#not to mention all the fans who saved this show in 2018

[youjustwaitsunshine]

Seb helmets: the long awaited sequel

Mugello 2020:

Not on Seb's website, but still on ferraris instagram, Seb had this helmet to celebrate Ferraris 1000th gp. (in the same week, he announced his move to aston martin)

Turkish GP 2021

a beautiful sea creature design to remind us to save our oceans. i personally really love the turtles

Singapore GP 2022

gorgeous neon rainbow on super light absorbent black design. now it can be said with finality (as of yet): jens munser and sebastian vettel never missed when it was about helmets in singapore. i have a keychain of this helmet so I'm especially fond of it.

British GP 2022

ngl i cried a bit just from pulling those pictures up again. he is so loved. i love how even though we know barely anything about sebs family, this helmet shows so much personality from his kids and hanna. this is the most gorgeous helmet of them all. however, shoutout to the subtle nigel mansell design hed have driven with if his family hadn't made a secret birthday helmet for him.

Abu Dhabi 2022

I'm so so proud to be a fan of a driver who loves his fans. The few times I've met Seb, he's always taken his time - often more than allotted - to greet as many people as he could, pose for pictures sign things etc. He feels very genuine in showing his appreciation for his fans and so I think this helmet is a beautiful monument to the love people have for him. He is deeply beloved and in turn, he loves his fans and has shown this from his retirement message that was so much more personal than a press release, over the time between the announcement to his last race and beyond. This helmet is a testament to the way we love Seb and the way he loves us back.

USGP 2022

Peace and Love baby! this gorgeous woodstock inspired piece is incredibly gaudy and glittery and very unapologetically so. i love it deeply but opinions were very split on it

Japan 2022

a very cleverly done thank you to helmet provider arai. who doesn't love opening packages? especially one as beautiful as this one! it's a bit sad to not have the little ninja mascot on the helmet for sebs last f1 race in japan, however, with his 2022 helmet designs being so beautiful and elevated, he outgrew it a bit. important side note about japan 2022 here is sebs battle to the line with fernando alonso.

Hungary 2021

Let us remember this GP for the joy it brought and not the desperation that followed. Seb came, saw and served cunt in his rainbow sneakers, rainbow shirt, rainbow mask and rainbow helmet. He drove to the podium and nothing bad or terrible happened after.

Brazil 2022

the intertwined bars of the german and then, further up, the climate change flag (and the brazilian one on top) are reminiscent of the 2018 german gp helmet!

Austria 2022

The iconic bee helmet! I actually have a few pics of this one from the Austrian GP that i took myself. Even though that GP specifically sucked so hard it made Seb sway towards retiring, the helmet is beautiful and iconic.

Honourable Mentions:

- Miami 2022: the snorkel helmet! first GP underwater, also premiering sebs GIGANTICALLY OVERSIZED climate change t shirt also found in his shoo

- Canada 2022: Canadas Climate Crimes/ stop mining tar sands. this one made a politician on twitter sooooo angry. it lost her rant a bit of credibility that she directly profited from the tar sand mining.

- LGBTQ+ CLEAN OUR OCEANS (Abu Dhabi 2021): the world's to do list. i mostly have to laugh at the unlucky placement of the lgbtq+ and the clean our oceans phrase. why are the cishets exempt from cleaning our oceans? questionable.

- Race4Women: Saudi Arabia 2021. a return of the beautiful day-glow paint.

almost all of sebs helmets are either on the sebsite or deep in jens munsers archives (difficult but not impossible to find)

Seb helmet masterpost

#sebastian vettel #ive seen a few of these helmets irl at the essen motorshow and i honestly just stood there in awe #helmets like this are such an underrated art form

[astrolaurical]

RM’S CHAOTIC LOVE LIFE ANALYZED IN SONG LYRICS

This is all alleged and speculation. No relationships are proven true until confirmed by the idols themselves or their agencies. Do not take this personally or too seriously. This is just an extreme over-analysis of song lyrics and observations I have made about idol interactions from years of being a K-Pop fan.  This is a work in progress- RM has like a million songs and I am constantly going back and rediscovering new meaning in lyrics and adding to the song list. So buckle up, get a snack and a drink because I basically typed an 12 page thesis.

Indigo track-by-track analyses link

Favorite Girl (2012)- girl broke up with him over a letter in the winter

Thinkin Bout U- mentions red converse high girl

Coffee (2013)-bitter over breakup bc became idol?

Blanket kick (2014)- keep being/acting embarrassing around crush/gf and admits a lot of songs about her- possibly about yerin?

Miss right (2014)- maybe about yerin? possibly about wishing to be in ideal relationship but can’t bc idol

Where did you come from (2014)-superficial love 

Boy in luv (2014)- unrequited love and changing oneself to try to get her affections

Danger (2014)-unaffectionate/uncaring gf not putting her all in the relationship

Intro:what am I to you (2014)-relationship started out too intense so gf put up barriers and shut bf out

Converse high (2015), converse high (predebut) -song that I believe is about yerin from 15&

Run (2015)- giving your all to someone who doesn’t appreciate it

Hold me tight (2015)-knows breakup is about to occur but wants to rekindle feelings from beginning of relationship

I NEED U (2015)- how because of this girl, they are becoming ruined and they want out of the relationship. However, they cannot bring themselves to leave and begs her to break it off for him. They are going through hell because of this relationship yet they keep coming back.

Autumn leaves (2016)- refusing to move on from breakup

Love is not over (2016)-refusing to move on from breakup where girl clearly didn’t love him/ she was toying with him or realized that hookups don’t satisfy them bc only last the night and person only theirs when they are physically in the bed

Blood sweat tears (2016)- addicted to sex with someone

Dilemma (2016)- gf feeling like stranger as she becomes distant but rm still refuses to let go bc he loves her

13430 (2018)-galactic ode to lovers whose bond dwindles, eventually breaking aloof.

Fake love (2018)- “I’m so sick of this fake love” Pretty self explanatory. The same message will be repealed in “Her” and “Closer”.

Her (2018)- the person they are in love with doesn't know the real them, only the mask they put on

Truth untold (2018)- It speaks of the singer putting on a mask to see the one that they love. They create a facade to hide behind so the object of their affection doesn’t see their broken and damaged side. They are afraid that their love will leave them because of their hidden side. They have a love, but it is fake love because they aren’t being real and so because they did not have the courage to show their love their real self, they left. They are left sitting in their ruined dream reminiscing about what would’ve happened if things turned out differently.

Im fine (2018)- a little self growth yay! Went from “save me” to “I’m fine”

Euphoria (2018)- happiness associated with young love and new beginnings. There are some underlying tones of feelings of how their love is fake and not based on attraction

Waste it on Me (2018)- a hopeless and hopeful love affair. While one side of the relationship labels the concept of love as a waste, the other strongly advocates for the pursuit.

Jamais Vu (2019)- can never do right by gf so want another chance

Crying over you (2019)- breakup but each person is mature enough to let go of each other and sending wishes that their ex would find a better person whom perfectly fit for them.

TOMORROW X TOGETHER - 0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) (2021)- apparently RM had part in writing this song. He must have been loved up in his couple ring era because this song screams honeymoon stage. Clearly it didn't last based on the angry songs in this list that came afterward.

Young Love (2022)- We don’t know which of the members this viewpoint is about, so I will include this song just to be safe

SEXY NUKIM (2022)- you know the part I’m referring to… Girl you can keep it low While we do the ride I'll apply you tonight Ain't gotta DM 'Cause you heard about my team”

Closer (2022)- Namjoon, man. Will you ever learn your lesson?! You can’t replace sex with love! And you know it too. You’ve written like 20 songs about this very thing.

Change pt. 2 (2022)- MANS HEXED HIS EX LMAOOO. I WOULD BE SCARED SHITLESS.  “SOMEDAY A GREAT GRIEF WILL DO COME FOR YOU AND THEN YOULL KNOW IT TOO THATS ALL I CAN SAY TO YOU. YOU CANT LOVE SOMEONE LIKE I DO”

Smoke Sprite (2022)- Honey, what you doin' in my bed? Yeah, Uh, baby, welcome to my favorite place, yes→ RM said 2022 IS THE YEAR I LET EVERYONE KNOW IM NOT A VIRGIN

Dont ever say love me (2023)- “I wanna die when youre next to me” like man wants to breakup so bad because even when youre around him you give him the ick

WHO ARE THE SONGS ABOUT?

ANONYMOUS PRE-DEBUT CITIZEN

RM admitted to having a girlfriend in highschool during a 2015 episode of Problematic Men. He said it was a short-lived relationship because she had too many male friends and was causing him to be jealous. Speaking of 2015, notice how the other men are rushing him to try and slip up and admit that he is dating? Or admit that he would write a letter to a sweetheart? That goes into my theory about Yerin below, with the timelines matching up in 2015. RM is notoriously TOO honest and his Problematic Men hyungs knew it, with Namjoon probably gushing about his girlfriend at after-taping 회식, and were wanting him to slip up and spill on air. RM finally admitted that he would write a song for his crush on White Day (cough cough Converse High cough cough).

YERIN

While BTS has never had a confirmed partner since debut, Baek Yerin is the only rumored girlfriend RM has had tabloids write about. Yerin is the only one of the three women I’m the most confident about in this analysis that he has had a relationship with. I am fairly certain that RM has a crush on Hwasa, and that Chaeyoung has a crush on RM.

Yerin’s entire 2019 album “Every letter I sent you.” seems to be a reflection of the passionate love (and toxic) affair her and Namjoon had when they were around ages 18/19-20/21. It could be possible they dated even as early as when Namjoon was 16 if his earlier unreleased love songs are about her, as well. That’s highly unlikely, as Yerin is the same age as Jungkook, 3 years younger than Namjoon. 

Her songs often mention tons of sex, drunken nights, smoking, and fights. This sounds highly out of character for Namjoon (minus the sex and a little bit of drinking). There are rumors that some BTS members smoked, though it’s not confirmed who they are and if they still do. (Edit: Taehyung was officially confirmed to have smoked after pictures of him smoking at the 2022 Grammys were leaked. There were also numerous other occasions where he was holding a vape in his hand, but nothing as big as this “Grammys smoking scandal” went as viral. Jungkook is also confirmed to smoke after his vape was revealed in a Weverse live. Suga alludes to him being a constant smoker in his song “Haegeum”, and he does hold that cigarette like a seasoned pro… but the cig reference was mainly a call out to overprotective fans who think they they can tell other people what they can do with their bodies.)

They most likely had a karmic relationship- an intense but PAINFUL relationship that will rip you out and spit you out. Every hidden side of you is revealed through sex and intimacy, but it is so intense, that you cannot be with the person forever but you feed off of each other’s brokenness. I’m sure if you asked them about what they learned from that relationship, they would say they learned SO MUCH about life, love, and self.

