lilich: i get the PLEASE GENDER AFFIRM ME BY DATING ME thing but you gotta do that when youre like, 16, and not a whole adult,

Alice repeatedly says that as she gets to know him he becomes someone he can “relax” around, someone who makes her feel peaceful and who she can talk to or not talk to about deep stuff as she wishes without pressure. and this makes him really depressed! and it’s something she tries to placate him about over the course of the route (YES babe the horsie DOES make you look masc, etc) 

GOWLAND: “... Even this doesn’t make you wary of me?”

GOWLAND: “So even if I do this, you’re not aware of me...”

ALICE: (thinking) He hangs his head and I hurry to reassure him. When Gowland gets depressed, I somehow get incredibly flustered.

even when he suddenly kisses her, she says it made her feel "startled", but it didn’t make him seem like a dangerous or threatening presence to her. Shouldn’t this be good? Shouldn’t it be desireable if your crush feels relaxed in your presence, responds without fear to you kissing them? But...

GOWLAND: “As a man... For you to be so relaxed with me in this situation is difficult, so...”

this goes in circles until they get into a real fight about this where he says in return some things that make alice feel truly bad and he has to apologize for saying!

 (That she’s a cold person, that he thinks she must’ve been a player back home- MUCH to unpack here but this is the gowland essay and we mustn’t wander too far or we’ll be here forever.)

but it becomes an issue in the first place because, as he keeps saying, over and over, this isnt the kind of thing "a man" wants to hear. I’m going to quote some fellow scholars (friends who watched me stream), now. 

lilich: like i think there are ways to do it that would be really interesting to me lilich: but by the nature of this game its treated as like lilich: very normal and right that a man would feel this way lilich: which is not really great to me lilich: BUT ALSO SOME OF IT IS VERY FUNNY

lilich: my issue is not that hes trying to win at man or that he comes off as aggressive especially since he explicitly fails at being aggressive...my issue is that the wider narrative is like, yeah this is totally normal

skitazzu: I guess he wants to make her nervous like in the "I like you way" but it comes off aggressive skitazzu: and creepy

But now we have to ask, WHY is this masculinity within this setting? Why is this, specifically, what a perfect man is?

for easiness’ sake, i’m going to quote/paraphrase myself from yesterday-

the culture of man in this park is different from what he’s trying to be. the culture of man in this park is a HYUU HYUU guy*. we have seen this for ourselves with our very own eyes and ears, that a man in this culture, this territory, this country, is a HYUU HYUU guy.

He might be masculine when compared to the men where he lives, but not when compared to other roleholders.

*we see a scene with the local faceless guys and girls and theyre all full of pep and energy and have 24/7 customer service voices just as a local accent even when not at work and this guy goes HYUUUU HYUUUUUU and its a really hysterical bit of voice acting

for example, his behavior brought up a connection for a friend-scholar:

skitazzu: YOU KNOW WHAT skitazzu: IT GIVES ME skitazzu: TRYING TO BE LIKE ACE skitazzu: BUT he can never be ace

So this “wariness/awareness” he’s trying to reach is a standard not of being a man in the Amusement Park Territory. He wants to be a man in the style of (to look at the game level) roleholder men or (to look at the wider view) dating sim love interest men.

(i think looking at how vivaldi fits in as a love interest and roleholder woman who is treated differently by the game but still given moments of romantic aggression could be VERY interesting, but again, not the point of this essay. MOVING ON!)

august 12, 2022 edit - it’s been weighing on me for some time now that i quoted something that is Extremely Not About Silly Little Videogames for my silly little videogame essay. regardless of the association in my brain it seemed inappropriate to me and i’m deleting it.)

okay, now i’m going to quote a friend-scholar again. this blew my brain RIGHT open. i have nothing to add it says it all for itself.

EccentricIsopod: i think his angle is interesting within the context of this wonderland, where violence is so ubiquitous, physical power is kind of irrelevant, so winning at man leaves, interpersonal power or fear i guess, which as we've been saying, is a weird angle

and other love interests DO have alice being “wary”. other routes she could take DO include that element of romantic/sexual aggression, fear, jealousy (as a normal and expected emotion born of Being A Man With A Crush) and feeling of ownership to her, etc. 

And because this is the desired trope, they embody it so it can be in the story.

So I think I’ll leave it here for now- In this worldview, you CAN “win at man”, and many men (men-y, hahhaaha) do.

Thanks for reading all this!

commentary on the gowland post:

thanks to friend-scholar @venhediss for this information!

re: the "you aren't aware of me as a man" thing, i always read this as "man" having the built-in suggestion of "potential sexual partner" because of how naturalized the role of sexuality is to a man vis a vis a woman. you see this same phrase in other japanese media; i guess the english equivalent is, you know, friendzoning or "like a brother to me". that's what gowland is upset about, i would think, is that alice's lack of wariness around him shows that she doesn't consider him as a potential sexual partner (he's "like a friend" or, in this case, more likely "like a father", but not like a (sexually interested and interesting) man). if she did, she would be more conscious of the fact that he could potentially be perceiving her sexually, and she would be more cautious and more on guard.

it is obviously shitty and patriarchal and it's rooted in an understanding that women are wary about/guard their bodies against men who they perceive as potential sexual partners, because a potential sexual partner is also a sexual threat.

the HYU HYU guys and the other goofy faceless are probably goofy, from a meta standpoint, to keep them from ever reaching that level of being recognized as potential partners - they're desexualized and perhaps, consequentially, demasculinized, because those two things are intertwined.

like i have a reason for thinking this, i've seen this like. i think the phrase is "otoko to shite ishiki wo suru" or something similar.

like i literally just googled 男として意識 and the first page is "how to make the girl you like be conscious of you as a man: 9 methods"

So essentially i want to clear up that a lot of this is based on me reading it literally as a man (gender) , and not realizing the expression it actually means. But i hope there were still things here worth reading and good thoughts for you to digest!

#hnkna #thoughtful honking

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Wow. I really liked the Buffy book "One Thing or Your Mother." Much more than I thought I would, actually. It's probably one of my favorite Buffy books now, even.

The story takes place right after "I Only Have Eyes For You" and the main connecting thing in this one is, as the title would suggest, stuff going on with mothers. First with Principal Snyder's and then with Drusilla having decided to sire a child because she wants to be a mother.

The only outlier to that is a plot where Buffy has a new tutor (because Snyder forced her to, in bringing up to Joyce--her own mother. Ha--that she would fail Junior year, otherwise, but really he was just kind of trying to humiliate Buffy more with suggesting she needed a tutor) that she likes, and vice versa, and Angelus is jealous (though more on this later). Though I should mention that even though Angelus is involved in this jealousy plot, he's also in the Dru wanting a child childe one (as is Spike). And all of this is one story. It isn't separate stories or anything like that.

I really like the stuff that they did with Snyder here. And yes, you do find out that he was an abusive home and that made him the man that he became. I sort of figured that that was what they were going to go here. And I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, because that trope can be cliché at this point. And I have mixed feelings about abuse victims becoming their abusers plots. That does sadly happen in real life (though definitely not always!), but sometimes I really wish fiction would steer away from that sad message. And when we already had that plot with Amy in Buffy, I wasn't sure if I wanted it again with Snyder, even though it would be the best way to explain him, probably, and the only way to make him sympathetic at all.

But I was surprised to find myself really liking how it was handled here. And actually tearing up at one point. I think it helps that maybe the way it was written wasn't justifying what Snyder later became (and he especially does something evil in this, but though it's not excused, you also get why he did it)--and even Buffy at times finds herself mystified why she's ending up caring so much, as she's doing exactly that: caring--but it explains it. I don't know. It just had a really nuanced touch, and it struck something in me. -shrugs-

The stuff with Dru wanting to have a vampire child was also really good (and I probably won't say enough about it here to show how much I did like that story, but I don't want to spoil everything for you guys). And I found myself also really loving the Spike parts they wrote into this. And how they perfectly tie into things like "Becoming" later on.

As for the Angelus stuff... This book isn't canon, per se, so I guess I can't say this one hundred percent certainty... but boy, does being in his head in parts of this book prove a lot of the fandom's headcanons about him right.

Like how Angelus really didn't hate Buffy, but rather was still in love with her and couldn't/wouldn't admit it to himself. And also that that love that he did still have for her after losing his soul was a demon's kind of love/a bastardization of love.

Also people's headcanons about things, like how Angelus would not anyone wanting to try and kill Buffy but himself (probably not even Spike or Dru), and if they tried, he'd feel that they were encroaching on what was his.

You know what? Despite saying I don't want to spoil too much of the Drusilla, Spike, Angelus, and vampire child storyline, I'm going to be a major hypocrite here and spoil the big plot twist in the whole "Angelus being jealous of Buffy's new tutor" plot. So, don't read ahead if you don't want to know, if you plan to read this book yourself or something.

*SPOILERS*

The tutor was actual hired by Mayor Wilkins to kill Buffy. And when Angelus finds this out, he's furious that someone out there wants Buffy dead and is trying to kill her before he has the chance/before he's done with her, like I said above, but he then drains the guy for hurting Buffy, because only he gets to do that. But the last part seems more like an afterthought. It seems more like Angelus killed him because he hurt Buffy.

There's also a part in the book where Angelus says he doesn't have time time to deal with the stuff with Drusilla and her new child. And then Spike replies, "Oh, that's right. You're too busy not killing the Slayer." And at the end of the novel, Spike thinks that Angelus isn't even really hurting Buffy, he's just pissing her off. Hmm...

I also love this section where Buffy and Angelus are fighting in this, and Angelus tries to hurt Buffy by insulting their first time together. Again (and Buffy has realized that that isn't really how Angel feels/felt about it). And though she's initially hurt by this in the moment, until she rethinks his words later that night, she still throws back a lie that she didn't like her first time with him! That she's slept with Todd (the tutor) now, and he's so much better than Angel(us) could ever be. And she pisses Angelus off with this, and gives him a taste of his own medicine, and yes, get it, queen!

The two of them also almost kiss during this fight, when they start quipping like the above back and forth. Angelus says, "Finally," when his lips are really close to hers. And then Buffy asks, "Finally what?" thinking traitorous thoughts that she doesn't want to voice. He then replies, "Finally you're worth killing," which then ruins the moment, as Buffy attacks him again and then he ends up leaving for the night. But this segment was locked in Buffy's PoV, and I don't think that's what Angelus was really thinking there. Like, that's what he said, sure. But was that where Angelus' mind/heart was really at? Especially if they were about to kiss? I doubt it (especially since this seems contradictory to me. Angelus' whole thing is about killing Buffy, but only now she's worth killing?). Angelus lies. Though then again, maybe it was his thought process there. Angelus' feelings are all twisted. -shrugs-

In some ways, some of the stuff with Angelus and Buffy in this book kind of felt like a fanfiction to me. But I don't mean that to knock this novel or fanfiction writers at all. The opposite, really. Since this book had to be okayed by the Buffy show writers before it was published, like I was saying above, it probably means that the fandom's largely on point when it comes to their ideas of Angelus. Good job, fandom!

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also love this book because everything ties together so well, into a nice little bow. That's a main reason that I do, in fact.

#buffy the vampire slayer #long post #buffy tie-in books #buffy book #this kind of makes me wish that there were more books with angelus (i think this is the only one. off-topic: i think there's only one comic #too. i think). but this one was so good. i guess it's more than enough #i guess i should tag bangelus since there's actually some bangelus in this book and i talk about it quite a bit here #bangelus

[fucktheroyals]

You know after reading and reading and reading peoples theories and the meta from before the spn finale aired and the meta writers reactions to the finale I think I have a theory of my own. We don't have any answers tho, so this is pure speculation. If you wanna add something to support or discredit any of this that's cool but there's too many things floating around. Know I dont have proof for this conclusion at all. A lot of what I say is just guesses based on previous facts.