It (allegedly) definitely seems like Namjoon broke up with her around 2015-2016 after the success of I NEED U, when BTS became busier and he had less time to spend with her. From the timeline of BTS songs, I would place their relationship anywhere from 2012-2015. While he was heartbroken for YEARS after this (see the above listed songs, the longest list off all 3 lyrics lists), he has now come to terms with it. It seems like Yerin has come to terms with it as well, as this blog post breaks down each song meaning beautifully. It seems like Yerin has found a box of diaries or love letters from this relationship and has written songs in chronological order of the entire timeline, from beginning to end, with the last song talking about her getting closure with viewing the memories and how the two were not meant to be.

Yerin states that “This album reflects memories, dilemmas, and thought processes I had from when I was nineteen to twenty three.” She is currently 24 years old Korean age (23 years old standard age at the time that I wrote this in 2020, she would be 26 years old in 2023 now). This would put the beginning of the album at 19 years old in 2014 to 23 years in 2018. The timeline does match.

Maybe its not our fault (2019)- how partners in relationship slowly started to drift apart

0310- sex cant save a relationship

It’s like I dont know myself (2017)- the more he probes the more she loses herself and him

Meant to Be (2019)- about namjoon 100000% id bet my life on it. Him saying they’re meant to be, he’s kind. 

Across the Universe (2015)- hes slipping away but shes clinging to him

Mr. Gloomy (2019)- talking about how hes so melancholy and loves rainy days (Namjoon forever rain)

Bye Bye My Blue (2016)- becoming resentful of Namjoon’s growing fame while her career is stagnant

“Cuz I’m afraid to say things I want to say. I push you away and make things uncomfortable”

CAN I BE U (2019)- most likely a response to I NEED U

His Ocean (2016)- NJ trying to get a deep connection but Yerin resisting. Namjoon also has a fascination with oceans and always mentions it in lyrics.

“I'm not good at emptying my heart. It's not as easy as it sounds. But why do you keep asking me to do something I can't? There's a lot that has built up in my heart. I can't get rid of it and I'm always frustrated”

Amy (2019)- apologizing for the hardships she put him through in the relationship and admitting she buys all their albums and that their Love Yourself campaign has helped her (allegedly)

Popo (2019) - saying how intoxicated she is with the man (his eyes, his scent, his voice). If the song is about NJ, I mean, same girl. The man in the song wrote her a song and played it for her.

“You'll never know How much your voice attracts me, boy. It's exceptional Especially When you're playing the song for me. I can't take my eyes away”

Datoom (2019)- Reflecting on how much they argued before they broke up

Not a girl (2019) - seoulbeats (linked above) sums up this song perfectly: “Yerin wanting to speak up for herself against a lover who doesn’t seem to truly be for her. There lies a misunderstanding between who he attempts to see her as, versus who she believes she truly is.”

“Can’t be what you want. I can’t be what you were. I can’t say I have done so many things but now. Can’t be good enough”

Newsong2 (2019)- "Want to be just like you once. Make it up if I do wrong. Ignore and leave the silence". Make up and brush it under the rug.

Point (2019)- insecure partner in love keeps questioning her love

London (2019)-partner is trying to idealize her and is not seeing her for who she is

HWASA

It does seem that Namjoon has a thing for Cancers, if my and others’ speculations about his dating life are true. Both Yerin and Hwasa are Cancer suns. While Namjoon’s Cancer Mars is in his 8th house and plays a predominant role in his life and relationships, it is clear to see why he is drawn to Cancer sun individuals. But remember, the 8th house is death and rebirth. Karmic relationships.

Hwasa and Namjoon do have a lot of similarities, from not only looking similar (face, tan, thicc), but to being criticized by fans and media alike (tan, ignorance. RM has apologized and grown from his mistakes. Still waiting on Hwasa’s genuine apology since she continues to appropriate… and do blackface). Both are also highly sexual beings.

While the man in her songs has characteristics that sound a lot like him, so do many other anonymous citizens of Seoul like Hwasa stated. She makes her ex sound like he was available whenever to come and see her, and RM being part of the biggest boy group on the planet doesn’t have much free time, even though his personality is very empathetic and giving. The only reason I included her is because a lot of other people seem to think there was something going on between the two, whether it was a FWB situation or brief one-month romance. I will admit I do not keep up with Mamamoo or Hwasa at all so these are the only songs I know by her. I have heard rumors that she has been in a steady relationship with a man like 10 years older than her and is in a prominent position, like a ceo or something? All alleged, of course. You can never really trust that stuff.

Twit (2019)- how Hwasa wants her lover to not be so passive, loving, and predictable, but take charge and surprise her. This song seems the most likely of Hwasa’s songs to be about NJ because Yerin and BTS’s songs about exes have mentioned the man giving so much of himself into the relationship that he loses himself. Hwasa fans speculate that Twit may be about Loco, as he was VERY chivalrous and swooned over her every time they worked together.

“You give me a lot, but why are you the only one feeling unhappy? Because you breathe only for me. You look so lonely”

Why (2020)- missing her ex, most likely the lover from Twit

“You're my hero. We have many similarities, like a mirror”

Kidding (2020)- sarcastic remarks to a cheating ex and his new lover. Not quite sure if this is about Namjoon because his natal chart doesn’t really have any aspects linking to cheating, but natal charts aren’t the end-all-be-all. Everyone still has free will, and he very well may have cheated.

“Of course you must have been busy. You two falling in love. It’s an old thing that’s thrown out after one use. You’re going to regret it soon. Isn’t it so ironic?”

CHAEYOUNG

Another slightly uncomfortable pattern in all of these alleged “exes” is that RM likes to date younger women, as every single “ex-girlfriend” listed here is younger than him. Namjoon was born in 1994, Hwasa in 1995, Yerin in 1997…. and Chaeyoung in 1999. Namjoon… dude. Chaeyoung is a Taurus, which vibes well with his Virgo sun. Namjoon also has his descendant in Taurus, which is what he looks for in a marriage partner. I don’t have any of the girls’ birth times, but standard 1200 time all results in negative match scores, showing that the majority of Namjoon and each individual girl’s natal chart did not sync well for a compatible match.

Whenever there are multiple fan videos of idol ships, take notice. Weed out the delusional ones but pay attention to ones that seem plausible after researching the K-Pop industry and how idols get away with dating. Idols have confirmed that looking at each other is a form of flirting when at award shows. And there are plenty of clips of RM and Chaeyoung doing just that. Chaeyoung has written her own rap lyrics but mostly it is about a crush and then immediately to heartbreak, so clearly the relationship didn’t last long. The song timelines from crush (2016) to regret (2018) show a brief interlude of happiness and touching (2017). My guess is that after pursuing RM for quite some time, he gave in and hooked up with her, but she wanted more and got her heart broken.

Precious Love (2016)- apologizing and asking scorned ex to come back

“I’m so sorry. Please come back. Do you still feel the same? Have you still not forgiven me? Have the scars I’ve given you Not healed yet? Or have you replaced me With someone else? Is there no place for me In your heart anymore?”

Daring Woman (2016)- she’s young but stop pushing her away

Eye Eye Eyes (2017)- describing a crush she has on someone. Mentions white tee shirt and jeans that he likes, possible reference to converse high

“Ocean-like eyes, I’ll swim in them. Yeah yeah yeah. Everyone knows his pretty eye-smile. I want it to myself. Yeah yeah yeah. Your heart is ice I’ll melt you” and “Do men like White shirt with jeans and most importantly long hair”

Missing U (2017) -ex promised her the world then broke her heart. A recurring theme throughout all 3 girl’s lyrics, hmmmm maybe the ex in Namjoon’s songs isn’t the problem, then?

“You promised me And I foolishly believed. But when you left, you had no guilt. But still I miss you. Miss you baby”

Sweet Talker (2018)- I have a very tiny suspicion this might be about more than one BTS member since Jeonghyeon was involved in the writing process. RM is known for choosing his words carefully, being a smooth talker when it comes to flirting and being a poetic genius.

“You seduced me with your sweet words. You made my heart beat with your clear eyes” and “Your words were as clear as the sky. Your words had no feelings”

The only confirmed relationship I know that Chae was in was with that scumbag tattoo artist that drew those lewd drawings of Chae giving him head and posted it for the world to see and she got so much hate because of it. Thank goodness they’re not together anymore.

This is where I had last stopped in my draft. It says the last edit was December 6, 2020 lmao. So some things I had previously said I may disagree with now but I'm leaving up as I like to see how my thoughts have changed over the years. For example, I now do not think that Chaeyoung or RM ever dated, and that she just had an extreme crush on him. I mean, girl same. Yerin I still believe 100% dated him as she broke formal speech on TELEVISION and called him a pet name. The only reason that wasn't a bigger deal is that both were unknown artists back in 2015. Hwasa, I am on the fence about. I see more reaction videos of Taehyung being the ass man that he is lusting over her than RM. I wouldn't let my buddy thirst over my girl but RM is pretty chill about it. Granted they are in public and being filmed, but even if he did talk to Tae about it, V still did it over and over. Weird, no? So that is why i lean more towards that Hwasa and RM probably didnt officially date, but maybe were just fuck buddies?

Now onto RM’s love life that DID make news:

COUPLES RING

I really wish I had kept a better timeline of him wearing that ring, sigh. The only things I can really find online of him wearing that ring started the whole “namjoon married” ordeal were around September 2020 when that infamous video of him taking it off before going on air surfaced, making it look hella suspicious. I definitely remember him wearing that ring for maybe the entirety of Dynamite promotions? The Dynamite era went from August 25, 2020- December 3, 2021 according to BTS Wiki. This was like peak COVID time and I was an essential worker so I admittedly wasn’t keeping up with BTS that closely and instead was just trying to make it through the day. He was talking about having kids a lot during this time too, and that one live of him showing off the baby shoes did not help his case that he is already married with kids. Namjoon did seem to get in on the joke though by trolling us and posting that photo of him and a little girl with her face covered.

There were also terrible rumors going around during this time that he was gay. Namjoon clearly has a very close guy friend and likes to take pictures with said best friend to preserve memories. To respect his non-famous friend’s privacy, he puts emojis over their face on the photos. Some of the emojis were hearts. Thus the shipping and speculation began. RM eventually stopped posting photos with this friend at all and then deleted all of them.

FIANCEE

June 24, 2022… the day when all Namjoon stans had a heart attack. News broke that he was engaged. So those couple ring photos must be true, we all thought. But alas! HYBE released a statement saying “RM’s marriage rumors are not true. We are currently taking swift action against malicious rumors started on YouTube.” Namjoon himself even posted on his instagram story saying “I don’t know her.” All is well, right? Then Indigo was released… and Namjoon really meant it when he said “I don’t know her.”

It is my belief that Namjoon really was engaged to be married to the person whom he shared couple rings with and who was the lockscreen on his phone. But, based on the lyrics from his songs in the Indigo album, we know that the relationship did not end well. Based on the lyrics in “Closer” and “Change pt. 2”, it seems like she broke his heart by either 1) cheating or 2) putting up emotional barriers and saying she didn’t have feelings for him. I will dissect all songs from the Indigo album in full in a separate masterlist and will link to it here.