This all came together in my head when I realized how much this finale REEKS of the original producers and who the show was originally for. It REEKS of Robert Singer. Like if the execs started saying they didn't want it, Robert Singer was the one pushing that the story was about the brothers. That kinda thing.

Then, I was thinking of the problems in this episode and it struck me these are all of Supernatural biggest issues and to be honest all of it feels completely deliberate.

Take the sexism for example, Supernatural in it's later seasons largely out grew this, we have Jody, Rowena, Donna, Charlie, Mary, Claire (and even a wayward sisters pilot with MORE women/girls) all making regular appearances. They're mainly good characters and mostly aren't there to hurt our boys. Rowena, of course, is the one outlier being very about herself but it's clear she still cares for them, I mean its part of her development. But they're all real, with character flaws just like everyone else. (And we have Death too and she was POC 😭 THANK GOD)

Now look at the earlier half of Spn, we have Ellen and Jo, who's appearances were far in between. There's Bela in season 3, recurring for quite a bit (5 eps), but she is a character that is only there for herself, definitely not found family (unlike Ellen & Jo), and she's got more episodes in season 3 than Ellen and Jo in season 2 who aren't seen again til season 5. The "fans" send in hate mail after hate mail to try to get these characters off, and eventually they are. Then there's Ruby who's character stayed for a whole two seasons and was a largely recurring character. Why does she get to say so long? She's a plot device. She's supposed to be there to betray Sam. She has to stay (plus Jared obviously likes her). But she's not just a character the writers like writing about. Same with Lilith. Obviously not as recurring but still a plot device. Did they get hate mail tho? You can bet on it. Why? because tHeY'rE gOnNa PuSh ThE bOyS (Dean and Sam) aPaRt ThE sHoW iS aBoUt ThE bOyS oNlY. Without even thinking about the hate mail, just notice how large the difference is from how women are seen in the earlier seasons to the later seasons. Misha got tons of hate mail too for being a character that could split up the boys (probably only being allowed to say because he a man, thanks sexist producers and execs).

Only after Castiel was killed off and then Castiel fans successfully (thank you guys) got him back on the show did the hate mail largely simmer, which means female character's were allowed to stay! Which has lead us to a show with a good amount of female characters. But can you imagine having to kill characters off time and time again because people keep complaining that the show is "only about the boys." Fun times really.

So now we get to this final and we see sexism. But it wasn't just the plain old regular sexism you find in the earlier days of spn. Because now, there ARE women to talk about, talk to. But this episode was DESOLATE women wise, unless they were used for plot (which is also sexist!). Small scenes, they're barely there. Women gets her tongue cut out. Random women from s1 gets killed. Sam doesn't SPEAK of Eileen. Nothing. No mention of any female characters from the boys mouths unless they were from/in this episode itself. That's WIERD. I know we've all said it. But that goes beyond forgetting about characters. I mean its SAM'S GIRLFRIEND for Christ's sake. There is NO REASON they couldn't have said Eileen's name. Notice how Sam's wife is just... faceless. This is literally an age old sexist trope. Like... one of the things about bringing Mary back to life for s12+ is that it takes this trope... of basically a generic mother, and gives her life and feelings, whether you like them or not, they're real feelings. They said Mary isn't just a mom she's a person. Mary's existence in the later half of spn is to fix this kind of female tropes that fall upon her character, to not let these her stay a 2 dimensional character. They said we should know she's more than just the mom who tried to save her kid. Do that is the exact opposite of Sam getting a nameless, faceless wife. The sexism of the old spn wasn't just brought back, it was completely amplified. It wasn't just accidental or some exec "fixing" the story it was DELIBRATE. Whoever wrote that, didn't do ALL OF THAT by accident. Because an exec or a producer who doesn't see the flaws in old supernatural isn't going to write it that deliberately.

Let's bring it back to s10 when Charlie was killed (singer was mainly to blame). Dead in the bathtub, age old classic of burying ur gays. If you were here you know people never let Supernatural live that down. THEY KNOW what bury ur gays means. Hell, Robbie Thompson left because of Charlie's death and you think the writers don't know what it means? I mean both Bobo Berens (especially) and Steve Yockey's careers are centered around LGBT+ storytelling and you think they don't know? They know. They know.

And Dean wasn't just apart of the bury your gays trope, it is so far BEYOND that. Dean being killed on a rusty nail/screw, the tongues ripped out, things that seemed to be meant for other people. Jensen's acting in the last two episodes was giving us "DEAN RECIPROCATES" but no one ever actually saying it. I think it's clear that Dean was killed for being Bi. They didn't address it for a reason, they just silenced him. His narrative was supposed to be about letting him be HIM for the first time, to say what his feelings are instead of having them miscommunicated, and instead of doing that, they just silenced him. And the more we look at this scene the more horrific it gets. The more it's a complete slap in the face and it's supposed to be. Some guy who knows nothing about the LGBT can't write a scene this horrific.

Some guy who knows nothing about Dean couldn't write a scene that deconstructs all of Dean's character development and gives Dean his worst nightmare. I MEAN DEAN WANTED TO LIVE HIS LIFE! THEY DIDNT HIDE THAT JOB APPLICATION (or whatever job related thing that was) IN THERE FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SITUATION. Dean isn't Barney from HIMYM. If you watched HIMYM then you'll know Barney went from being a stereotypical ladies man and treating women terribly to being in love with a women and treating her right and working hard for it. The last episode of HIMYM (why its so bad) Barney's character development is thrown out and he's back to being a stereotypical ladies man. You don't need to know Barney's character very much to do that.

To kill Dean during a hunt his father never finished, to not have anyone at his funeral, to have Dean die young like his life didn't matter. Those are Dean's worst fears and you'd only truly know that if you watched the gin episode in s3, where they are basically laid out for you. You HAVE to know Dean's character to tear him apart like this.

This episode took all the core elements of the show and did a complete 180° the name of the episode itself is "Carry on" and Dean and Sam very much did not carry on. Sam grieving his entire life so that he good get to heaven and see Dean again. Dean being ready to live his life, despite the enormous pitfalls and learning to love himself only to be killed. "Family don't end with blood." Um.... it did in that episode either literally with Dean's death or you know BECAUSE NONE OF THEIR FOUND FAMILY WAS THERE. Not Jack, Not Cas, Not Eileen, Not Donna, Not Charlie, Not Jody, Not Claire... on and on we go. No one was there, nobody was even mentioned. Dean's funeral, no one even called that we know of. It was just Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean. And Bobby. Don't forget Bobby. But yeah Sam and Dean.

That's what the show is about right, the brothers.

Except it's not anymore. It hasn't been for years.

Cas not being there was deafening but it brought us to a major point. Becky. Becky's telling us about the terrible ending.

And many of us are wondering why would they literally tell us this is the worst ending and then... make it the ending.

Now before we move on, it very apparent many of you think Dabb doesn't ship Deancas. And Dabb doesn't care about the characters.

Say what you will about any plot holes in his writing, the point he is VERY GOOD at writing the characters, and giving us good ones.

Why do we know Dabb ships Deancas? (ill say when its cowrote, other wise its not) cowrote ep 8.02 - purgatory "I prayed to you, Cas, every night" "Cas, Buddy, I need you." "I have a price on my head, and I've been trying to stay one step ahead of them, to – to keep them away from you." 8.08 Hunteri Heroici - Cas helps them hunt! 😊❤ Dean & Cas have a serious convo about why Cas doesn't want to see/go to heaven. 8.22 Dean's mad at Cas. Sam's explanation of why Dean should be easy on Cas: "It's Cas." Dean then points out how he'd knife anybody else if they did what Cas did. 9.10 - Cas comforts Dean when Dean can't take seeing Sam (Gadreel) being tortured anymore. Also tons of Cas. 9.20 (bloodlines) - Canonical couple parallel "I was there, where were you" 9.22 The angels make Cas choose between them and killing Dean and he "gave up an entire army for one guy" 10.09 Claire's reintroduction. Cas heavy ep. DeanCas date. 10.22 THE PRISONER - u know the ep where Dean beats the shit out of Cas but loves him enough to not kill him.

We COULD keep going but I think I've made my point. If Robert Singer is the guy that is like "the show is about Sam and Dean only" Andrew Dabb is the DeanCas shipper. And you could even say a Cas stan.

Notice! How in s13 for SEVEN episodes we have a story that revolves around Dean's grief about losing Cas. Notice! How often the stories in all these seasons have a focus on their relationship. THAT is Andrew Dabb. If it weren't for him doing that, we wouldn't be able to easily say after Dean's lack of a response to Cas' confession, that Dean reciprocates.

To me, when I was (binge) watching s12 for the first time, I thought damn this is really got a lot of DeanCas. So I went to look at who was in charge, who was writing. I saw Andrew Dabb, associated him with Deancas episodes, saw all the new writers, Bobo, and then I saw that Yockey is known for same sex stories and it clicked. Dabb assembled a team to give us Destiel. THAT WAS IN SEASON 12!!!!!!!!

The amount of people saying he's homophobic flabbergast me. Open your eyes! That isn't what's going on.

Imagine making a show and trying to right all the wrongs of Supernatural. Imagine trying to write the greatest love story ever told and you have the entire season planned out for it to end off beautifully, it may possibly be your greatest achievement when it's done and then boom. someone comes in and tells you you aren't allowed to make Dean bi or make destiel endgame, after he was most probably already given the go ahead.

Sure. You could imply he's bi or into cas still in a way. Still make nice-ish ending. just give everyone what the kinda want.

Or you could scrap the last season, nothing close to a canonical bisexual Dean Winchester or Deancas endgame in site. People can be done with it be happy with the show, continue to live their lives in ignorance as to how close they were to Canon destiel.

OR you can lead everyone to the very closest you can get them to what you were aiming for and then show everyone the ugly truth and reality. Light it all on fire. Burn the show to the ground in your wake. Try your darnedest to making these people's (the people saying no) pockets suffer. Show us, the audience, what happened. Show us what this show really is.

I've seen people talk about the ending being changed during covid but I dont think that happened. I think what happened was Dabb already had this season planned out before it even started. Obviously the details were wobbly but it was all lead up to this ending. Destiel endgame, Canon Bisexual Dean, whatever it was. They were ready to write the greatest love story ever told and then someone shut it down.

Imagine the pain that must have caused them to be told no when they already said yes. They must have been so excited to give this to us.

I think someone (some producers) told him what this show is "really" about. The brothers. Can you imagine, after being told no, some kinda bullshit like this is said to you: "Why aren't you bringing it back to the brothers, Andrew? that's what the shows about. What with all this homosexual stuff, you know the audience won't like that. Not really." Imagine the original producers pushing this kind of view on you. "You know when we started it was Sam and Dean. It should end with Sam and Dean." That kinda sounds like someone huh? huh.

So why give us a nice acceptable finale, when you can take every problem Supernatural's had either up front or behind the scenes and create a finale so incredibly bad that people don't want to watch it anymore.

Someone made a good point about how Sam was originally supposed to be the main focus (this isn't to put any hate on Sam or Jared). Dean and Sam are the main characters but Sam was supposed to be the focus and for Dean to have become the focus, must have annoyed the producers because... well here we are. They wouldn't listen to Jensen. The producers liked this ending. Jensen's opinion didn't matter to them.

In some ways, if this is really what happened, it can be seen as childish from Dabb. To hurt all of us like that. Yes, he's hurting the producers, the execs, the cw. But to hurt us? Yeah it stings.