According to the Sojang video posted on June 23, 2022, RM’s chaebol “fiancee” was going around bragging about being engaged to the idol. Once word got out about this, they had a huge fight about how she was just using him for his fame and not for his personality. This is where I kind of believe Sojang may have sources that are true. The BTS members have had tons of fake dating rumors and have never felt the need to personally respond and always just let their company handle it. Around this time, Jungkook was being “attacked” by Sojang for fake dating rumors as well and he never responded. But Namjoon decided to go to his personal instagram and type “I don’t know her” which could be viewed in two ways: he really has never met the person Sojang is claiming he was engaged to… or he never really knew the TRUE person who he was engaged to, only the mask they wore. And we all know that Namjoon loves being petty, passive aggressive, and cryptic… even more so when it comes to his exes apparently if his songs are anything to go by. He is straight up hexing his ex at the end of “Change pt. 2”.... The breakup has definitely scarred him. While I think he has been working on healing and that the Indigo album has helped tremendously, I do think that Namjoon is now way more reluctant to love than he once was. He has even said so himself on The Dictionary of Useless Human Knowledge that he used to see himself getting married (hmmm… I bet you did), but now he is unsure if he ever will. His long letter to ARMY recently on Weverse gives me hope that he will find love again when he is ready, and he admits so himself in that letter that he won’t go searching for it but will let divine timing take place and let the chips fall where they may.

#namjoon #rm #namjoon analysis #namjoon fs #namjoon twin flame #bts twin flames #bts #bts tarot #bts fs #bts namjoon #kim namjoon #bts lyrics #bts theory #rm indigo #bts astrology #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts analysis #namjoon theory #please look at all the attached links #i spent 3 years putting this together

[magenta-embers]

My Army Journey

I first heard of K-pop back in 2010 when a friend of mine mentioned being a fan of a group called Shinee, a Korean boyband. We weren't that close, so it's not like she tried to show me anything of theirs. At this time, I was also trying to be less judgy about other people's musical tastes, so even though I found (western) boybands to be cringy, I was pretty indifferent to K-pop out of sheer will.

I didn't really hear about K-pop again until about 2016-2017 as someone in uni. Being chronically online, even then you were bound to come across it on Twitter. I'd see male idols everywhere and they all blended together in my brain, EXCEPT for this one guy named Jimin. I'd recognize him as that pretty one. Didn't even know what group he was from, didn't care.

At this time, my dad also got remarried and suddenly I had a younger step-sister who was into K-Pop. I became curious because this was getting a lot more popular than I remembered it being. My stepsister's favorite group was Seventeen, (cue my teasing: "If they're seventeen, why are there thirteen of them?" "Do they each sing like half a line?" "Which one's Jimin?"). When I brought up Jimin, she did finally confirm he's in BTS. She said BTS and EXO are the biggest, but BTS is overtaking. I asked if BTS are the best, and she no, but they're good. I asked her to show me the gayest music video of theirs (I don't even know why) and she showed me Blood, Sweat & Tears (The Queen herself). The video was cool, Jimin was fkn pretty, but I still didn't delve deeper.

It wasn't until mid-2018 that the rabbit hole shit happened (you know the one. You're all here for the same reason). It was completely on a whim. I saw this photo on Twitter:

I recognized Jimin immediately of course. But this photo got me curious because they all had an interesting look to them and I thought it wasn't fair that I'd ever thought "they all look the same" because they didn't and I felt like I owed it to them to at least do them the respect of learning their damn names (famous goddamn last words, anyone?). Jimin, Joon, Hobi, Yoongi, and Tae (eyebrows man, as I called him) were the easiest to learn in that order. I had a little more trouble telling Jungkook and Jin apart at times. I think I had it down by the time the weekend was over though.

One of the first things I watched was their puppy interview. Crack cocaine. Watched a couple more interviews and then moved onto the beginner guides to BTS, funny and serious. Then, the funny compilation videos set to Nintendo Wii theme music. I didn't even get into the music until way later. The very first BTS song I listened to on my own was Lie. What an introduction lmao. The second was Save Me, and that was the song that made me go, "Yeah okay, they're the real deal" (I also tried listening to EXO and some other groups, but... yeah no). After that, it was just further and further down the rabbit hole.

What was important to me was the quality of lyrical content and the ability to sing live. I couldn't have become a fan if they didn't have those two things down. Little did I know, even that is an underestimation of their abilities and their journey. They constantly blew my mind as I learned about all they do. They're capable of extraordinary things.

Being involved as a fan in a powerful fandom of such a massive group has had its ups and downs, but now I just want them all to come back. I miss them together so much. The fandom's in fragments and sanity is cracking without BTS as a unit.

Next post: Shipping and Jikookery

E.

#BTS #bts army

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Breaking down the comics: BEMIS. Part 3

READING THINGS SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO! 

Part one is here. 

Part two is here.

Part 2: Phases. (Issues 194-200) Published: August 29, 2018

Written by Max Bemis. 

Art by Jacen Burrows, Paul Davidson, and Ty Templeton

Editor: Jeff Youngquist

“Moon Knight couldn’t be in better hands”???? Excuse me comicbook.com? I don’t know who wrote that but… I’d like to have some words with them. 

Also, I’d like to note that at the end of a few issues, they have Kight Mail. This is something that was started way back in Moench’s run. Fans would write in and they got posted at the end of comics! It showed what they thought of current issues, what they wanted to see, and sometimes they even posted criticism of changes. It was a way to connect to fans and for the writers to feel appreciated or to ask what they wanted to see. 

Looking through the fan mail of Bemis’ work in vol one was interesting. All HIGH praises and excitement to see them make Moon Knight dark and gritty. I can’t help but wonder about the demographics of the people writing in at this time. Many of them said they had been long time fans of Bemis’ band “Say Anything”. Which makes me raise an eyebrow. 

Now, looking at the first issue of Vol 2. 

Still written by BEMIS. 

I want to rewind a bit and touch on something that’s going to be VERY important in this next upcoming issue. 

Remember how I mentioned that Bemis self identifies as "A Jew who is also a Christian"? Not a lot of people know what that means. It’s also been known as “Jews for Jesus” and Messianic Jewish religious movement.  

Messianic Jews are a branch off of Evangelical Protestants. 

"They adhere to conventional Christian Beliefs, including the concept of salvation through faith in Jesus (who they refer to as Yeshua by the Hebrew name) as the Jewish Messiah and savior from sin." 

I'm not going to get into religious politics or a lot of history here (I'd be here all day)... But if you have even the SMALLEST knowledge about Judaism, you'll feel a creeping sensation along your spine. 

The word moshiach (messiah) at its roots meant a leader to the people, not a savior deity. Not a god. It meant that a great king would arise or someone that could lead the people in peace. 

So when the Torah mentions the moshiach (messiah), it is referring to a human being that would come to the Jewish people and became a leader, politically usually, who would help Jews and all people thrive in peace.

The "Jews for Jesus" movement is a way to convert Jewish people to Christianity under the guise of still being Jewish. But the problem is that you are either Jewish or you aren't. If you convert to any other religion, you are no longer Jewish. It is a movement meant to recruit more power to the Evangelical Christianity side of things while also removing Jews away from Judaism. 

You see, Judaism is a people first and foremost. These people have been killed over and over and over again by so many different countries, religious sects, and political followings. A lot of the major movements (see Spanish Inquisition for more history on that) were not just genocidal, but culturally genocidal with forced conversions. Numerous times, the traditions and culture was almost completely wiped out. 

Because of this, there are a lot of VERY strict rules in place to try to save the culture and Jewish religion. One of those rules is that if you convert, you are no longer considered of the Jewish people. You are no longer considered able to speak on their behalf. This may seem confusing and harsh to some Christians or other people that are not Jewish. Perhaps I’m not the one to best explain that to you, but if someone repeatedly tried to kill you and wipe your memory and existence off the face of the planet, then a buddy decided to go join them, would you want that buddy to be able to say “Oh yeah, I know all about how it works. Let me speak for them.”? 

They tend to target new converts to Judaism, lonely jews, depressed jews, or at risk Jewish people. They invite them in saying that they want to be friends and to help them celebrate holidays and so on. Then they work on convincing them to convert. 

It's scarily like how a cult works. 

A "Jew for Jesus" is not a Jew. I don't care what their background growing up is, they no longer have the right to claim to understand the Jewish people or any of that. 

So having BEMIS come into Marvel and saying “I can write a Jewish system! I’m Jewish, after all! Representation!” is the biggest load of crap and honestly, it’s almost a hate crime. ….And after reading Vol 2, it WILL be a hate crime. You’ll see. 

Aside from the return of Bemis, there is a new artist named Ty Templeton. Templeton only draws for this next issue, which covers the creation of Moon Knight as a child. Then we head back to Burrows. 

And Cover artist Becky Cloonan. 

I feel bad because this was Becky Cloonan's first time as a cover artist. 

Despite the story, that is some AMAZING art. 

Issue #194

That’s nice. Looking at that kinda makes you excited right? A story about young Marc! Last time we got young Marc was a few flashbacks in Lemire and I adored those. I’d kill for more of that. 

Alright... Opening up, we have the title page that gives you the "previously" blerb. 

"Marc Spector recently fought through a gauntlet of enemies old and new as the Sun King joined with Bushman and the Truth to attempt to destroy Moon Knight and everything he held dear, including the daughter he never knew he had. Spector overcame the odds and defeated the Sun King, but now faces an even greater challenge: Fatherhood." 

Hmm. Sure. Okay. It's not terrible. Maybe....Maybe this issue will be okay. It’s a false sense of security. A little beam of hope. 

We see Marc and Frenchie at a table having drinks and chatting. 

I do deeply enjoy the idea of Frenchie coming back as a friend. Not as a loyal devoted pilot, but as a much needed actual friend to Marc. Marc has only ever just had Frenchie. 

They're chatting it up. Frenchie asked him if he could have had any job in the world, what would he have liked to have done if he wasn't a mercenary. 

Marc says he wanted to be creative. Aww. 

Frenchie tells him he'd have made a handsome actor. 

But Marc say sno, he wanted to be something creative. "There's a lot going on up here." He points to his head. "Stuff I could express without, you know...Beating people half to death. I'd be fat ad happy and soft." 

I mean, that's a pretty good Marc sentiment. And looking back at Lemire's childhood depiction of Marc, it fits. He wanted to do so many things... 

This is starting out as a pretty good issue. I like the art more (still a little flat, but it’s a coloristic style).  Not nearly as bad as-

Ah. 

Okay, so... I... I'm gonna take a very long breath here because we are about to go down a rabbit hole of SEVERE antisemitism. 

This is your only trigger warning. Same warnings as in Vol 1. I’m also going to cut a LOT of art out and just describe it to you. It is going to get disgusting. 

We are getting the story from Marc's narration as he talks to Frenchie about why he thinks being Jewish is the reason behind all his trauma. 

That's now what he said, but it is what is being heavily implied. 

Bemis just straight up said "Being Jewish is traumatizing and life would be better if I wasn't." 

And coming from a "Jew for Jesus", you know he full on believes this and follows it. 

And this is going to get VERY uncomfortable. 

MOON KNIGHT HISTORY LESSON REFRESHER: 

Moench didn't intentionally write Moon Knight as Jewish. 

He picked a name and found out it was of Jewish origins and he thought "Yeah. That sounds good." and rather than ignore it, he went with it full heartedly. 

He outright said "Marc is Jewish. The system is Jewish. Moon Knight is a Jewish Comic." 

He touched on a lot of heavy themes that in one way or another tended to cycle back around to Jewish issues at the time (1980s.) Moench tended to write about what he was seeing in the world around him and it is done with such care and grace that we can still feel those movements and issues when we re-read it today. His message is never lost. 

It wasn't until Zelenetz took over the run that we really got any of Marc's backstory, though. 

Zelentz, a man from a Jewish background who taught in a Jewish school, made Marc's father a Jewish Orthodox Rabbi from Czech who fled the Holocaust and Nazi invasion. 

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCE was it ever implied that this or any of that upbringing had anything to do with his DID. 

In later issues, deep into the 90s and far away from Moech and Zelentz, mostly when talking about his brother, he mentions that his father was very strict and had a lot of rules. 

Some writers even hint at some abuse from his father, especially towards Randall Spector. But this conflicts with Zelentz, who stressed that Marc's biggest issue with his father was that he was too passive. 

In Lemire, we see another reimagining of Marc's father and see him as a bit more modern day and very concerned about his son's mental health and what others might think of him. 

We still don't see the trauma that happened and it doesn't even pretend to hint at it. 

I'll cover Marc's trauma in a completely different post much later, but not knowing Marc's trauma and past is a good thing. 

But people are curious and they wanted to know. They wanted to know what caused the DID and where Moon Knight came from. 

So Bemis thought "I used to be Jewish. Who better to answer this question than me?" 

(Anyone. The answer is anyone is better than you, Bemis.) 

So we see a bunch of stereotypically Jewish men sitting around a table. They are enjoying some wine after a meal and there are a LOT of books behind them. I'm going to assume they are in a Synagogue and this is a temple gathering. 

The artist here CLEARLY tried to copy and feed off of Smallwood. Perhaps in an effort to establish to the reader that we are looking at the same people and this is how the characters now look in cannon. 

I can appreciate that. 

So we recognize little Marc Spector and Elias Spector. 

We know Elias is a Rabbi and Rabbi like to gather with other Rabbi to discuss things and share knowledge. 

So I'm going to take a wild stab here that this is a group of Rabbi or other learned men in close proximity to the Rabbi. 

"Let me explain. I'd have to start with Rabbi Yitz Perlman, the funniest guy I've ever met in my life. 

You know when you're a kid and a grown-up is making grown-up jokes you don't really understand, but they're still so funny you almost Pee?" 

We see Rabbi Yitz making a joke that cracks everyone up. 

I had to look this one up because the joke flew over my head. Apparently it's an old joke and Bemis did NOT tell it right. 

Here is how the joke is really supposed to go: 

A Jewish father was troubled by the way his son turned out, and went to see his Rabbi about it. "I brought him up in the faith, gave him a very expensive bar mitzvah, cost me a fortune to educate him. Then he tells me last week he has decided to be a Christian! Rabbi, where did I go wrong?" "Funny you should come to me," said the Rabbi. "Like you, I brought *my* boy up in the faith, put him through University, cost me a fortune, then one day he, too, tells me he has decided to become a Christian." "What did you do?" asked the father. "I turned to God for the answer," replied the Rabbi. "And what did he say?" pressed the father. "God said, 'Funny you should come to me...' "

It’s actually pretty funny when told right. It also says that you should take responsibility to actually raise your kid. But it’s also a Jesus joke in a way. I’ll let you decide if it’s funny or not. 

Marc continues: 

"There was something exotic about the language he used, the rich, almost mealy-mouthed yiddish inflections he peppered into his monologues, but most importantly... Yitz had the best Jewish jokes of anyone I've met to this day." 

Marc… You were RAISED by a rabbi. There should be nothing ‘exotic’. YOU SPEAK YIDDISH. 

"Now, let me back up for a second and establish something you've probably caught on to, Frenchie. There's nothing Jews find funnier than making fun of ourselves. As a guy who gave up on organized religion, I sometimes think of it as a weird byproduct of our pride in being "God's Chosen People" (Or at least according to the old testament). Like we can afford to take the piss out of ourselves because, in the end, we're going to be the one's ruling the roost." 

I…I have to take a minute to break down why this WHOLE PARAGRAPH is wrong. GAH. 

True, Jewish people love to poke fun at themselves. It’s a survival tactic. I once had it explained to me that it was laugh or cry and the Jewish people chose to laugh. 

I don’t see Marc as having ‘given up on organized religion’. This is a very common misconception when it comes to Moon Knight. If anything, Marc Spector epitomizes the essence of being Jewish. He very much still is aware of the culture, costumes, and often still shows that he understands. Time and time again in Moench and Zelentz he spoke Yiddish, he saved Jewish people, he stopped antisemitism, he rescued a Rabbi and Torah, he punched out Nazi scum. In MacKay, we see that Marc still knows Hebrew. He still knows the prayers. Jake speaks Yiddish! What’s happened is that Marc observes in his own way and while this doesn’t come across as being overtly religious, that’s the beauty of Judaism. You don’t have to go to a temple or synagogue. You can be at home and follow your own path. 

The term Organized Religion in itself is not a Jewish term! It’s Christian! There is no overall ruling power or singular organizer that keeps the rules or how things are done! 

Here’s the biggest issue! There is NO pride in being “chosen people”. That’s NOT WHAT THAT MEANS BEMIS AND YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER. 

So, in Judaism, "chosen people" means that Jews are "chosen" to have extra responsibilities than other peoples. In terms of the covenants with G-d (basically, it's referring to circumcision, keeping kosher, etc). It means that the people have been chosen to make the world better. They can’t rely on anyone else. It is their responsibility to do their part! BUT Evangelical Christians interpret "chosen people" to mean "Special." Because Evangelicals believe that Jews are necessary for resurrecting Jesus. Which is where the “we’re going to be the one’s ruling the roost” phrase comes from. THAT IS NOT A JEWISH BELIEF. 

He says “Old testament.” There is NO Old testament in Judaism. Because there is no NEW TESTAMENT. That’s a Christian belief and teaching! It’s the Torah! And they aren't even organized the same way! 

They can afford to take the piss out of themselves because they have to! They humble themselves. They joke and make light of their situation. They say what they feel and think then laugh it off because they have to! 

And...While Marc is explaining this, we see young Marc watching a Seinfeld episode. 

Specifically it's the one where Dr. Whatley is suspected of wanting to convert to Judaism because he wants to make Jewish jokes. 

It's implying that converts aren't converting for good cause, but with a hidden agenda. 

We also see Moon Knight in certain Jewish and biblical settings as he explains things. 

"After all I've been through at the hands of one faith or another, I confess sometimes that makes me angry. But then I realize I'm caught up in the cycle itself just by having these thoughts. Inflation of ego, anger, shame...Just a cycle. One that runs on hatred. 

But at that point i didn't know anything about that. Jewish humor was just pithy and jolly, and I was proud to be in on the joke. " 

AGAIN. These are NOT Jewish ideals. Not Jewish teachings or beliefs! 

We see Marc expressing anger about being traumatized by religion and falling into a sort of cycle of inflated ego because he believed he was chosen! 

He talks about how it caused hatred and ego! BULL SHIT. It's humbling! When you take it into context, these teachings are MEANT TO BE HUMBLING! 

"Yitz was the Rabbi who taught my dad how to be one himself, so he was very much an uncle to me. I loved sitting in the corner of his office and listening to Yitz, Dad, and their friends rant about endless Jewish minutiae and debate its moral significance." 

No nonononononononono.

Absolutely not. 

"Being, unsurprisingly, a bit of a loner, I'd often go on adventures by myself through the bowels of our Synagogue, staving off dust allergies so I could pretend to be Indiana Jones. As if I'd, like, unearth some lost tablet that held the answers to all of life's questions and get rich. What I found, mostly, were obese mice.

I was a prepubescent kid who was more comfortable with a couple of Old Jewish Guys than I was with a single soul in my homeroom class." 

In these depictions, Marc is already an older kid. Judging from how he’s drawn here and in Lemire/Smallwood’s run, they look to be about the same age. 

We know that DID has to happen at a very young age from REPEATED horrible trauma. In Lemire’s run, we see Marc already HAS DID at this point, though it isn’t very obvious to him or his parents yet. They are already concerned about his behavior and he is already showing signs of being more than one person, even before we see him be introduced to Steven Grant. We also do know that Marc was a lonely child growing up. He played alone, didn’t have friends, and showed signs of behaving differently from the other children. 

How old do you think Marc is here? Cause he looks at least 8-10. And with the way he speaks and behaves, he has to be somewhere in that range, maybe closer to 10. 

Marc asks what the Shoah is and his father tells him that he’s too young to know. THen likens it to “The Sex Talk”. 

Not only that, but he doesn’t want to tell Marc about it. 

Elias says that his father was in a war, and that’s where he met Yitz. 

“The Shoah was part of a war. A big war. The biggest war. They called it a ‘world war’ Lots of people died. My dad died there. And my Mom had to move to America to get away from all the fighting, and that’s why we live here and not in Czechoslovakia…Not that I’m complaining.” 

NO. NO NO NO. That is NOT how you explain that. You do not casual World War 2. You do not casually explain the HOLOCAUST. ESPECIALLY not as a Rabbi talking to your own sun AT THAT AGE. He should already know about WW2. He should already know about the Shoah. He didn’t even explain it right. 

I’m sitting here sobbing. As a history buff that ESPECIALLY focuses in on this time period, I’m dying inside. I’m seething. 

He is downplaying the Holocaust. I can’t believe this. LOOK. OKAY. I get that this is a comic. It’s a comic that is rated T. I can understand (BITTERLY) if Marvel does not want to cover something as deep as- ….NO. ACTUALLY. NO I CAN’T. 

GO READ MAGNETO. GO READ CAPTAIN AMERICA. Magneto did a beautiful job of covering the Holocaust YEARS AGO. There is no right or reason to have to down play it like this. Bemis is just being a bigoted idiot that is trying to show his father as uncaring, Marc as being ‘special’ and unwell, and Jews in general as being cold! 

X-Men: Testament. Magneto

By Greg Pak and illustrated by Carmine Ci Giandomenico. 

Published in 2009. 

THIS is how you cover the Holocaust while still trying to be a comic set in the Marvel Universe. It is heartbreakingly beautiful and as honest as a comic can get coming from Marvel. GO READ IT IF YOU CAN. 

THIS… THIS IS NOT HOW YOU COVER THE HOLOCAUST.

No. Elias doesn’t get to look at him like that. It was a SHIT way to explain it. It was a shit thing that he just did there. He put Marc in that position and failed to teach him about his ancestors, his culture, his history, and the world in general. 