But in other ways, if this is really what happened, this is Dabb showing us the muck and gunk under the shiny surface. The hate for Misha. The hidden hate for Jensen. The underlying sexism. The underlying homophobia. The people REALLY in charge don't care about us, they just want our money. He needed to open our eyes and free us, at least free the people that he was writing for. The people he sees that care about this show.

This is the ending the powers that be wanted and its a big fuck you for a reason. I dont think this is Dabb spitting in our faces for loving this show, I think this is him trying to get revenge for us.

But from here, you can see it how u want it. If this is really what happened, I'm not in charge of your emotions, if you wanna be mad be mad if you wanna be grateful be grateful. And you don't have to believe me either I said this is speculation.

Also, as for all of the rumors like there being shots to the confession scene that we didn't see, which Jensen himself implied, I think that might have been a last ditch effort to canonized DeanCas but obviously it was cut. Like the name change was pretty clear. As for Misha possibly having shot some stuff for 20 I dont know what to tell you. If it's true I dont know where the blame would lie.

I do think however, that if all this was the case, the writers were prepared to become villians here. I mean they told us the writers were villians with Chuck right? So. Who knows what went down so they could give us such a vile ending. It could've been the producers or the writers, who truly knows. I do think tho that people we "trust" did some pretty shitty things to push the narrative in certain directions so now one would see this as the actual ending that was coming.

So again do with my SPECULATION what you will. This was in no way meant to put Dabb on a pedestal or anything. Just meant to give a bit of perspective.

(Also Jensen didn't unfollow Dabb recently he was already unfollowed for years)

#15x20 wank #spn finale wank #spn finale meta #15x20 meta #Andrew Dabb #spn #supernatural #castiel #dean winchester #destiel #deancas #misha collins #jensen ackles #long post #sorry im on mobile #this is the longest post i have ever writen

[jackoshadows]

The ASoIaF fandom can be so frustrating sometimes.

It’s okay to admit that one doesn’t like this or that character. There’s nothing wrong in disliking a character.

I am pretty open on my blog about my indifference towards or dislike for Sansa because of her stans. I don’t make disclaimers about how much I love the character before proceeding to criticize Sansa. I am not a Sansa stan and that’s okay. My blog is a place for me to jot down my thoughts and celebrate characters, books and shows I do like. If you love Sansa as a character, block me, don’t follow me etc.

What’s obnoxiously annoying are the folks who claim to love all the characters the same and then give their ‘unbiased’ opinions which are held up as canon facts because they came from neutral book reader experts. To hell with that nonsense.

These posts reek of hypocrisy and double standards. It often tears down some characters while subtly propping up others - and it’s gobbled up by the wider fandom as unbiased interpretation of the text.

One example is pushing forth the notion that calling Arya pretty (Something that both her father and brother tell her she is in the books) is wrong, it’s sexualizing her, it’s okay for Arya to be ugly, she’s canonically not pretty because Cat/Sansa said so and no other interpretation is allowed etc. And then the same person who says all this celebrates Sansa’s beauty and ships her with a 27 year old man who falls in lust with Sansa.

Or when they say that the Arya-Lyanna (and Sansa/Lyanna parallels, because it’s always important to mention Sansa with respect to Lyanna even if said person claims to not care about Lyanna as a character) parallels are overrated and not important and they don’t care about Robert’s Rebellion characters but on their blogs there’s all these posts, fanarts and meta about Elia Martell - a Robert’s Rebellion character.

A so called book expert would note that GRRM has several characters outright compare Arya to Lyanna or mistake Lyanna for Arya in the books while Sansa has no such comparison. But no, the unbiased book expert thinks that the Arya-Lyanna and Sansa-Lyanna parallels are equivalent and are both overrated.That post just annoyed me excessively into writing this long ass rant post.

Why are these neutral, unbiased folks so interested in stripping away from Arya’s story?

In the books Jeyne Poole is masquerading as Arya Stark - but that story is only Jeyne’s, has nothing to do with Arya or Arya’s importance to the North. 

Arya is a strong warg, Nymeria and her wolf pack are a ‘Chekov’s wolf pack’ that GRRM has hung on the wall  -  Our expert opinion is that Direwolves are not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Arya is pretty - why needlessly call Arya pretty, it adds nothing to Arya’s story and is all about sexualizing a child.

Arya-Lyanna parallels - why do we need these parallels, Arya is distinct and interesting without them.

These aspects are all important parts of the character’s story. There are so many very well written essays exploring these concepts with respect to Arya’s journey of self discovery in the books, the narrative significance of her parallels to Lyanna, her bond with Nymeria and her warging talents. For those who are interested, here are two bloggers who actually like Arya and have written about her character and character arc.

https://donewithwoodenteeth.tumblr.com/meta-masterlist

https://ashotofjac.tumblr.com/tagged/arya-stark

Some of these same people will rush to condemn any reading of the books that does not have Sansa wielding power at the end as being ‘Sansa hate’. But they will have no issues to undermine and devalue Arya’s actual book story, the relationships she has, the parallels she has, the skillsets she has, her appearance, her importance to the current story happening in the North.

There is a whole ass plot currently in the books of Northerners rallying for Arya Stark and preparing for battle against the Boltons for Arya Stark. But that’s not important because it’s actually Jeyne Poole and Arya’s story is about sailing off west of westeros.  But hey, Sansa will definitely go North and hold power and that’s like 100% happening because we are the unbiased book experts and we say it is so.

Or when all else fails - Arya is a Mary Sue, she’s a fantasy character, she’s a ‘strong female character’ because she fights with a sword, people like her because she’s a tomboy who fights. Sansa is realistic, Sansa is complex - but here are all the essays that basically transfer Arya’s complexity and story to Sansa - because it fits more with their fave, because these aspects would fit better with the traditionally feminine character even though they never tire of talking about how GRRM is deconstructing tropes. Because the trope deconstruction is only applied to Arya, Jon and Dany. Never Sansa.

And honestly, why are these people reading a high fantasy series if they hate fantasy and fantasy characters so much? We love Sansa because she’s so non-magical! Then go read non-fiction books. They also twist Jon, Arya and Dany into ‘fantasy’ characters - despite these characters going through some very real and human experiences. What’s fantasy about Arya’s experiences in war torn Westeros, Jon dealing with bigotry at the wall, Dany trying to rebuild Meereen, while dealing with famine, disease and insurgency?

Or how Jon and Dany getting any kind of happy ending or becoming rulers would be so boring, sweet, predictable, conforming to tropes, a happy ending etc. But Sansa getting love, romance, going home, becoming the Stark in Winterfell, getting her fairy tale ending - that’s totally what GRRM is going to do! No trope deconstruction there!  In may ways, Benioff and Weiss’ ending is not all that surprising -  Mad Queen Dany, Jon remaining a bastard with the freefolk, Sansa having power as a leader - are all popular theories among bnfs in the fandom. D&D wanting to wind up the show quickly with easily found fan theories is not that much of a stretch.

ASoIaF reddit is equally frustrating. Instead of Sansa stan bnfs on tumblr who pretend to like Arya and Dany while subtly undermining their story and importance, on Asoiaf reddit it’s Stannis stans who dislike Jon and Dany because these characters present a challenge to Stannis. The mere suggestion that Jon may play a role in the battle against Ramsay sends them into frothing at the mouth rage. They hate Jon, Jon is a Gary Sue because he dared advice Stannis - the greatest general ever - on Northern military strategy. Never mind that Jon grew up in the North and learned from Ned, how dare Jon Snow know more than Stannis! Unacceptable!

And I love Stannis Baratheon. I want Stannis to crush and defeat the Boltons. But unlike reddit dudebros, I can see that he is a secondary character, a tragic character who is most probably going to perish and Jon takes over because Jon Snow is a central protagonist in the story.

I feel it’s the same with Sansa. IMO, GRRM clearly doesn’t see Sansa in the same way as he does Arya, Jon, Dany, Tyrion and Bran. Whenever he is asked questions about the books, book plots, long term arcs, endings, age gaps etc it’s these characters he often brings up and references. It’s these characters who are important to him.

And that’s why there’s a lot of undermining and undervaluing of these character’s and their stories, them being described as fantasy characters, tropes, Mary Sues and Gary Sues, ableist rhetoric about Tyrion and Bran to undermine them.

I am damned certain that if it was Sansa who had all the parallels to Lyanna, or if she was the warg, or Jeyne Poole was impersonating her, this would all be ‘VERY IMPORTANT’ and on all the gifsets and essays. But she isn’t. So fandom bnfs are reduced to talking about how these aspects are not all that important anyway.

It’s like how this quote - ‘You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts’ turns up on gifsets every other day on the Arya tag but this quote - ‘Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier of Arya had been a bastard, like her half brother Jon. And Jon’s mother had been common, or so people whispered’ very rarely does and will not get reblogged when it does.

Or when Sansa sees Joffrey trying to kill Arya and sides with Joffrey or when Sansa throws Arya under the bus and tells the Lannisters that it’s Arya who is the traitor - just sisters being sisters y’all!

It’s all about maintaining a certain narrative about Sansa - and when others point out her actual relationship with Arya in the books, we are accused of hating and wanting Sansa dead and how we should be criticizing Tywin and the Mountain instead. This is nonsensical whataboutism and ignores that people talk about  these aspects of the books because sometimes bullying, getting mocked for one’s appearance, abuse and neglect from parental figures etc. can resonate with certain readers unlike getting one’s head smashed in by Frankenstein.

At the end of the day, I wish these people would be honest about the characters they like and relate to. We are all biased. That’s why our opinions and interpretations are subjective. There’s nothing wrong in saying, hey, I like Sansa more than Arya or Dany, I relate to her character more.

I relate to Jon Snow a lot, I see things from his POV, I would disagree with the characters who disagree with Jon,  I enjoy his story at the Wall and the North. My interpretations of the text are therefore colored by my bias towards Jon. 

For others, it’s Dany or Sansa or Arya or Tyrion or Jaime. And that’s okay because these are fictional characters and liking one more than the other is not going to earn anyone woke points and lead to women’s rights.

And finally, there’s nothing edgy or cool about disparaging the central protagonists of a high fantasy series as being fantasy characters - go read other books if one is not into fantasy.

#rant post

[antiloreolympus]

7 Anti LO Asks

1. does ... does anyone on the LO art team know anatomy? why does daphne look like that? (also im p sure the flower petal hair idea was stolen from punderworld and/or hades game, because all flower nymphs before in LO never had that feature but now do?)

2. Weird thing but Daphne was/is a health it. She runs, is a yoga teacher, and probably more since she has a lot we “don’t expect” yet Apollo is just following behind her, like not flying not some weird god power, just chasing after her as she runs from him. Sure the dress might slow her down but she tied it. I feel like she could have gotten farther faster.

3. i kinda get what LO is doing by trying to make Demeter "redeemable" by making her a victim too, but that shouldn't be via depowering her so much to where Zeus and Leto and even Hecate can push her around, but also we still saw Demeter was emotionally and mentally abusive to Persephone, that doesn't just go away over the span of a stressful month. I get LO is doing this so Persephone isn't stuck with an abusive mom half the year, but this is the worst possible way to do it.

4. I honestly hate Apollo’s character in lo.  He’s not a fun villain or a villain to root for. He’s not even a villain I love to hate.  Apollo’s motivations are barely even explained.  His character makes me so uncomfortable and makes reading lo harder than usual.

5. the only two times ive seen a depiction of hades running a business like LO it was HADES and Hadestown, and the former made sure to show Hades paid everyone and have them benefits like time off, and the latter was about how capitalism is a cruel and unjust system. Meanwhile LO is like "slavery is good, actually", like ...