It’s not like there is a literal holiday set aside “DAY OF REMEMBRANCE” or that there is a literal prayer SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN for all those who died in the Shoah. And it isn’t like every Passover includes a paragraph ABOUT THE SHOAH. There is NO REASON Marc should not have an idea what the Shoah is. I’m so mad. I’m so mad right now. 

Oh! And then we immediately follow that up with a Greedy Jew Joke. 

Great. Fantastic. Why is Marc studying in the Rabbi office? 

He goofs off a bit more and they have fun. Marc asks Yitz if he can come by and study there again tomorrow while his dad finishes his work at home. 

Yitz tells him to come after seven. 

"I don't want to convey that I liked Yitz more than my dad. My dad was great. It's just that...Sometimes he wasn't all there. He would zone out sometimes and just...Disappear. Which is...Whatever. But when he got too deep into it, you'd see a flash of something. Something he knew. Something he felt... You'd get the suspicion something was upsetting him. Something he didn't want to discuss. He... Had a lot going on up there."

NOPE. You do not get to play this off like Elias was also mentally ill. 

While there IS a very small amount of research that may show that DID can be contributed to by a chemical imbalance in the brain that is hereditary and predisposes them a bit more towards becoming DID if traumatized... There is no proof and studies have not been conclusive or done enough! 

Or, perhaps, Bemis is implying that Elias knew about what was coming. WHICH IS EVEN WORSE. 

In Lemire’s run, Elias was caring. He wanted to help his son, though he went about it the wrong way. It was what was expected for that time and age. 

"I knew Yitz said to come by after Seven, and I was kind of embarrassed to show him how eager I was to hang out...Gotta play the cool kid... But I figured he'd be excited to see me, so it wouldn't matter." 

He finds Yitz's office locked so he decides to head down to the basement again to wait. 

He finds a trap door in the basement and of course he opens it up and falls inside. 

There, he finds Yitz in the dark.

"Oh, Marc. I said to meet me after seven, didn't I?"

If we follow the logic (logic. HA) that Marc doesn’t know what WWII is, what the Shoah is, or what happened, we can also follow that to mean that Marc doesn’t know what a Nazi is. He doesn’t know about antisemitism and he doesn’t know how to avoid danger or dangerous people.

That is a large room. To be hidden under a basement in a synagogue. And no one else knows it’s there? Bullshit. 

Also? Marc said that Yitz was a Rabbi that knew his grandfather and who also trained Marc’s father in how to be a Rabbi. This means he’s been a Rabbi for a LONG time. And not everyone just gets to be a Rabbi. It’s a PROCESS. A long process! 

I’m not posting the next pages. They are disturbing. 

"You must have so many questions. Most importantly, 'what is uncle Ernst doing with that dead boy hanging from the ceiling?' First... He's not dead. Though I was hoping to get that done before our meeting. Truthfully, you're a good sort and you've never been in any danger from knowing me. Until now, that is. Because you have learned. I'm not Uncle Yitz, but Uncle Ernst. Would you like to know how I knew your Grandfather, really?" 

He's torturing the hanging man during this speech. 

He babbles on for a while. Here's a summary: 

When the Nazi invaded, Marc's Grandfather tried to offer up information to the Nazi in an attempt to get his family out and to America. Apparently Ernst was the Nazi that Marc's grandfather pleaded with. Ernst saw that things were not going well in the war and that Hitler's end was coming. So he helped get the family out. In return, he asked to escape with the family. 

He disguised himself as "his long-lost Rabbi friend". 

Along the way, Ernst killed Marc's Grandfather so no one would learn the truth. 

Then he starts talking about how he was part of the Cabal (the people that made the Red Skull). They gave him enhancements too. 

"My Enhancement is more simple, more elegant. I discovered a method to elongate my life, so long as I sufficiently stimulate the dark, primordial pleasure center of my brain on a regular basis. And you see... What I enjoy most is killing Jews." 

Yeah so... We have a Nazi jew killer from Hitler run Germany who pretended to be a Rabbi????! 

This is propaganda. There are literally conspiracy theorists out there that believe that the Jewish people are hiding the Nazi. That they made it all up to hide the Nazi. 

Again, it takes SO MUCH to be a Rabbi. He had to study. He had to know All five books of Moses AND the Talmud and the history and teachings and language! There is NO WAY someone just stumbles their way through that. 

So this guy goes up to Little Marc and tells him about "what we accomplished together as a nation, less than a century ago. I will tell you of your 'Shoah'." 

Hmmmmnn…

And he tells Marc what his FATHER should have told him years before. 

About the Holocaust. It's a cliff note version of it. 

All of this is told over images of Marc enjoying his life with Marlene and Diatrice. 

It's told very matter of fact. 

About the trains, ghettos, camps, gas chambers, or of course Dr. Mengele (who, while famouse was not the worst of them). 

"It's the same world now that let it happen back then, Marc. It isn't crazy enough that it's impossible. People like me... We'll always be out there waiting to come back for you." 

SEE. THIS IS WHY HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THIS BEFORE. He could have gotten the proper introduction. The history. THe proper order of things. The places, the Nazi propoganda war machine, and the Final Solution. It is important to know history so it doesn't happen again. NEVER AGAIN is what they are taught. 

But it also teaches them that there are Nazi and people like that out there in the world. It teaches them how to avoid these things. These people. Teaches them about the dangers of people out there that want them dead. 

This should not have traumatized him. This was fact. This was what he should have already learned about and dealth with. 

So, Little Marc gets pissed off and attacks the man, biting him, punching him, and scratching him. 

Marc gets away, but Ernst yells that if he tells anyone he'll come back for him. 

This is not what caused Marc's DID. 

This is a poor rendition of "Jew Trauma" story telling. 

This is a clear play down on the Shoah, a push to show a Nazi hiding as a Jew, and a cold responce to mental health and death. 

I hate this. Good thing it gets worse. So...much...worse... 

Anyways, Marc finishes his tory and Frenchie looks horrified. 

He thanks Marc for telling him. He tells Marc that he needs to eventually find a way to "explain your condition, your world, the complexity of it all" to Diatrice eventually. 

You see, Diatrice has been raised by Marlene. Marlene is NOT Jewish. 

Even with "Uncle Jake" stopping by to help raise her, as implied in the last volume... It is very VERY doubtful that she is doing raised Jewish. 

And we already know that Marc/Jake/Steven’s condition has been hidden from her.

I wish it ended there, though I dislike the use of telling her he's a kook. 

But of course it doesn't end there. 

"It's probably something that's been in my family for a long time. And I can't help it." 

Again, no proof that this is a hereditary thing. 

"And when I was little, I got scared very badly and, since my brain was wacky, it wound a wacky way to deal with being scared. I made friends like Uncle Jake and Uncle Steven to keep me company when I feel really lonely or upset." 

It…Isn’t a TERRIBLE way to explain things to her, depend on her age…. It’s not exactly accurate to how it works, but it’s a start for a young kid. 

But then we get Bemis doing a TERRIBLE call back. Because Marc didn’t do a bad job of explaining this! This was not world ending universe changing news! This was something she’d already run into and now had proper terminology for! She knew her dad was different! She knew about Uncle Jake and Steven! This isn’t the SHOAH.

I really…REALLY wish this was like an annual or something. That it was mentioned then never brought up again. I really REALLY wish they had dropped this story and gone and done something else… ESPECIALLY considering Issue 200 is coming up and it’s a big deal…. 

It isn’t. It. Keeps. Going. 

In the afterward we got whoever being like "Wow! What an intense issue! What a gut punch at the end!" 

I think it's the editor. Which is just... They thought this issue was deep and moving. 

That should tell you a lot about where this volume is going. 

This bread? It’s rotten. Send it back. 

Issue #195

This one is drawn by Paul Davidson. 

This...This issue? I hated it. I hated it so much. Not even the kind of loathing hate you saw in the last issue. This is just... I felt physically ill reading this one. 

Oh. Right. Paul Davidson. 

I...I hate this art. I hate it so much. 

What I don't get is that his art doesn't always look like this. 

Sometimes it's kinda nice and has a good flow with the story. 

But it's like they gave him Moon Knight and he went, "Insane guy right? Caricatures it is!" 

Okay so... I DO remember reading this issue. It immediately struck me as a hateful commentary on 'radical' thinkers, 'new age' people, and 'people trying to be socialites'. 

This is why it's drawn like cruel Caricatures. They want you to hate these people and look down on them and think they snooty and bad. 

It’s cropped like that because it just keeps going. 

I’m going to save you the trouble of reading that drivel and give you a summary: 

You see a leader telling them that The Collective is starting today. 

He wants to assess each "former individual". 

We have the artist. She name drops a famous artist then tells them she "collects real human skulls of deceased circus clowns". Uh huh. 

Then we have the "Aggressive romantic nihilist". He has a collection of jeans that he doesn't wash after sexual conquest. Hmm. 

There's the skeptic. She thinks everything needs doubt and states that she hates everyone so far. Cute. 

There's the fanboy? He likes the whole group and apparently stalked them online before they even met and made paper-mache busts of them all? Right. 

Then you have the leader who is conducting the experiment. 

His idea is that he wants to "Fuse our very personalities in defiance of our skin shackles and actualize pure socialism." 

WOW. So this is not just a cheap shot at mental health, DID in general, but it's ALSO a political shot at socialism. 

Fantastic. 

I'm so stoked for this disgusting journey we are about to go on. 

I’m going to put a pin in this for a second for some personal commentary. 

I’m Ace. I’m deeply uncomfortable when it comes to sexual depictions and situations. Especially in comics. There are comics out there that are sexual in nature and that’s fine! I don’t care. I know not to read those ones. I have nothing against the act, in people enjoying different things, different fetishes, and so on. In fact, I stand very firmly in the beliefs that as long as no one is getting hurt and everyone is consenting, you can enjoy whatever you want. That’s your right. 

So when I opened up this issue and was faced repeatedly with deeply uncomfortable situations, implications, and art meant to make fun of these people… Not to mention that it felt like they were trying to make the very act of fetishes ‘funny’ or ‘wrong’... This isn’t good comic book content. It really isn’t. 

I’m not going to show you all these pages because they really are disgusting and make my stomach sick. But I’m going to try to pick out a few that are not…the worst…

So now they're at a "secret A.I.M. Base." 

They have some technology that the main guy is paying them for access. 

Apparently his cousin works at the AIM facility as a member. 

"I spent most of my life being spoiled by my parents, drowned in trophies, diplomas, accolades, and doctorates. Yet, as long as I can remember, I've woken up feeling empty and mundane. I'm as much as one man can be on his own. Together, we could be...something more." 

Yeah... this is going to be a dunk on DID. I can feel it coming. 

"This machine creates psychic bonds". The idea is that it's going to fuse them. 

They all gather around the machine and it melts them into one horrible flesh thing. 

They spot the AIM worker hiding in the corner and tell him he looks Lonely and "you should join us". And they absorb him too. 

And just like that, we are back to NORMAL art. Proving that it was drawn like that originally on purpose to make us instantly feel disgusted and uncomfortable and hate it. 

This art right here? I like this. I love the sharp lines. The shading. The dull colors. I like the shape of the faces. I like the noses (I'm a nose person. I love the shapes of faces and the different noses!) 

....I'm not sure why they are all fishing and why Steven looks like he's in time out... 

Got a good look? Good because the art style is about to change again and we don’t see this style again. I…I don’t get it. Why go back. Why give us ugly and disgusting? Moon Knight should be beautiful. It should make you stop and look at a page for hours just wondering about how he got the oil slick on the street to look like that (still pining for Bill. Always loving Bill.) 

So we see the boys sitting on a rock above a boiling water in the mind scape and Marc is complaining that he's done with the meta human "freak market". He wants to take it back to street level with thugs and dirtbags. 

Jake tells him "good job on the not-killing-him thing." 

He's being sarcastic because he's pretty sure that Sun King is going to show up later to cause problems like they always do. 

"It's all good. Bushman and I are really getting to know one another. We exchanged numbers. I think we might start a bowling league." 

"Jake, you're by far the worst me." 

Hm. Once again the conflict on Marc vs. Jake is just...Not fitting in with their character at all. 

And Khonshu catches something on his fishing line. 

It's marlene's head and she looks pissed. She yells at him and it snaps him out of his inner world state. 

We see them at the movies with Diatrice and his phone is buzzing. 

Apparently there's a "Super-Crime alert" app. 

He checks it despite being in the theater, completely pissing off Marlene btw, and is more than a little disgruntled to find that it's not a normal problem. 

He gets up and heads out "I said no more weirdos. I SAID no more weirdos..." And it is Moon Knighttime. 

He arrives to find utter chaos. 

He locates two cops and asks where the thing is. 

I'm not pleased with this at all. 

"All right, where is the guy?" 

"It's against the law for me to tell you that." 

"Jerry, don't mess with that guy. It's that crazy one. He cuts people's faces off." 

OKAY. SO. Let me get into this a bit. 

ONE TIME one of the writers had Moon Knight come up against Bushman. He cut his face off and kept it like a souvenir. Literally no one was around to witness this. Yet it's always been a running gag about how insane he is and that he cuts off faces. 

Which... I hate that writer for doing it. It was funny at the time... But that was a long time ago and looking back at it, that run was just... It had problems.

I'm not mad at this art style some of the time. It's an interesting costume and I always enjoy seeing interpretations to his costume. 

Then we see the thing. 

It's pretty grosse. A giant writhing mass of blobby flesh with lots of faces and hands and eyes and teeth. why is it always teeth? 

And it has noticed Moon Knight and wishes to absorb him too. 

"I don't necessarily like that you know who I am." He is not thrilled about fighting this. 

"We are now composed of...At least 32 New Yorkers. Several of which are familiar with your history." 

"Would you, say, be willing to not be that?" 

It smashes up any darts tossed at it. 

It immediately turns to a security guard and sucks him in, absorbing him into the Collective. 

Ready for this?

Yeah. I'm so uncomfortable right now. 

Moon Knight pulls out two swords and slices and dices but it doesn't really do much. 

It manages to tackle Moon Knight and rips off his mask and starts to absorb him. 

I'm not showing you that picture. 

things go black and then we find Marc, Jake, Steven, and Khonshu in a dank cave like place. They head towards a lighted room and find this thing that haunts my nightmares. 

I'm going to show you this because it's really ALL I need to show you to hopefully make you understand WHY I hate this issue So. Very. Much. 

Art makes or breaks a comic people. But so does the writer who tells the artist what to draw. 

ALSO WHY IS THE ART STYLE SO INCONSISTENT?! 

Nnnhhh…. This is not a Dr. Strange comic. There should not be psychedelic imagery. And even this is a bit much for Dr. Strange, because at least that knows how to make sense of the chaos. 

There is a fine art to depicting chaos without overwhelming the audience. This isn’t it. 

Also, it’s VERY clear that this is supposed to be taking a jab at the hippy collective socialist mentality. 

And you 100% know that Bemis thought this up and went “They’re already a collective of DID! This is going to be super awesome to show them joining all these other minds and making sense of it and then getting rejected!” 

F@*&%&$ you Bemis. 

So that ends that issue. 

Great. Next bread please. Get me out of this house of moldy bread. 

Issue #196! 

Still Davidson. (SIGH) 

I hate this cover. I have this thing about depicting the brain so it looks like wormy spaghetti. It doesn't sit well with me. I hate it. You know what else I hate?

Yeah. Yeah… I’ll leave it alone for now. But I can’t stress how MUCH I hate this. 

So... Butterfly man gives them a tour of the collective consciousness. 

"And this is just the beginning. The human mind has an infinite capacity for diversification. Each new brain we add is another universe within us. So imagine that we keep adding infinity upon infinity every time we absorb someone..." 

Jake calls it. 

"That's a lot of personalities to deal with. What you've got here is an excess of personality. You realize it's taken my man Marc Spector 30 years to deal with a HANDFUL of identities? No wonder you're just attacking random people on the street. This place is out of control." 

No. I mean yes but I also mean no. 

A system is not always cool and collected. Sometimes there are disagreements, fights, and struggles for how things should run (and that's just the ones that are aware of themselves being a system). 

MARC is not the one keeping their system going. We know this. We've seen it time and time again. Marc is the stubborn ass-hole that keeps them moving. That keeps them doing what they need to do. But he'd work them to death to do what he does. 

Jake is the one that cools them off and helps build up their social life and handles the joy in life. Steven is the one that handles the self care, the management of the life that doesn't involve them breaking every bone in their body, and Steven is ALWAYS prepared to pull Marc to the back if things go too far. 

They take care of one another. They have their roles. 

Marc is NOT in charge. 

Just because writers don't know what to do with Jake and Steven and always throw Marc to the front (1990s onward. Moench knew exactly what to do with them), doesn't mean Marc is the man in charge. 

Well, Butterfly man says "That's where you come in, Mr. Spector. [....] I'm the de facto ruler of the collective, given that its idea was born of my thought process. But I'm just one man who never had much to say for himself outside of scientific ambition... Which is obviously adequately represented here. Someone needs to kick some butt around here to keep things in line."

So Khonshu and Steven reason that if someone takes charge on how to handle all the ‘personalities’ then the blob will stop going on a rampage. 

IS THIS AN ALLEGORY FOR D.I.D.?! Is that what Bemis is trying to do? Oh I hate this. 

Butterfly man points out that they are ‘the sum of all your thoughts and whims’ and this somehow manifests…. 

So.... We get a lot of different designs of Moon Knight. Skrulls and robots and more butterfly sorts and just... The thing Marvel does when it's trying to design a lot of weird designs. 

I’m just not impressed. There could be better designs and in this art, they are all just kinda hovering there doing nothing. 

And thus… "Moon Knights. Every you you've ever dreamed of. Now, what say we put them to work?" 

And Moon Knight goes on a therapy mission to try to fix all the parts of the collective brain universe. 

The Moon Knights resolve "the Oedipal complex, the Angst quotient, All suicidal and homicidal tendencies..." 

(the fact that they placed suicidal and homicidal together in the same spectrum is down right insulting). 

Also there's this... 

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I’m going to skip the obvious low hanging fruit of “False masculinity” that should have been called “Toxic masculinity”... And hit the fact that you can feel that Bemis doesn’t like Steven. He writes him as a wimp. He writes him crying all the time and as vain and clinging to Khonshu. He CLEARLY views Steven as useless except as eye candy or worse. 

(Not to mention we’ve seen Steven in a speedo before, Speeden as we lovingly call him, and Bill did a FAR better job.) 

So they go back to butterfly man to see how things are going, since they resolved so many of the collective's issues. 

They take a peak at the outside world and... 

I swear to all that is holy in the Moon Knight world...

There's an image of the blob huge and destroying things and what not. Under neath that is a list of emotions the blob is feeling: 

Rage 25%, Frustration 25%, Sexual Frustration 40%, inner peace 10%

They decide they need to figure out the core of all the bad emotions and Jake figures that it's the main control guy, the butterfly man. 

"All this judgment and messiah complex nonsense--You're kind of a @$#%, huh?" 

He denies it, saying "It's not the general sentiment around here" but some of the original collective pop in to tell him that they all think he is. 

Butterfly man freaks out, yelling about how none of this would be possible without his genius and blah blah blah

"You think the work you've done is so great? If it weren't for me locking away that sentient virus that's trying to drive the collective insane, things would be way worse!" 

And everyone stares at him and asks if that's true about the virus. He denies it. 

They restrain him while they decide to open the locked door and deal with whatever problem is hidden behind it. 

A bunch of weird goblin like Ork creatures come out in battle armor and tell them all to prepare to die or kneel before their leader. 

"One man should never control an entire world, Maurice, and no crappy aspect of someone's personality should define them. Trust me. I would know." 

Uh huh. It's ego. They're fighting ego. 

So we get some trippy art of all the Moon Knights fighting the goblin things mixed with images of the blob fighting the army and avengers in New York. 

UGH. 

"All right. You're weird little reign is over" they defeat the goblins. 

"It's Facism of the mind! Get Jungian with us and let go, Maurice!" 

UGH. "Jungian analysis is a psychoanalysis method to access and experience and integrate unconscious material into awareness." It basically is looking for meaning behind behavior, feeling, and events. It's CARL F-ing Jung. A psychologist  "The goal is to achieve psychological healing and wellness by aligning conscious and unconscious aspects of someone's personality". 

There are a lot of opinions about Carl Jung out there and I'm not going to get into that. But a lot of this doesn't go well with D.I.D. It has a lot to do with integration of the alters when applied to DID. ...I'm not going to get into that either, because it's a HOT debate in the DID community and I have no business poking that bear with that stick. 

So Butterfly man Maurice says "But...I just hate AND love myself so much!" 

Jake takes things into his own hands. 

"Steve, I don't really know the metaphysical implications of this, but given this guy seems to think he's what's holding this all together, I think it might help to just...Whack him in the face. Give him some perspective, ya know?" 

(WHY IS HE CALLING HIM STEVE?!)

(Why did the art style change again? Why did their designs change again?) 

The blob explodes in the real world. It's...it's disgusting. 

It starts to vomit up all the people like No Face from Spirited away. 

Marc sits there, covered in goo. "Well... That was a rough one." 

Khonshu reflects. "I wonder if the effects of the change Maurice made to his body will ever come back around again? Can he be contained?" 

The police hand cuff Maurice and put him in the cop car. 

"It really goes to show how someone's hang-ups can govern everything about them." Marc reflects to Khonshu. 

"Certainly a lesson well learned, Marc. For you, for me, for everyone." 

"He may be a horrible guy, but I hope some of the work we Moon Knights put in within the collective's mind-state affected his worldview." 

Oh thank you it’s over. 

And I have reached my 30 image limit again so this is a great place to take a break and a breather before we head into the final countdown of BEMIS. 