6. I used to really love Lore Olympus - to the point where I would argue with the anti's to leave the comic alone. I'm Greek, and I hate the Percy Jackson series with a passion and I think I clung onto LO as the closest thing to what a non-Greek could produce that was actually pretty good.

And to be honest, season 1 wasn't that bad at all! There were a few funky pacing issues, and some things that needed an explanation (why Apollo was entitled, why Demeter kept Persephone hidden, a bit more on why Hades is considered a bad person, ext.) But I just interpreted that these things would come with time. After all, it's a series.

But then, season 2 actually came out. This is when I started to notice that the webtoon, even in season 1, had a ton of bad writing.

Apollo is cartoonishly and unreasonably evil. He has no nuance to him, like the other gods and goddesses. In Greek mythology, everyone did shitty things, so I guess I expected a bit more nuance to his character since Smythe had given this to her other villain-like characters - like Minthe, Zeus, even Chronos was hinted at having some emotional issues. Yet Apollo comes in and the only thing we know is that he could be being pushed by his mother - but we don't really see his side of the story - and if anyone tries to bring this up it immediately gets put down as "You're a r@pe apologist!" No, I just need a bit more consistency - you can't give Minthe a reason as to why she does what she does, make Zeus nuanced, but then treat this other character like the devil himself - especially when this God is such an important part of Greek culture and mythology.

Smythe's Demeter has become a joke. How is it, the Goddess that was once referred to some ancient Greeks as Mother Earth herself, a powerful Chthonic Goddess along with her daughters Persephone and the mysterious Despoina, was one of the most important Goddesses to date, is not a Fertility Goddess and is easily captured? I mean, ok, Leto was indeed a Titan of Night/Light of Day and considered to be one of Zeus's brides; but Smythe didn't even bother showing us the Goddesses fighting or interacting! There was no struggle at all?! On top of that, she is a perfectionist that is considered overbearing and snobbish - I don't understand how Demeter can be shown as strong and even threatening in season 1 and was even hinted at having a history with Zeus and Hades is now just....a character trope?

Why is Persephone being written as a Mary Sue? I never thought I would have to bring this word up in the Lord's year of 2021, but here we are. Persephone has too many men after her or has shown a slight interest (Hades, Ares, Apollo, Hermes, Hephaestus, and possibly Chronos? Seriously?) Like, I know that in *one* story it was mentioned that those Gods mentioned offered her wedding gifts, but Demeter turned them away- but they weren't all going after her at once. Demeter's fertility Goddess title was obviously taken from her (among other Goddesses) to make Persephone the super special one. And now her Act of Wrath is being downplayed and Zeus is being villainized for wanting to convict her...I honestly stopped feeling sorry for her. I'm at the point where I want Zeus to give her to Apollo haha.

Hades's character is inconsistent - first, he's portrayed as a 'scoundrel' CEO type that people fear - one that literally rips someone's eye out and forces the dead to pay to get into the afterlife- and then he's portrayed as a gentle and loving man? These two character types do not flow together smoothly, and Smythe has made little to no effort to harmonize them.

When I presented these criticisms to the recent fast pass chapter - I was attacked. More than 10 dislikes and fans telling me that I need to stop reading and that saying that Demeter and Apollo are badly written is me missing the point of the story. The fandom has also become incredibly toxic, and I'm ashamed to say that I even defended this comic. 

7. id be so mad if i spent years reading this comic only for them to get together off screen. i really hope rachel isnt pulling that because as much as the fans are annoying, they deserve to actually see what they've been waiting and paying for, not have it all happen off screen and rushed.

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical

[lemon-boy-stan]

end scene - finn wolfhard x reader

The reader is filming a deleted scene which sparks trauma. Warnings: SUPER ANGSTY LIKE SERIOUSLY, crying finn, mentions of death, mentions of sex (at the end), abuse, mentions of alcohol and swearing. And also long paragraphs. Lower case.

finn was the only person who knew about your trauma and cared - your mother had a boyfriend and moved on.

the car crash was your burden and catalyst to your inconsistent episodes which was why, every time you rehearsed the scene with him, finn made sure you were okay and that you knew he didn't mean it.

millie was good at being dead. she'd lay there, under the rubble, not moving a limb - she looked so lifeless like that that you were positive a passer-by would rush over to help her.

except there were no passer-bys, just you, your boyfriend, cast and crew and the CGI.

but yet it still looked so real - and it reminded you of her that much - of the car, the crash, the rubble, debris, anger that left your father's mouth afterwards, the deafening silence of your mother who stood and watched in the hospital...

mentally, you forced yourself to shake it off. the memory had obviously tuned the other cast members out.

"it wasn't her fault!" noah screeched - finn appeared to be approaching you, a look of mad and sadness in his eyes (which did not seem to be for you but hurt you anyway) kindling dangerously.

"we can still save her," he turned back from you to her "dead" body, "we can still save her! nancy! nancy. do you know cpr? does anyone know cpr? steve? johnathan? even you, billy?"

"even you?!" sadie shrieked. darce shot her a look and shook his head as if billy was telling her to pick her battles.

"anyone?" finn talked over her. "please. someone help me! she can't die here. she won't die here! i won't let it!" his words and voice were exactly the same as every other time you rehearsed it alone.

you continued to stare at the nothingness that wavered around him as natalia and everyone else remained quiet.

finn darted to you with the corner of his eye before recovering again, "we can still save her!" the rest of the cast waited.

'we can't', mouthed charlie, you'd forgotten your line by a beat. SHIT. finn frowned - something was fishy.

"we can't," you said softly, quickly. finn exhaled invisibly and silently. "f - mike. mike, el said - she told me - she said she was sorry and she said she - "

he cut you off just like every other time, "what good," he began, breathing through his nose, "is an apology," silence, the rest of the cast who were watching liked it, "if she's dead?! please! someone help me!"

no one helped him.

"come on," he begged the world, "come on. el. el. wake up. wake up. wake up!" he shook millie's body as if shaking a dead person would wake them up, kind of like how your father shook your sister in the hospital bed even though the nurse said that shaking her would make things worse.

"el," he choked back, "no. el. el." the fake tears hurt you more than they normally would have.

finn was your boyfriend and you could normally tell the difference between his fake and real emotions and for some reason you couldn't today.

after finn finished crying, he stroked her lifeless hair just like every other time and just like the time your father stroked your sister's before he turned to you.

"YOU were supposed to save HER," he spat the words viciously like every other time, eyes flicking over you with assurance. "but SHE saved YOU! she wasn't supposed to save YOU! you were supposed to die, you were supposed to die! the mindflayer was supposed to get YOU but it got HER! you're not even sorry! none of you are sorry! because if you were sorry, YOU would be DEAD and SHE would be ALIVE!"

you couldn't tell at the time but the words hurt him, too.

"it doesn't work like that!" noah screeched. "she was here first, anyways! she's my sister! eleven understood that so why can't you, mike?!"

"i told you to come up with another plan," he hissed at you, ignoring noah, "but you didn't! you let her die! you let her die, belle! you're a bitch and you let her die!" he yelled over noah.

"i'm sorry," you whispered, to which gaten and the rest of the cast wore a look of amazement - you hated improvising.

finn frowned slightly before going along.

"you're not. fucking. sorry. do you know why?" he waited.

"mike," natalia cut in.

"BECAUSE YOU WOULD BE DEAD! YOU STUPID BITCH, YOU WOULD BE DEAD! BUT YOU KILLED HER!"

"no, she didn't! don't call her that!"

that was the first - and last - time finn had ever called you that or yelled at you. you froze.

"i'm sorry," your lip shook - you didn't have a line just then but the crew liked it. "i'm sorry, i'm sorry,"

"it's your fault she's dead, y/n! you stupid bitch! you killed her! you killed your sister! do you know why you killed her? because you're a mistake! and a murderer! you fucking killed her, you stupid bitch! you can't do anything right, can you, you fucking brat? i saw you yelling at her! 'hurry up, izzy, i'm going to be late!' i told you not to go, didn't i? i told you she can't fucking drive in the fucking rain because she's bipolar and fucking crazy! but you're a brat, y/n, and it's going to be the end of you and everyone around you and even that finn boy, i don't give a fuck how much fucking money he has because you're going to blow him up too like the bomb you are! i don't give a shit how many fucking fans you have, do you hear me? because you. blew. her. UP!"

the nurses stared.

one turned to your mother in her stupid ninties pink dress and pearl necklace as if to say, 'aren't you going to do anything?' but she didn't, she pretended as if everything was fine.

"i'm sorry," you bit back the tears. "i'm sorry,"

"you aren't sorry! because she's dead! you aren't sorry! you're just a bomb!"

you bit your cheek harshly - no one else besides finn noticed.

"i'm sorry," your voice shook, "i'm sorry i killed her i'm sorry i'm sorry please don't - please i'm sorry,"

the crew started giving you looks - knock it off, it was starting to get weird and they didn't want the audience to hate your character.

but you couldn't help it. you didn't want him to hit you and you didn't want the people in the hospital to stare.

but you weren't in the hospital, you were on set, and he wasn't with you, it was finn, but same difference.

because maybe if you said sorry more maybe finn wouldn't unlove you like he did, maybe finn wouldn't hit you like he did.

"i'm sorry it's my fault i'm sorry i'm sorry,"

finn's breath hitched and his adam's apple moved before something washed over him - recognition.

you see, the endless trails of apologies had happened once at his house at night.

"wait!"

gaten threw his arms up at the outburst and the rest of the cast looked dissappointed. this scene was such a good trope for the love triangle between mike el and belle.

"wait - just - just cut. please. she's not acting, i swear this has happened before and i can help her please," he was begging now and the crew sighed and grumbled - everyone was human.

"alright, that's a wrap, we'll film again in a half," they began to leave.

"i'm sorry finn i'm sorry i kill - "

"baby, stop," he put his hands on your shoulders but you just shook your head and kept saying the words anyways, "baby! you don't have to apologise for anything, baby, you didn't kill anyone,"

"but i did kill her, finn!" you sobbed, "i killed her. "i killed my sister because i'm a stupid bitch and a brat who made her sister drive her to her friend's house in the rain," you bit your cheek until there was blood,

"i'm a mistake, finn, i'm sorry i'm a fucking bitch, and i'm sorry i killed them. just please, please don't unlove me, please, everyone who's loved me's unloved me, please i swear i'll do litera - "

"baby, what?" he looked like a puppy who'd just been told off, "why would i unlove you?"

"because i can't do anything right," you shook your head, "and you have to unlove me even though i don't want you to, finn, because i'm a mistake and i'm a fucking bomb, and a bitch. but please, please, i'm sorry, i can't - i can't lose someone else - "

"you're never going to lose me, baby," he whispered. he was shaking, "and you're not a bomb. oh, fuck, the last thing you are is a bomb, y/n. this isn't bullshit. i love you too much to give you bullshit. if he told you that, let me tell you this: you. are. not. a. bomb, baby. you're mine, the farthest thing you are is a bomb, you're a band aid, and a lifeline. you're never going to lose me, i promise i promise."

"but finn," you said, "don't you get it? i'm not a band aid or a lifeline, i'm a bomb. i will blow you up if you don't leave me before you can even though i don't want you to leave me because you're the only person- "

"and i'll keep being the only person," he talked over you and it frustrated you to even more tears, "i don't care if you blow me up. heck, you blew me away the first time. besides, so what if you're a murderer (which you aren't baby it was a fucking accident and he needs to get that through his fucking skull)? i hate myself for bringing up the stupid movie you love y/n but i don't give two shits what he says you've done because a) i know he's a drunk bastard and b) i will always love you baby more than rose loves leo baby i'll always come back to you, always, i'm going to marry you when my parents let me get married and i'm going to always come back to you even if you yell at me to get out because you're my fucking bomb, do you hear me? you're mine and you're a bomb. so what? you're a good bomb."