So this issue is a sort of filler. You see, it was a one off that has nothing to do with the over all arch. It’s designed to give us space between important plot issues so that we feel a sort of passing of time. We start with something that feels like it stands on it’s own. Then we get filler. Then we start what feels like a new plot but it always circles back around to that first issue. 

Which means… Things are about to get really really bad. 

This issue may feel kind of pointless and like a one off that had no meaning other than to play with the inner workings of MK’s mind… But it was done so badly. 

We’ve seen a good rendition of how it’s done in MacKay. When people attack him mentally, his system does what it is supposed to do and acts as a protective force, often bringing great pain and downfall to the people that dare set foot in his mind. 

We’re talking about a system that has worked HARD to build up such a force to fight these sorts of attacks that he’s practically immune to them. 

Now THAT’S interesting. The idea of a collective hive mind trying to absorb his militarized mind is a fantastic story to tell! It’s exciting! Why? Because you should see HOW the system has learned to function together. How they protect one another. How much of a UNIT these guys are after all these years. 

I also really hate that Bemis is trying to get psychological on us. Attempting to reference big names that honestly are so far out of date that he’s not even using them correctly anymore. 

And seeing the way he writes, you get the feeling that he is pulling the “I know more than you” ego attitude and is prepared to fight/argue anyone that dares to try to disagree with his take. 

Knowing how he has written things here, and seeing how he has handled Moon Knight’s D.I.D so far, this whole issue was just one big jab at their mental illness. It was supposed to be funny and action packed and get MEN (specifically men who read Chuck Palahniuk or who take the Punisher to be pro cops) to agree and get excited about the new edgy Moon Knight. 

This isn’t where he’s supposed to be. The story isn’t supposed to go like this. The characters are all falling so short that I can’t wait to see them all leave again. 

….We’re so close you guys. Just…Just a few more issues to go.

Part 4 HERE

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight comics #Analyzing the comics #BEMIS #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Steven Grant #I hated this with a burning passion #No one should have to read this #why is this a thing that happened to us #What did we do as fans to deserve Bemis? #Please... It's been torture

[captainrayzizuniverse]

Yes! Thank youuuu @goldcrumble for this I truly need it now. I’m sitting in Kelowna waiting for the worst year of my life to be over in the most unremarkable way (binging on paw patrol with my nephew) and what better way to do it than this? Beware, long ass essay incoming. 

When did you become a Louie? (This is about to get loooong)

I love talking about this because it’s such an interesting journey for me compared to other artists I love. I used to watch British reality tv with my grandma every year and that of course includes x-factor and strictly come dancing (and the GBBO, sewing bee, BGT etc..it was unhealthy) which usually start around the same time. We started with x-factor when leona lewis won until the last season with Louis as judge. So yes of course I watched the one with 1D and I was rooting for them during the show (and Louis was my LEAST fav only because I’d watch the xtra factor and the video diaries and he was SO loud and obnoxious and basiclly everything I find annoying in a person. Sorry it was what it was. Anyway after that season I never paid them any attention but we continued watching x-factor year after year. I've mentioned this before but when Louis was announced as the judge in 2018 I remember telling my grandma that it’s probably to draw in the 1D fans because the show was so bad at that point. Obviously I said it with eyes rolled and thinking ‘they really think they’re gonna save this shit with a kid from a boyband?’. Little did I know this guy will ruin me. Anyway as a non fan and someone who really didn’t know anything about the guy I absolutely loved him as a judge..so like a couple of weeks in I read his entire wikipedia and was 100% drinking the ‘reconnected and in love with his long term gf and has a kid with a one night stand from LA’ koolaid. And I listened to his singles at the time, loved them, added them to one of my Anghami playlist and it was chill for a while.

I have never been in a music fandom before..I’ve been in the football fandom (esp livejournal) for ages and also several movies/tv shows and books. I think most of the music I listen to are either from bands who are dead or there just isn’t a fandom big enough to exist…or I haven’t found it. Dunno..just never got into one. SO on a flight from oslo in 2019 I was reading a fic from another fandom and in the author’s note there was something about being inspired by a Larry fic and I vaguely remembered who the Larry ship is about. So when I clicked it and saw that it was THE Louis T, I went into my second rabbit hole and saw all these news singles he has out and an album that was about to come out and a show in Toronto and wow so much excitement all at once. Booked the tickets for the show which were later cancelled due to covid and then never got to see the ltwt live (rip hearing defenceless live). After that I didn’t follow up with him, I didn’t even know lthq was a thing ffs. When people say that they need to promote things on his personal IG, it’s for people like ME! Anyhoo! I still never searched him up on Tumblr until one day by chance I saw a clip from a livestream on instagram of one of his earlier shows in Texas. I didn’t even know concert livestreams were a thing tbh. So I kept on monitoring to find the source until I got to finally watch an entire show (I think it was the 4th American one, a few before the chicken nugget incident) and then somehow that led me to Tumblr and slowly I started following very very few blogs. So when did I become a Louie really? Was it 2018 when I was like ok the dude is cool I like the couple of songs he has out? Or 2019 when I booked my first concert ticket? Or in 2022 when I found the fandom on Tumblr? Also I got into 1D when I read that wiki page and it said something about him having the most writing credits. It intrigued me and was like ‘fine! I’ll give them a go I guess!’

your favourite song? (one off walls and one off fitf)

We Made It. All this time (if you ask tomorrow it might jump between Saturdays or holding onto heartache or she is beauty)

your favourite music video?

Miss you! The hair, the song.

your favourite gig?

Toronto one because I was anticipating it for sooooo long and it fully lived up to it. Esp after spending the entire 2022 watching livestreams and being jealous af. The new york one was good too but my home show will always be my fav

your favourite louis hair?

X-factor hair. 

your favourite louis interview?

Oof man this is hard! They all kinda get mixed together so either a Zach lang one (probably the first one because it sticks in my memory more since I saw it right when it came out) or one of the buzzfeed ones like the snack wars or the one he did with the yellow background (man I’m lazy as shit, I can literally YouTube this).

suit louis or tanktop louis?

Suit Louis. Literally anything but tank top louis. I know I’m the only one in this boat but I just don’t dig tank tops. I think it’s also the fact that he almost always wears hideous shoes with them that kinda kill the look. If I had to be specific, I’d say tracksuit Louis. 

favourite louis tattoo?

I’d also go with the x&o’s 

favourite louis bodypart? (c'mon we all have one!)

I immediately thought his eye crinkles but realized that’s not a body part. Maybe hands or the veiny neck??I love a neck with passionate veins (what even am I saying??)

—-

I think my small Louis loving mutuals have either already done this or have been tagged, so it ends with ME!

And with that I shall wish everyone a genocide free 2024! A free Palestine! And an end to this fucking massacre!

Back to watching Marshall and Skye on PP. 

#what is kelowna even btw?

[roninkairi]

Quick Review- "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (SPOILERS ALERT)

Anyone who knows me already knows how much of a Mario fan I am. Hell, my family could probably tell you some wild tales about my Super Mario Bros. addiction during my grade school days. But even the announcement in 2018 that Nintendo was going forward with Illumination to make an animated feature length film based on their flagship franchise made me more that a little overly cautious; after all their previous effort (the live action 1993 film) did not exactly do them ay favors either (and while were at it, the TV shows, while memorable, still leave much to be desired). This also is not the first time that the Mario Bros. would be in an animated film (Back in 1986, there was an anime called “The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach!”, which never got a US release. Doug Walker actually reviewed it so if you want you can look it up)

Fast forward to now. The movie has now made about $600 million at the time of this review and has yet to be released in Japan. I have a feeling though that after it is released it will make a lot more. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve personally seen this movie twice. That’s something I very rarely do as far as my movie theater habits go  and if I do that its most assuredly a sign the movie in question is worth my time.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” serves as an origin story for the two Brooklyn born plumbers, the plot being straightforward and simple much like the mainline Mario games: the two siblings somehow find themselves whisked away into another parallel dimension and get separated, with Luigi ending up in the Dark Lands and Mario landing in the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario enlists the aid of Princess Peach and, along with Toad, sets off to save Luigi from Bowser, the king of the Koopa tribe, who just acquired the Super Star. The group journey to the Jungle to enlist the aid of the Kong Army, led by Cranky Kong and his son, Donkey Kong.

As I mentioned before, the plot is pretty straightforward and to the point: at 92 minutes there is quite a bit going on and it comes at you fast. Not too much time is spent on character development for certain individual members like Luigi and DK. We get a revelation about Peach’s backstory (not being from the Mushroom Kingdom is certainly an eye raising reveal) and hints about the relationship between DK and his dad, but its not really a focus. You get the sense that Nintendo wanted to play it safe with the story, but at the same time you want just a little bit more. Thankfully the story is enjoyable as it is, and has enough humor, action and equally touching moments to sustain itself. A lot has been said about the choices for casting in the film and for me, while the choice of Chris Pratt was very questionable when I first heard about it I was glad I took a wait and see stance to it. He did quite a good job in the role and so did Jack Black as Bowser in all of his evil, kinda hammy. Scene chewing role. Of course, his demeanor changing whenever the subject of Princess Peach being brought up is also VERY notable. I mean dude practically sung a love ballad about her (TWICE) and stole the damn Super Star just to try to impress Peach. I can understand that though, given how she is in the movie. Princess Peach, voiced by Anya-Taylor Joy, serves as Mario’s guide and possible love interest in the movie and instead of being the person who has to be saved for most of the adventure, is the more action oriented and confident character accompanying Mario. If the prospects of Peach jump kicking Bowser, using power ups and generally willing to throw down with a gang of Koopas at a wedding reception seem to be alien to you or out of character, I will assume you have never played Super Mario Bros. 2…

…or Super Mario RPG…

…or Super Paper Mario…

…or any Mario Party games…

…or Mario Strikers…

…or Super Smash Bros…

…or the Mario + Rabbids games.

You’re lucky I didn’t even mention the stuff she did in the Super Mario Adventures manga! Anyway the point is, she is pretty darn awesome in this film. Fred Armisen’s take on Cranky is…well…ok why does he sound like Larry David? I half expected to hear "Frolic" by Luciano Michelini play when he got caught oy the Para Koopas on Rainbow Road.

Visually, the movie is animated very well and does a great job of animating the worlds in great detail, including familiar locations from across the games that you may immediately recognize. There are also TONS of audio and visual easter eggs and references not just from Mario history, but Nintendo history as well. (Quick show of hands, who found the Wave Race reference? The Hidden N64 Controller? Who found Mr. Game and Watch or recognized Disk Kun) The movie happily, and with no shame, throws in all of these nods to Nintendo’s past and I have no issue trying to find them all. Which says a LOT about my attention span. There are 4 different licensed songs used in the movie though but their inclusion doesn’t really detract from the enjoyment. (Ok 5 songs. One of them is directly tied to Chris Pratt and another certain movie series he is involved with.)

The movie is not exactly perfect and that’s ok. I was not expecting a huge scale thought provoking movie that makes me question the motivations of humanity (I’ll save that for whatever DC movie comes out next) I just wanted a fun adventure anyone and everyone can enjoy. And this movie certainly delivers on that.