"please don't unlove me,"

"baby i'll never unlove you ever ever,"

"promise?"

"yes baby i promise y/n i promise just please tell me you're okay and tell me when you're not okay because it kills me baby it kills me so much,"

"okay finn," you mumbled; you didn't want him to cry anymore, "i promise. i'm sorry for ruining the scene," you looked down at your hands.

"hey," he said firmly, lifting your chin up so you were forced to look at him, "scenes can be re-filmed but i'm going to ask them to film a different one okay? but for now please just tell me you're okay baby,"

"i'm okay finn," you sighed. "sorry you had to put up with that and sorry i made you feel shit,"

"you know you make me feel lots of things n/n," he whispered, "and shit is one of them. and i wouldn't have anyone else make me feel anything else, 'cause i love you. even if you blow me up i love you okay? even if you crash me i'll still love you from hell 'cause we all know that's where i'm going..."

"are you talking about the other night?" you looked up, "because the feeling was totally mutual finn we both wanted it you know that don't be a dick,"

"there she is. also, yeah, that night and that time noah walked in on us jesus," he smiled and hugged your neck, "okay, okay, i love you though y/n. god you have no idea how much i love you..."

"i think i do," you replied softly and he smiled into you.

So this is super long but oh god guys I'm still in love with it ahh...

MASTERLIST - requests are ALWAYS open (depending on what fandom it is!)

#finn wolfhard #finn wolfhard gif #finn wolfhard angst #finn wolfhard x reader #finn wolfhard x reader sad #finn wolfhard x reader abused #finn wolfhard x abused reader #finn wolfhard x reader angst #finn wolfhard angst imagine #sad finn wolffhard imagine #richie tozier angst #mike wheeler angst #stranger things #boris pavlikovsky imagine #miles fairchild angst #finn wolfhard x reader anxiety attack

[astrognossienne]

tragic beauty: lupe vélez - an analysis

“I had to play with boys, girls found me too rough.” -  Lupe Vélez  

This is an analysis I’ve wanted to cover for a while for quite a few reasons. Primarily because, in a few ways, I see myself in her and, as such, feel the need to defend her and assert her true legacy: as a pioneer. Which brings me to the main reason I wanted to do this: to correct the scurrilous rumours about her premature death cooked up by a hating ass imbecilic Aquarius whose infamous book doesn’t deserve to be named. So if you want to hear the truth about this lady, read on.

Known as the “Mexican Spitfire”, Latin bombshell Lupe Vélez was (an to an extent, still is) a much-maligned and terribly misunderstood woman. A true Cancer, she was a force of nature and unconsciously antagonized others and made them uncomfortable because of her authenticity to herself and her emotional nature. Born during a storm, she had a naturally stormy personality. She could be hilarious and charismatic one moment, and depressive and vicious the next. Instead of anyone trying to understand her, they just stuck her with the “spicy fiery Latina” stereotype, not knowing or caring what was behind it. The harshness of her life before stardom may explain some of her fearsome, yet fun, personality; she grew up with violent trauma – watching her father kill and almost be killed during the Mexican Revolution. She also is believed to have had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which would explain her extreme moodiness and outbursts.

One of the first Latina actresses to make an impact in Hollywood, she was subjected to the racist, sexist Hollywood tropes that forever typecasted her—she was called “senorita cyclone,” and the “hot tamale”. The Hollywood press willfully misunderstood Vélez’s sex positivity and consistently portrayed her as a woman who took great pleasure in her body, and indeed, the tempestuous Vélez had numerous affairs, including a particularly torrid one with a young Gary Cooper, and a tumultuous marriage to “Tarzan” star Johnny Weissmuller. But in 1944, at age 36, she found herself pregnant with the child of a little known-actor name Harald Ramond, who would not marry her and this reality made her come undone, and like my other baby Carole Landis, she succumbed to an drug overdose. Her promiscuity, right or wrong, became part of the way her stardom was packaged and promoted. Also, the press naturally compared her to (and pitted her against) Hollywood’s only other female Mexican star—the “high-class” and elegant Dolores Del Rio. The press couldn’t even find sympathy for her even in death and a false story was printed that she drowned in the toilet after vomiting up a spicy Mexican dinner. Her death is parodied and mocked to this day. Again, she’s a true Cancer in the sense that the same imperfections that everyone else has, she is seen as less than human for having them. I hope to help right that wrong by honoring Vélez for being the trailblazer that she is. At any rate, Vélez would seem to be a prototype for contemporary female stars, from Madonna to Rihanna, who have proclaimed their pleasure in their body and their sexual liberation — a pro-sex activist before her time, doomed to suffer the rejection of a more puritanical age.

Lupe Vélez, according to astrotheme, was a Cancer sun and Leo moon. She was born María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, to young upper-middle class parents. Her father, Jacobo Villalobos Reyes, was a colonel in the military, and her mother, Josefina Vélez, was an opera singer. They also had another son, John and daughter, Annette. The Villalobos family were considered prominent in San Luis Potosí and most of the male family members were college educated. The family was also financially comfortable and lived in a large home with servants. As a young girl Lupe showed an interest in performing, but her father was outraged at his daughter’s “low-class” dreams, and forbade his daughter from being in show business. All that changed during the war. Her family was in a state of upheaval—the Mexican Revolution was happening, her father had been presumed dead in the war and all their money was gone. While most of her family members were too proud to get jobs, a teenage Vélez did just that, supporting the family by working as a saleswoman in a department store. She then finagled an audition with a local theater. However, her father was indded alive and well and soon returned home from the war. Because at that time becoming an artist and coming from a well-to-do family was seen as embarrassing, her father refused to let her use his last name in theater, so she used her mother’s surname.

She proceeded to seek out venues where she could dance the then-popular “shimmy.” In 1925 she was cast in the big stage revues Mexican Rataplan and !No lo tapes! and became a big audience favourite. Her name got around to American stage star Richard Bennett (father of American film stars Constance and Joan Bennett), who was looking for a Mexican cantina singer for his new play. Lupe traveled to Hollywood but was rejected for the part for being too young. While in Hollywood, Lupe met film and stage comedienne Fanny Brice, who took a liking to Lupe because of her sparkling personality. She put in a good word for Lupe to impresario Florenz Ziegfeld (creator of the Ziegfeld’s Follies), who could use Lupe in one of his Broadway musicals. However, MGM producer Harry Rapf heard of Lupe as well, and offered her a screen test. When producer Hal Roach saw the test, he immediately signed her to a contract. Vélez soon made her major film debut in Douglas Fairbanks’ action-romance The Gaucho in 1927. The film was a huge hit and Vélez was an overnight sensation.

Along with her professional life gaining steam, so did her love life. Vélez sought out some of Hollywood’s hottest men, which wasn’t hard for a hot and sexy number like Lupe; men flocked to her like bees to honey. She was romantically linked with Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, cowboy Tom Mix, “Tarzan” actor Johnny Weissmuller, Errol Flynn, John Gilbert, Henry Wilcoxon, singer Russ Columbo, Randolph Scott, author Erich Maria Remarque (who wrote All Quiet On The Western Front and later married Paulette Goddard), Clayton “Lone Ranger” Moore, director Victor Fleming (director of Gone With The Wind), and boxers Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey.

One of her first conquests was cowboy star Tom Mix. She also had an with newcomer Clark Gable, who cut off their romance because he was afraid Lupe would run all over town discussing their sexual secrets, which she did. Soon she had a torrid affair with comic genius Charlie Chaplin in 1928. Lupe revitalized Chaplin’s libido after he had gone through a torturous divorce from his wife. Whatever time she had for the many men in her life, that same appreciation didn’t extend to other women and she would frequently battle with the other females with whom she had to work with and would often threaten them; when she was starring in director D.W. Griffith’s Lady of the Pavements, she had to co-star with an actress named Jedda Goudall, whom she hated, and the two had a ferocious cat-fight on the set. When she made her final appearance on Broadway in the Cole Porter musical “You Never Know”, Vélez and fellow cast member Libby Holman feuded viciously. The feud came to a head during a performance where Vélez punched Holman in between curtain calls and gave her a black eye, which pretty much ended the run of the show. Vélez was territorial about the men in her life, she was vicious toward any woman who might be competition for her man or an acting role. She mocked Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn and Shirley Temple, and her arch nemesis Dolores Del Dio by doing imitations of them.

When she was cast in the film The Wolf Song in 1929, she met Gary Cooper and immediately started what would be her first widely publicized romance. Theirs was a one-sidedly volatile relationship; he would often appear in public with scratches and bruises. One time, she attacked him with a knife during a fight. He needed stitches. By the end of their time as a couple, Copper had lost 45 pounds and was physically exhausted.  He was ordered by the studio to take a vacation. As he boarded a train, Vélez shot at Cooper but missed. Lupe soon moved on to other men; she had a thing for fighters. In addition to having a brief fling with boxer Jack Dempsey, she conducted a flagrant, but secret, affair with the black boxer Jack Johnson. In those days, blacks and whites almost never conducted sexual affairs out in the open. She met Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller at the hotel where she was staying that was owned by film star Marion Davies. One problem: Weissmuller was already married. But no matter, he dumped his wife for Lupe and married her October 8, 1933 in Las Vegas. Theirs was not a happy, serene marriage, and they constantly battled, with Lupe filing for divorce several times in 1934 and changing her mind each time. Weissmuller’s patience was so strained he dumped a plate of salad on her head at Ciro’s nightclub. Finally, in 1938 she filed a petition that was finalized in 1939.

After having many hit pictures with MGM, they unceremoniously dropped her. The excuse was that the studios were no longer going to make Spanish versions of their films and there was no longer a need for Latin actresses. Vélez returned to Mexico in 1938 to star in her first Spanish-language film. Arriving in Mexico City, she was greeted by 10,000 fans. The film La Zandunga, was a critical and financial success and Vélez was slated to appear in four more Mexican films, but instead, she returned to Los Angeles. She soon went to RKO Studios and starred in the B-movie The Girl From Mexico. Despite its lowly status, the picture became a tremendous hit with audiences. RKO rushed her into another film, this time called Mexican Spitfire, playing an emotionally volatile singer named Carmelita. The 1940 film became another smash for Lupe. The Spitfire series of eight slapstick comedy films rejuvenated Lupe’s sagging career.  In late 1941, she had an affair with writer Erich Maria Remarque whose wife, actress Luise Rainer later wrote that Remarque told her “with the greatest of glee” that he found Vélez’s volatility hot.

At this same time Lupe took on another lover in the form of a French 27-year-old bit actor named Harald Ramond. He was a strong and controlling man who knew how to tame Lupe. After she discovered that she was three months pregnant, she announced her engagement to Ramond without his knowledge or consent. When he learned of her pregnancy, he refused to marry her. Deeply hurt and stunned, she felt backed into a corner; she knew her career would be ruined in Hollywood if word got out she was pregnant and unmarried. It just wasn’t done in those days. And despite her wildness, Lupe was a devout Catholic, so abortion was out of the question. She could see only one way out: suicide. On December 18, 1944, at the age of 36, Vélez swallowed 70 Seconal pills, she lay down on her pink satin pillow on her over-sized Hollywood bed and arranged herself like a movie star, with her hands folded across her chest and went into an eternal sleep. Dramatic to the end, Lupe went out of this world in glamorous style. She left a suicide note addressed to Harald, which read:

“To Harald, May God forgive you and forgive me too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby’s before I bring him with shame or killing him. How could you, Harald, fake such a great love for me and our baby when all the time you didn’t want us?  I see no other way out for me so goodbye and good luck to you, Love Lupe.”

THAT is the truth. But the bottom line is: how she lived her life as well as the circumstances around her death are all irrelevant at the end of the day. What matters is the loss of a great multi-talented, pioneering Mexican star and a legacy unrealized and stunted by a world that wasn’t ready for her.

Next, I’ll talk about the most famous of her paramours, the yin to her yang, a perfect example of the special chemistry that Taureans and Cancers share, the strong, silent hero of the silver screen: Taurus Gary Cooper.

Stats

birthdate: July 18, 1908

major planets:

Sun: Cancer

Moon: Leo

Rising: Gemini

Mercury: Cancer

Venus: Leo

Mars: Pisces

Midheaven: Pisces

Jupiter: Virgo

Saturn: Aries

Uranus: Capricorn

Neptune: Cancer

Pluto: Gemini

Overall personality snapshot: She may have seemed at times to be a shy, vulnerable, romantic individual who only wanted to please, but underneath she had a voracious appetite for adoration and respect, and would not stop until she got it. Without a doubt, she had a very warm feeling for others, and domestic security with plenty of happy togetherness is high on her list of priorities. When it came to cooperation with others, however, she had her limits because she was profoundly individualistic and, albeit in a charming manner, she insisted on doing things her way. Ultimately the most important thing for her was believing in herself and being true to her standards and aspirations. Most of all, she needed to fulfill her creative potential, which was like an intimate companion with whom she shared her life. You nurture it, protect it, and then you show it off, and whatever walk of life you are in, you tend to be a fine performer.

This gave her a lot of self-respect and a touch of vanity as well, and her emotional sensitivity combined with her underlying imperiousness tended to impress others and made them take her seriously. She was a devoted member of her flock, and she zealously and jealously protected and promoted whomever she was devoted to. When it came to developing her own talents, however, she seemed to know that she had to pull away in order to grow into her greatest self. Others may have thought she was a bit of a show-off but that was not the case: she simply had a deep sense of the importance of her own creative talents, and she felt only half alive if she did not honour them. Although she was pretty sensitive to criticism or rebuffs, she was just as committed to honesty and personal integrity; and despite her vanity, she eventually learned to laugh at herself.

She had a very good memory and found it easy to learn subjects that interested her. She was very kind and thoughtful towards others. Her imagination was very keen, but if it got carried away, she may have experienced irrational fears. Even though she may have tried to maintain a scientific and objective outlook, her mind was actually dominated by her emotions. When it came to careers, she may have felt initially vague or confused about what she really wanted to do. She was eventually forced to give up her career of choice by events out of her control (as was evidenced by the tides turning from the “Mexican spitfire” female ideal due to the changing of the times). There was probably some element of self-sacrifice involved somewhere in her choice of career (the element of sacrifice being that she had to sacrifice her child, and ultimately her life, in relation to her reputation as an unwed mother as well as her unborn child’s reputation as an illegitimate child). She had good technical and scientific ability due to her, at times almost fanatical, attention to detail. She was also fastidious when it came to matters of health, diet and appearance. She was not afraid of work and was very resourceful and capable. She also worked well in a team. She became very annoyed if somebody else questioned the way that she operated. Her energy levels were somewhat inhibited, her self-confidence reduced, and her ambitions restricted through fear of failure. Times of strength and weakness alternated within her. Even though her decision-making ability could be ineffectual through over-caution, she often seemed to be placed in situations where a quick decision was needed. When she succeeded, it was mainly through her own efforts. She also showed a tendency towards wanting to start at the top, wanting to avoid the hard work that gets you there.

She belonged to a generation with a rational and logical attitude to life. There was a conflict between tradition and convention, and the experimental and unconventional. As an individual, she had to learn to strike a balance between the erratic and the conventional. As a member of this generation, she had the ability to come up with original ideas which could be of practical value. She was part of a very artistically talented and creative generation that wanted to escape from the demands of the world around them into a world of excitement and glamour. She was part of an emotionally sensitive generation that was extremely conscious of the domestic environment and the atmosphere surrounding her home place and home country. In fact, she could be quite nostalgic about her homeland, religion and traditions, often seeing them in a romantic light. She felt a degree of escapism from everyday reality, and was very sensitive to the moods of those around her. Bow embodied all of these Cancer Neptunian ideals. As a Gemini Plutonian, she was mentally restless and willing to examine and change old doctrines, ideas and ways of thinking. As a member of this generation, she showed an enormous amount of mental vitality, originality and perception. Traditional customs and taboos were examined and rejected for newer and more original ways of doing things. As opportunities with education expanded, she questioned more and learned more. As a member of this generation, having more than one occupation at a time would not have been unusual to her.

Love/sex life: It wasn’t easy to be passionate and emotionally explosive and also hold on to her dignity, but this was what she wanted to accomplish. She tried to conceal the pulsating softness of her sexual nature behind a façade of control and bluster. She thought that her display of strength and jolly self-confidence would hide her vulnerability and her susceptibility to virtually any sexual diversion. Of course, no one was really buying this cover up. They saw the luscious edges of her erotic hunger peeking through her disguise. That’s why they were all so anxious to be around her. The biggest problem in her sex life was how to deal with change. She loved it and she hated it. She loved following the lead of her feelings and surrendering herself to the moment. Too much consistency, even loving consistency, was apt to leave her bored and dissatisfied. But she also saw change as a threat to her sense of control and to the emotional security that she valued so highly. Because of this duality in her thinking, her reaction to changes in her sex life was abrupt, contradictory, and (horror of horrors) a little undignified.

minor asteroids and points:

North Node: Gemini

Lilith: Libra

Vertex: Scorpio

Fortune: Gemini

East Point: Gemini

Her North Node in Gemini dictated that she needed to prevent her idealism from influencing her thoughts to such a high degree. She needed to consciously develop a more clear-minded and analytical approach involving her thought processes. Her Lilith in Libra was definitely working overtime here. Relationships somehow caused her to err, and her partner choices caused much suffering.   She expressed herself through others. As a lover, she was aggressive, yet co-dependent. As a mistress, she was not above trying to cause a divorce, which she did with Johnny Weissmuller and she ultimately became fatally despondent when she found herself pregnant with a bit actor's baby. She used her good looks as a weapon to help her get ahead in the movie industry. Also, Lilith in Libra strangely enough, manifested itself as a sort of lighter female Capricorn archetype, and she pulled herself up by the bootstraps in a rather glamorous way, going to work after her father left the family unit. As such, she exhibited graceful gumption right until the very end. Her Vertex in Scorpio, 5th house dictated that she had a desire or continual need for feeling irresistible and irreplaceable on all levels of intimacy, whether spiritual, intellectual, emotional, or physical. From the fires of hell to the heights of heaven, the  further and deeper the range of interaction she could experience with another the more fulfilling. She had a childlike orientation, in all of its manifestations, toward relationships on an internal level. That implicit trust, or perhaps naivete, that was instilled in our  childhood persisted far into maturity. The concomitant explosions and  occasional tantrums when these constructs are violated also accompany  this position. She had a need for fun, creativity, and excitement in a  committed relationship, no matter how many years it has endured. She often had deep fears, typical of children, of abandonment, as well as a need for universal acceptance, no matter how she acted, which she needed her partner to respect and nurture, rather than rebuke, especially in adulthood. Her Part of Fortune in Gemini and Part of Spirit in Sagittarius dictated that her destiny lay in travel, education and communication. She was able to overcome enemies by her words and by her writing. Happiness and fulfillment came from being able to express herself fully. Her soul’s purpose lay in seeking truth, justice and fairness. She felt spiritual connections and saw the spark of the divine when she studied, broadened her mind through new philosophies, or looked for inspiration outside the home. East Point in Gemini dictated that she was often insatiably curious and loved to collect little bits of (what seemed to be useless) information and trivia. Her interests were quite varied, and she may have been somewhat scattered. Sometimes her curiosity could appear cold and callous as her level of objectivity was potentially high. There was usually an openness to learning in any situation.      

elemental dominance:

water

fire

She had high sensitivity and elevation through feelings. Her heart and  her emotions were her driving forces, and she couldn’t do anything on earth if she didn’t feel a strong effective charge. She  needed to love in order to understand, and to feel in order to take action, which caused a certain vulnerability which she should (and often did) fight against. She was dynamic and passionate, with strong leadership ability. She generated enormous warmth and vibrancy. She was exciting to be around, because she was genuinely enthusiastic and usually friendly. However, she could either be harnessed into helpful energy or flame up and cause destruction. Ultimately, she chose the latter. Confident and opinionated, she was fond of declarative statements such as “I will do  this” or “It’s this way.” When out of control—usually because she was  bored, or hadn’t been acknowledged—she was bossy, demanding, and even tyrannical. But at her best, her confidence and vision inspired others  to conquer new territory in the world, in society, and in themselves.    

modality dominance:

mutable

She wasn’t particularly interested in spearheading new ventures or dealing with the day-to-day challenges of organization and management. She excelled at performing tasks and producing outcomes. She was flexible and liked to finish things. Was also likely undependable, lacking in initiative, and disorganized. Had an itchy restlessness and an unwillingness to buckle down to the task at hand. Probably had a chronic inability to commit—to a job, a relationship, or even to a set of values.                    

house dominants:

2nd

3rd

1st

The material side of life  including money and finances, income and expenditure, and worldly goods was emphasized in her life. Also the areas of innate resources, such as her self-worth, feelings and emotions were paramount in her life. What she considered her personal security and what she desired was also paramount. Short journeys, traveling within her own country were themes  throughout her life; her immediate environment, and relationships with her siblings, neighbours and friends were of importance. The way her mental processes operated, as well as the manner and style in which she communicated was emphasized in her life. As such, much was revealed about her schooling and childhood and adolescence. Her personality, disposition and temperament is highlighted in her life. The manner in which she expressed herself and the way she approached other people is also highlighted. The way she approached new situations and circumstances contributed to show how she set about her life’s goals. The general state of her health is also shown, as well as her early childhood experiences defining the rest of her life.  

planet dominants:

Neptune

Mercury

Sun

She was of a contemplative nature, particularly receptive to ambiances, places, and people. She gladly cultivated the art of letting go, and allowed the natural unfolding of events to construct her world. She followed her inspirations, for better or for worse. She was intellectual, mentally quick, and had excellent verbal acuity. She dealt in terms of logic and reasoning. It was likely that she was left-brained. She was restless, craved movement, newness, and the bright hope of undiscovered terrains. She had vitality and creativity, as well as a strong ego and was authoritarian and powerful. She likely had strong leadership qualities, she definitely knew who she was, and she had tremendous will. She met challenges and believed in expanding her life.

sign dominants:

Cancer

Gemini

Leo

At first meeting, she seemed enigmatic, elusive. She needed roots, a place or even a state of mind that she could call  her own. She needed a safe harbor, a refuge in which to retreat for solitude. She was generally gentle and kind, unless she was hurt. Then she could become vindictive and sharp-spoken. She was affectionate, passionate, and even possessive at times. She was intuitive and was  perhaps even psychic. Experience flowed through her emotionally. She was often moody and always changeable; her interests and social circles shifted constantly. She was emotion distilled into its purest form. She ventured out to see what else was there and seized upon new ideas that expanded her community. Her innate curiosity kept her on the move. She used her rational, intellectual mind to explore and understand her personal world. She needed to answer the single burning question in her mind: why? This applied to most facets of her life, from the personal to the impersonal. This need to know sent her off to foreign countries, where her need to explore other cultures and traditions ranked high. She was changeable and often moody. This meant that she was often at odds with herself—the mind demanding one thing, the heart demanding the opposite. To someone else, this internal conflict often manifested as two very different people. She loved being the center of attention and often surrounded herself with admirers. She had an innate dramatic sense, and life was definitely her stage. Her flamboyance and personal magnetism extended to every facet of her life. She wanted to succeed and make an impact in every situation. She was, at her best, optimistic, honorable, loyal, and ambitious.      

Read more about her under the cut.

Lupe Velez was born on July 18, 1908, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, as Maria Guadalupe Villalobos Velez. She was sent to Texas at the age of 13 to live in a convent. She later admitted that she wasn't much of a student because she was so rambunctious. She had planned to become a champion roller skater, but that would change. Life was hard for her family, and Lupe returned to Mexico to help them out financially. She worked as a salesgirl for a department store for the princely sum of $4 a week. Every week she would turn most of her salary over to her mother, but she kept a little for herself so she could take dancing lessons. With her mature shape and grand personality, she thought she could make a try at show business, which she figured was a lot more glamorous than dancing or working as a salesclerk. In 1924 Lupe started her show business career on the Mexican stage and wowed audiences with her natural beauty and talent. By 1927 she had emigrated to Hollywood, where she was discovered by Hal Roach, who cast her in a comedy with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Douglas Fairbanks then cast her in his feature film The Gaucho (1927) with himself and wife Mary Pickford. Lupe played dramatic roles for five years before she switched to comedy. In 1933 she played the lead role of Pepper in Hot Pepper (1933). This film showcased her comedic talents and helped her to show the world her vital personality. She was delightful. In 1934 Lupe appeared in three fine comedies: Strictly Dynamite (1934), Palooka (1934) and Laughing Boy (1934). By now her popularity was such that a series of "Mexican Spitfire" films were written around her. She portrayed Carmelita Lindsay in Mexican Spitfire (1940), Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940), The Mexican Spitfire's Baby (1941) and Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event (1943), among others. Audiences loved her in these madcap adventures, but it seemed at times that she was better known for her stormy love affairs. She married one of her lovers, Johnny Weissmuller, but the marriage only lasted five years and was filled with battles. Lupe certainly did live up to her nickname. She had a failed romance with Gary Cooper, who never wanted to wed her. By 1943 her career was waning. She went to Mexico in the hopes of jump-starting her career. She gained her best reviews yet in the Mexican version of Naná (1944). Bolstered by the success of that movie, Lupe returned to the US, where she starred in her final film as Pepita Zorita, Ladies' Day (1943). There were to be no others. On December 13, 1944, tired of yet another failed romance, with a part-time actor named Harald Maresch, and pregnant with his child, Lupe committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. She was only 36 years old. (x)

#lupe velez #cancer #star analyses #astrology #long ass post #tragic beauty #mine

[dangermousie]

2020 End of Year Post - kdrama edition

You can find my 2020 cdrama post here: dangermousie.tumblr.com/post/638449659546845184/2020-end-of-year-post-cdrama-edition

This is only going to cover kdramas that aired in 2020; if it originally aired another year, it’s not on this list.

It’s been a pretty lackluster kdrama year. There are probably only 5 kdramas I truly loved and only three of them I was really obsessed over. Better luck in 2021!

DRAMAS WATCHED

(In order of liking from least to most as opposed to pure quality; I am including if I’ve seen enough to make up my mind; yes I realize that’s inaccurate, but that’s my list)

42 Born Again - so bad, so incoherent, so insane, I have no idea why the leads signed up for it (and unlike some of the other watchers, I think it was awful from the very start.) There is literally nothing about this drama that makes sense.

41 Love with Flaws - a bunch of people who should be tried under the Geneva Convention.

40 Sweet Munchies - Jung Il Woo proves his inability to pick a functional script.

39 Meow the Secret Boy - if you ever wanted to bang a cat, this drama is for you. Not being a furry, however...

38 Do Do Sol Sol La Sol - I lost braincells just typing out this title.

37 When I Was the Most Beautiful - the only way it’s not the dumbest, most pointless melo of 2020 is because Born Again considerately came out the same year.

36 Woman of 9.9 Billion - if you want to watch an artsy French movie about miserable people, but only badly made, boy do I have a drama for you.

35 Lies after Lies - screams after screams.

34 Backstreet Rookie - people were up in arms about various problematic plots. I am a survivor of many plots much more problematic but even I couldn’t survive how utterly boring and annoying this drama was and how utterly irritating the leads were. This has taken Ji Chang Wook off my top favorites into “should I even check his latest Lovestruck in the City? Probably not” territory almost single-handedly (Melt Me helped, to be fair.)

33 Men Are Men - boring is boring.

32 Dinner Mate - two beautiful boring people eat out a lot.

31 Was It Love - no it wasn’t.

30 Alice - Joo Won in the shower can make up for a multitude of sins but not plot nonsense of such magnitude. When you find yourself thinking it would be better if he hooked up with the alternate universe version of his mother because at least then something entertaining would happen, you know it’s bad.

29 More than Friends - started out OK, then made me hate basically everyone and kept going.

28 Start-Up - honestly, it’s probably more decent than its place here, but the toxic and batshit fandom for it (the worst this year) made me feel like breaking out in hives any time it’s even mentioned.

27 The Spies who Loved Me - how to take a good cast and waste it.

26 Private Lives - it was good but it never took off with its concept and spent more time on the incoherent plot than the OTP which was its one strength. It’s a decent drama but coming after Heartless City and My Beautiful Bride from the same writer, it’s a disappointment.

25 Record of Youth - as high as it is due to Park Bo Gum hard carrying this entire awful drama on his shoulders and doing it so well I finished it. Alas, while he is in one drama (and that drama is great), the rest of the characters and the entirety of the script are a pointless useless mess.

24 Do You Like Brahms - excellent first third, mediocre middle, and terrible last third. I don’t know what musical term applies to this? Diminuendo, I think.

23 I’ll Go to You When the Weather is Nice - nice and mellow but nothing much happens.

22 Forest - mainly for Park Hae Jin’s excellent and frequently naked bod.

21 The Ballot - I didn’t love it as much as everyone did but it was well-made.

20 Hyena - more romance and less weird law stuff would make it better.

19 365 Repeat the Year - surprisingly solid.

18 The Game Towards Zero - see 365.

17 When My Love Blooms - very old fashioned, very lovely.

16 Chocolate - also very old fashioned and very lovely but also with Yoon Kye Sang performing medical procedures bleeding and shirtless. MMM.

15 (tie) Secret Royal Inspector - a fun if run of the mill sageuk.

15 Find Me In Your Memory - best melo this year.

14 Mystic Pop Up Bar - surprisingly good even though I wasn’t planning to check it out.

13 Where Your Eyes Linger - came out of nowhere but was tender and hopeful and lovely.

12 Itaewon Class - Park Seo Joon hard carries a drama that is already excellent. Love it.

11 Psychopath Diary - Yoon Shi Yoon is such a treat in a hilarious, cynical, dark comedy.

10 Kairos - more like ouroboros.

9 Queen Love and War - in a year where sageuks are very rare, this was solid and surprisingly moving and shippy.

8 The King Eternal Monarch - people didn’t like it but I did. It’s no masterpiece and both the leads and the writers have better dramas, but it was a lovely romantic fairy tale for me.

7 Mr. Queen - sharp, hilarious, and some of my favorite actors.

6 Psycho But It’s OK - healing, sharp cinematography and even sharper chemistry.

5 Crash Landing on You - the last ep pissed me off so much this drama is dead to me but I loved it so much until then I can’t place it lower in good conscience.

4 Train - who knew I would go this hard for an OCN drama or that OCN would do romance so well? But this time-travel mystery romance is just incredible and I shipped the OTP and rooted for the characters and loved every last bit of it.

3 Run On - this is the drama Record of Youth wanted to be but failed. Smart and lived in, you feel like you are peeking at real people, but also even four episodes in, I am so invested in the main characters separately and together, and care for them so much, it’s a little frightening.

1 (tie) Tale of the Nine Tailed - my perfect fantasy romance. I liked it better than Goblin, yeah I said it.

1 Flower of Evil - all the tropes I love in one incredible package. I would rewatch episodes waiting for new ones trying to puzzle the story and to stay withdrawal but it works just as well on rewatch. Lee Jun Ki brings his trademark tortured intensity and for once, both his leading lady and his script back him up and are worthy of that. It’s perfect.

FAVORITE DRAMA

It’s a tie between Tale of the Nine Tailed and Flower of Evil but if I had to pick just one, FoE, because it had me seriously obsessed and guessing about the protagonist and gave me the narrative tropes I love so much and an OTP that statisfied all my hurt/comfort kinks and then some.

WORST DRAMA

Born Again - honestly, this is so bonkers it almost becomes good but alas...

FAVORITE MALE CHARACTER

Do Hyun Soo/Baek Hee Sung, Flower of Evil - he is so messed up, so on edge, so traumatized. Yet capable of so much warmth and caring even as he himself doesn’t realize his humanity. FoE is basically a story of a man pushed and punished by the world for his entire life who, because of one woman, finds a safe place and peace and slowly comes to life without realizing it, and watching his desperation to keep this small bit of normalcy is so heartbreaking and exciting all at once. Plus, you start the drama thinking he’s a psychopathic serial killer and end it (if you are me) thinking he must be protected at all costs and if anyone even looks at him wrong they must suffer, and that’s quite a change!

FAVORITE FEMALE CHARACTER

Nam Ji Ah, Tale of the Nine Tailed - she is so funny and tough and smart and loving and amazing that I will totally buy that a literal demi-god will do anything and everything for her and love her for literal eternity.

NEEDS TO BE MURDERED

Dad in Record of Youth - yes in a year with serial killers and supernatural demons, I picked a normal character from a mediocre drama. It’s his everyday awfulness to his family that hits so hard and I am sad he never got his comeuppance.

FAVORITE SHIP

Ji Ah x Yeon - a fearless reporter and an immortal demi-god who’s been hoping for his human beloved to reincarnate. A really rare set-up where the OTP is equally ride or die, so compatible and completely BAMF. I got why he waited for her for that long and then fell in love with her all over again. Perfection.

Runner up: Flower of Evil - he is so messed up he literally does not believe he is capable of love or empathy, but he falls in love with her anyway and so utterly she permeates his entire life. She is tough as nails and only believes what she sees and is the sole person who believes in him against the world. She loves him but he needs her. She needs him but he loves her. They are amazing.

FAVORITE SECONDARY OTP

Seo Dan x Gu Seung Jun, Crash Landing on You, North Korean x Conman were so good I shipped them harder than the main OTP and the end of that storyline pissed me off so much I dumped the drama and didn’t finish it for months (and it’s still dead to me.)

NOTP

Record of Youth - it started out and they didn’t have much chemistry but the dialogues were interesting and I thought the chemistry would grow. It didn’t and deteriorated, their dialogues became boring and relationship had zero development (about as much as the supposed female lead.) I think we were supposed to feel bad they broke up and they were going for a bittersweet open ending, instead I found myself happy about the break up of two incompatible, chemistry-less people and hoping for the love of God they never get back together.

FAVORITE SCENE

Yeon and the bridge of knives, Tale of the Nine Tailed - Yeon choosing to undergo the creeptastic bridge of knives for a chance to save Ji Ah, who at that point he is not aware is the reincarnation of his Joseon love because, as he says, he doesn’t care if she is or isn’t, it just would be more horrible to have her die than to undergo the horrific torture he is undergoing, and then the sequence with his catching her, her weeping over him and the fact that she is the original Joseon girl revealed and all the bandaging and his watching her sleep and all that loveliness, is everything for yours truly.

Runner up: Hyun Soo having that break-down at the cliff at the end of ep 15 of Flower of Evil as Ji Won desperately tries to convince him she is alive and he finally stumbles to her.

Runner runner up (it’s my list, I will do what I want): Do Won preparing to blow his brains out to give a chance to Seo Kyung to live in Train.

BIGGEST CRUSH

Seon-Gyeom, Run On. Yeah, I know. Im Siwan is tiny, delicate featured and has a runner’s build, none of which are things that normally appeal to me. But his character is so odd, so honest, so unflinching in pursuing what he thinks is right, so incapable of self-pity despite plenty of reasons for it, and so ridiculously attractive when he smiles, I don’t even care.

BEST SCENE STEALER CHARACTER

Kim Bum, TotNT - I started out being annoyed by him and ended up looking forward to his scenes and being distraught by his ending.

NEEDS A SEQUEL

Honestly, none. I was fine with all the endings. I wouldn’t mind seeing post-end life of Tale of the Nine Tailed characters or the OTP settling into their literal new world in Train, but I am good.

TROPE THAT NEEDS TO DIE

Time jump that solves all the problems off screen or alternatively years pass and everyone is frozen - something that kdramas need to learn and need to learn badly. See Record of Youth, Brahms and Start Up.

FAVORITE TROPE WE’VE SEEN A LOT OF

Men who are ride or die for their OTP - this was a great year for this - the male leads of four of my five dramas were beyond anything on that scale (only exception is Run On because it’s still too early to tell there.) Yes PLEASE.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

This was a banner year for that what with Start Up, Do You Like Brahms, Record of Youth, and Private Lives all starting out well and nosediving off the cliff but winner is Crash Landing on You. I loved it so much for bulk of its run but the last episode pissed me off so much I deleted all my files and called it a day.

BIGGEST GOOD SURPRISE

Flower of Evil - I had no expectations of this drama and wasn’t even planning on watching it despite liking both the lead actors because yet another “look at evil serial killer be evil” drama with no romance was not my thing. Luckily someone convinced me there might be some romance and I peeked curiously. Honestly, their promo campaign was the most misleading and dumbest thing ever.

Runner up Psycho but it’s OK - I have never liked Kim Soo Hyun in anything before and the drama premise seemed WTF but it was shockingly good and KSH totally blew me away.

Hardest Working Lead

Yoon Shi Yoon - he starred in two (!!!) dramas in 2020 playing three characters and not only were both these dramas awesome in a lackluster year, but if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew it was the same actor and the fact that the characters shared a face, I would have never believed that they were played by the same actor. So good!

2020 DRAMAS I HAVEN’T SEEN THAT I MOST WANT TO WATCH

None. Covid Year gave me PLENTY of time

BEST NON-2020 DRAMA I’VE WATCHED IN 2020

My Beautiful Bride and Deserving of the Name - I was obsessed with both of them and honestly, they were much better than the bulk of 2020 kdramas I watched.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2021

The Moon That Rises in the Day, Hong Chun Gi, Joseon Exorcist, Island,  Frightening Cohabitation, Snowdrop.

#kdrama #flower of evil #tale of the nine tailed #ocn train #jtbc run on #jtbc chocolate #record of youth #crash landing on you #born again #love with flaws #sweet munchies #do do sol sol la la sol #meow the secret boy #when i was the most beautiful #woman of 9.9 billion #lies after lies #men are men #backstreet rookie #dinner mate #was it love #alice #more than friends #tvn start up #the spies who loved me #jtbc private lives #private lives #do you like brahms #i will go to you when the weather is nice #i'll go to you when the weather is nice #forest kdrama

[leporellian]

please infodump about song of the sky it sounds interesting :))

ok so. song of the sky my novel song of the sky. if you followed my webcomic back when i was doing that this will probably sound more than familiar to you but that's fine

SO song of the sky takes place in like. you know in like, 80s animated kids movies where the mice or rats or whatever have their -secret civilized animals- society and they basically all act like humans except for when they don't? That Trope is the basis of the setting here. all the characters (unless otherwise specified) are cats. they act like people though. humans still exist, and they live in a world for humans! the humans can't understand them or anything. you know that meme from barnyard (2006)? essentially that. and its in chicago. you know how it is

ok now anyway now that we've gotten this out of the way

so like 2 years prior to the story (which is longer to cats ofc) the former ruler of the city cats, king sarastro, was Overthrown by The Starblazer, a revolutionary. sarastro and the starblazer were actually originally close friends but sarastro cared too much abt his private circle of people and not enough abt like, The Actual Citizens Of His City, for the starblazer's comfort and this growing rift led to them McFucking Attacking each other. so the starblazer and her husband become rulers and are like 'yay we did it :) we're better than kings! we can do this better!' but it turns out they CANT do it better bc the husband just Dies of stress and the starblazer is overcome with the same paranoia and fear of her own people that led to acting Like That. and then even though she was just like 'i am better than kings and queens i'm going to elect my heir based on merit :)' like 5 mins ago she decides 'oh no i don't trust anyone besides my own daughter to be next heir lol' so Nothing Has Been Done.

also sarastro is still alive. his kids were killed etc but he himself is still alive and still has his followers. so now we have sarastro and the starblazer, who are both very similar but also really hate each other, vying for control of the city. nothing can go bad here

so the plot kicks off when sarastro is like 'wait i GOT it'. he and his second in command, the speaker, have figured out that if they just steal the starblazer's daughter/heir and wait for the starblazer to die, then they essentially get power handed to them on a platter without having to fight. the morality of this decision can be debated bc on one hand, finding a way to solve things without sending your citizens into battle is a Good Idea, but on the other hand... you know. kidnapping. so naturally the starblazer flips her shit over this

so anyway the main protagonist of this isn't sarastro OR the starblazer even tho they caused all this mess. it's pamina, the starblazer's daughter, and tamino, a randomass(?) housecat she recruited to go get pamina from sarastro.

tamino is filled with wanderlust and really wants to have a destiny and an identifiable purpose for his existence. he also really wants approval from everyone around him, particularly parental figures. no way that can go badly. tamino is accompanied in his quest by papageno, a birdcatcher working for the starblazer who really just doesn't give a shit about this entire situation. tamino tells him 'hey i'm suffering from a pathological need to only value myself on a basis of how much praise and approval i get from authoritative figures' tamino says. 'geez that sucks have you tried like not fucking worrying about it dude' replies papageno. also papageno has a dead fiancee but that's a whole other thing i'll get to her -later-

meanwhile pamina is just so fucking funny to me because she's spending every moment just figuring out how to kill sarastro. she hates that asgore dreemurr looking ass bitch so much. but also a lot of this thinking comes from her wanting to please her mother . pamina is so Fucking Mad but she's also really quiet and biding her time with all this. meanwhile she's accompanied by monostatos, sarastro's apprentice. monostatos is a strategist and a shapeshifter. he thinks that if he can get the chance, he can be made sarastro's heir and fix the whole issue between sarastro and the starblazer. he sees sarastro as his adoptive father and sarastro doesn't give a shit abt him lol its funny but also kind of sad. so basically this is rejection sensitive dysphoria: the novel

also there's the speaker, sarastro's second in command who is just Really Fucking Tired Of Everybody; and the forsaken molly, who just runs around annoying sarastro and the speaker bc she doesn't like them LOL

IF YOU WERE ABLE TO CATCH ANY OF THAT SHIT AND UNDERSTAND IT. You Get Special Victorian Cross Honors, because i am insane <3

#song of the sky #rambles

[caktii]

Shouma Toriashi - my edgy, unfashionable king (a short summary)

I'm back baby! Hiyall, I read the latest chapter (Vol 5, Ch. 21) and I got struck by inspiration. Stay tuned for some more ramblings on one of our favourite teen(?) criminals.

So Shouma is an interesting character, I don't think he strays far from the common 'tsundere with a soft spot' trope but I have picked up on a few fun tidbits that pull him away from the crowd.

One, Shouma is curt, emotionally flat and reserved, perhaps even a little subdued- perfect yakuza material. He isn't originally yakuza but he slides right in like a knife through a dead fish. Having re-read the manga I noticed something I should've before, and that he's a classic case of 'traumatised child turned aggressive boi'. In one of the panels (pls let me know if there were some liberties taken with translation etc., I have no clue), but when Kirishima looks over his background info on Shouma, it states that his mother died after she 'fell down the stairs on her way home from work', which- I don't know about you- to me is layperson terms for 'killed by abusive husband, but we swipe this under the carpet because that shit doesn't happen here'. Before he was then passed to his grandmother, then uncle, then his father before falling to the Soumei family.

You know which red flags this sets off for me? Poor relationships, poor models, no support networks, his social abilities should be kaput with that info alone. He would've grown up fearing and hating the world whilst also needing to work with it to survive- hence his presentation when we first meet him. High, volatile and violent. A salad of all the nasties a child could have.

But with this in mind, he's almost good fit for the yakuza, but as a functioning individual, I didn't see him conforming to any area of society, yakuza included. Not unless it was under lock and key. But as we see, he does. He becomes a member of the Soumei family, finishes school and goes to university, all without a prison sentence.

How? The harsh waves of storm Shouma calmed, after he met our heroine.

What's fun to me is his reaction to Yoshino. I'm not sure if it's her innate ability to tame the wild, but I think she represented a stability that he was lacking his whole life. When she stumbles on him trying to cut up his father, her reaction isn't the corny 'oh no you shouldn't do that he's your father!' its 'hand me the knife, he'll be dead and you won't go to prison'.

For the first time in his life- Shouma has been validated. Someone listened to him, sympathised with him and said 'you're right' whilst loading the gun. And if that wasn't enough, she takes him in. Not as a cheque, but as family. Shouma found a home.

This shocks him so much he has a Zuko-style fever of change (for anyone whose seen ATLA).

This leads us to his current relationship with Yoshino, and later interactions with Kirishima. He loves Yoshino, no doubt. The nature of this love is ambiguous, but one thing is clear, she is the most important person to him, so when a tiger in the grass in the form of Miyama Kirishima appears, he is visibly threatened.

But what I think is intriguing is that he and Kirishima are one in the same, yet polar opposites. They're both highly dangerous, volatile and batshit insane individuals, yet docile around Yoshino. She recognises him, accepts him as who he is with no questions asked. And as such, will do whatever she wants, no questions asked.

I know I focus on Kirishima and Yoshino a lot, but Souma has so much potential to be just as strong. Though he's hidden behind his lackadaisical nature, when the right button is pushed... he is explosive. If he didn't find his calm in Yoshino, I would not hesitate to say that he would be just as bad as Kirishima.

Not only does he have the looks, physical prowess and violent disposition, he also demonstrates an ability to navigate relationships should he feel like it. All it would take would be a spark, a loss, some skilful nurturing and bam. We've got another Kirishima.

I think he recognises that he and Kirishima are similar, and that's what sets him off so much. He sees his potential, he sees what he could be, but he doesn't want it. Not if it could endanger his place next to Yoshino. To him, there's nothing worth compromising his safe space with her.

But there's our kicker. A compromise must be made should she get married, and he loathes this.

I think we've only had a taste of what Shouma can be, and I for one, am so excited to see him blow up even more. I

As always, I give my love to the translators, and to all those who listen to my ramblings.

#raise wa tanin ga ii #toriashi shouma #mangacap #I love these guys so much #they tickle the psychologist in me #in a way that makes me comfortably say #they dont need therapy #they need a gun #ramble time #realistically there wasn't a lot to discuss since he fits a trope #but he has his moments #hes prime definition of 'live long enough to see yourself become the villian' #cos i think if anyones is gonna hurt Yoshino #its gonna be him