#the super mario bros. movie #movie review

[myfanfictiongarden]

One should really say “Bless the internet” because how else would I ever have heard of Michael Pink´s Dracula ballet, let alone seen the recorded 2018 performance of the Milwaukee Ballet Company? And let me tell you this adaptation is incredible! Like, omg!!!!!! I’m a huge ballet fan and the choreography and music, as well as dancers, were amazing- not to mention the costumes and scenography.

Definitely another adaptation where I can say Dracula-done-right.

Although there is one thing at the end that slightly bugs me…

Alright, so, I don’t mind when there are some slight changes when adapting a story, especially depending what kind of format it is becoming adapted too (tv show, cinematic movie, cartoon, ballet, etc…), so cutting Jack from the Suitor-squad and making Van Helsing responsible for the Asylum is fine. This is a ballet so of course you’ll have to shorten or condense things, which is why having Dacula kidnap Mina after his assault on her isn’t the worst of changes if you want quick drama at the end. Ok, so far, so good. They all go to Transylvania, they fight the Count, Quinecey gives his life defeating him, Mina is free. Great.

But… why does the performance ask her to step aside from the group and place her fingers on the former mark on her neck? Maybe I’m reading too much into it, maybe it’s not her dreamily missing the vampire curse and it’s more the melancholy joy of having defeated such an evil but through much suffering. Probably. But it would have suited far better to have her in Jonathan’s loving embrace (a husband who would have gone to Hell to save her soul), her friends around them (friends who she loved and asked for the ultimate support in her fate). Idk, the rest of the ballet was so true and faithful to the characters, so this sorta stood out a bit.

#I am so grateful place like Tumblr exist #how else would I have ever seen this ballet adaptation? #bram stoker´s dracula #milwaukee ballet company #michael pink´s dracula #things i like

[thewebbloghouse]

Berger saves the shoot-out’s final penalty to send Chelsea through to the Champions League semi-finals.

‘The celebration came out of nowhere – why the hell did I do that?’

Ann-Katrin Berger und Jess Carter, die Teamkolleginnen und Partner von Chelsea, sprechen mit Molly Hudson über ihren dramatischen Sieg gegen Lyon und die Prüfung, die sie gegen Barcelona erwartet.

Something strange happened to Ann-Katrin Berger in the seconds after she dived to her right and forced Lindsey Horan’s penalty away from goal to seal Chelsea’s progression to the semi-finals of the Champions League.

“It was weird. I didn’t know how to celebrate,” Berger, who had also saved Wendie Renard’s penalty, says. She ran out from her goal, shimmied her shoulders and then did a knee slide in front of the jubilant Chelsea fans, before being engulfed by her team-mates.

“My brain just switched off,” she adds, covering her face in embarrassment as she relived her celebration. “I have no idea why that came out of me, it just happened and afterwards I was like, ‘What the hell did I just do?’ The girls were laughing about it.”

While Berger’s penalty heroics may have come as a surprise to some, it did not to her Chelsea team-mates. The 32-year-old is a specialist at spot kicks. “I’m sure she’s already told you, she loves penalties, it’s where she likes to shine,” says Jess Carter, her Chelsea team-mate and partner.

Chelsea were seconds from elimination against the holders Lyon, before Maren Mjelde’s 128th-minute penalty kick took the tie to a shoot-out. While Emma Hayes, the Chelsea manager, couldn’t bear to watch, Berger was ready for her moment in the spotlight.

“It’s my job to be calm,” Berger says. “If you have a clown in the back [of defence], that probably won’t help the team. I didn’t prepare. I was confident enough in my team that they would score their penalties, especially after Maren took the penalty. I already knew it was going in because I know her abilities.

“I don’t have the pressure. I love penalty shoot-outs because as a goalkeeper you never have pressure on it, because everyone expects people to score from 12 yards out. That’s why I think I was as calm as I was because there was no pressure at all. They [gestures to Carter] had more pressure.”

Carter showed her cool to score the fifth penalty in the shoot-out.

Against Lyon, Berger and Carter — who blasted the fifth spot kick into the top corner — looked unflappable, but that was no act, as the couple are as laid-back away from the pitch as they are on it.

They have enjoyed most of their careers away from the spotlight, meeting during their time at Birmingham City in May 2016. By February 2017 they had moved in together as friends, before later realising they had developed romantic feelings.

In June 2018, Carter moved to London to play for Chelsea. Berger joined the club in early 2019, and the pair live together in London. Now they are adapting to the increased attention after the Lionesses’ European Championship victory last summer took women’s football to new heights.

Carter, No 3, was part of the England squad who won the European Championship last summer.

That day, the couple were in opposing dugouts as unused substitutes for their respective nations, but the impact of England’s victory on club football continues. The pair have just finished an event with the Chelsea FC Foundation where they surprised local schoolgirls and gave them tickets to tomorrow’s Champions League semi-final against Barcelona.

Both are genuinely touched by the reactions of the girls, who squealed in disbelief before looking up at their heroes with starstruck faces. It is a reaction neither is particularly used to.

“I was really surprised they even recognised me, I’m not going to lie,” says Berger, while Carter says that their reaction made her day. It was a moment of joy in a high-pressure week that culminates with the biggest game of Chelsea’s season so far.

The mere mention of Barcelona is enough to remind most fans of an evening in May 2021 that began as a dream for Hayes and Chelsea, but quickly turned into a nightmare. Berger and Carter both started that Champions League final, in which they conceded an own goal after 33 seconds, and three more goals in the opening 36 minutes. Barcelona went on to win 4-0.

Barcelona claimed the Champions League trophy in 2021 after thrashing Chelsea 4-0 in the final.

“I don’t think about it any more,” Berger says. “I can’t change it. We learn from our mistakes, hopefully, we have analysed it over the two years. They’ve changed, we’ve changed. It will be a completely different game. That’s why there’s no time to think about it. It happened and it made us stronger as well.”

Tomorrow’s game, in front of more than 25,000 fans, will be the true test of a squad that Hayes describes as “mentality monsters”. Barcelona are widely considered the favourites to win this competition and have a flawless domestic record, winning all 25 of their games so far, scoring 105 goals and conceding only five.

This is the only trophy missing in Hayes’s collection, but Carter believes their mental strength will help them to live up to the occasion.

„Es ist etwas, worüber Emma offensichtlich gesprochen hat“, sagt sie. „Diese Mentalität, manche Leute haben sie einfach, man wird damit geboren und manche Leute müssen hart arbeiten, um das zu bekommen. Für mich ist eine starke Mentalität im Fußball das, was dich an die Spitze bringen wird, und du wirst so viele Rückschläge erleiden. Wir versuchen herauszufinden, wie Sie diese Rückschläge überwinden und in Positives verwandeln können.“

[shipposttt]

Ship of the Day: Adashi and Shurtis

Names: Takashi Shirogane (AKA Shiro) and Adam W., and Shiro and Curtis, respectively.

Ship Name(s): Adashi and Shurtis

Original Content: Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016-2018), adapted from the original Voltron series (1984)

Ship info:

Voltron is a show on Netflix following the Paladins of Voltron- the ‘Defender of the Universe’. Fighting a losing battle against the Galra Empire (a volatile alien group who had plagued the universe for millennia, destroying planets and enslaving the races on them), 5 paladins stumble upon one of the sentient lion mecha ships. These 5 ships ‘choose’ their paladin and combine to become the giant robot warrior Voltron as a team- with Shiro (Takashi Shirogane), the paladin of the black lion as the head, the leader. The series follows this group as they try to save the world and defeat the Galran Empire, with varying successes throughout the series.

Now, there were multiple queer ships within this fandom at the time such as Klance (paladins Keith and Lance of the red and blue lions), though the two canon ones were greatly controversial- Shiro and Adam and then Shiro and Curtis. Voltron ran across 7 seasons, with no mention of Shiro’s sexuality until the final season. It is in this season that Adam is briefly mentioned as his dead fiancé who had died in a battle against the Galran’s prior to the formation of Voltron. There is a lack of exploration into this, with a severe lack of character building for him- just getting introduced and killed off in a flashback and a visit to a memorial. Curtis was also introduced this season, as a background character,,, with about 2 lines total. His relationship to Shiro within this time is shown as purely ship captain/crew, with them being shown getting married within a postcard shown within the outro of the epilogue.

Type of Ship: Queer bait/ bury the gays trope

As previously mentioned, this was a very controversial move for Voltron, with fans being outraged, claiming they were queer baiting and feeding into the trope of ‘bury the gays’ and i am inclined to agree (yes, i was once one of these Voltron fans, no, i dont want to talk about that stain on my fandom history/j). By giving Adam no character development and instantly killing him off,  they bought into the bury the gays trope- wherein studios add gay characters to appease calls for representation and LGBTQ+ fans and then dont bother to flesh out the characters, making them one dimensional before killing them off so they dont have to actually display a queer relationship at all. Similarly, there was outrage over Shiro and Curtis, whose relationship was non existent and then just jumped to a singular image of their wedding day, yet again failing to actually explore any semblance of queer relationship within the show. I for one agree with the fans on this subject, feeling as though it was just included to tick boxes and to try to score points with the large amount of LGBTQ+  people within the fandom- which was clear based on their reactions to Pidge (Paladin of the green lion) and their exploration of gender.

Admin🦇

#fandom #gay ships #lgbtq community #ships #shipping #voltron #vld

[cherrysnax]

hope people chill out soon, your take was immaculate and actually the reason I followed you initially bc i am an adult who likes cartoons and little kid shows but also doesn't get in internet fights about them and thinks adults who do are... wild, for lack of a better term..

but!!! now I wanna know about your comic (???maybe its a comic not sure) that you've mentioned, I couldn't find a tag to search but do you mind sharing about it? tysm either way have a good one

hi nonnie!! first of all ty for the well wishes and compliments! i'm sure once all the jokes and the offense die down, people will be relatively normal again... i hope.. lets get into the meat of the ask under the cut

EDIT: this got long so if u just want the basic gist, go to the very end!

soooo my girlfriend @pokemonleague and i decided back in...2018? to make spidersonas due to our love of comics and the movie into the spiderverse, but since we're nerds that totally span out of control. it went from a fan rp with several spider-man themed characters to a completely original concept with new characters, our own setting, power system-- the works. it is about superheroes, so it might not be your thing. okay so first backstory stuff

it used to be called the phillyverse and if u go into the tag u might find some old art, but its all extremely outdated (and bad. im not the bessst artist). after some delegation we decided to start making it a comic (we spent YEARS debating it) and named the project around last year. its uh called Show Your Spine!

I'm the worst at describing things but we have like 3 whole seasons entirely plotted out so I can pull somethin like a pitch together: while the vigilantism is a core aspect, with the main overarching plot being a group of unlikely heroes, old and new banding together to stop their city from being overrun by the mob, supervillains, and other threats. it's really about finding love and community in a city at war and finding the strength to protect and nourish it. all the while unlearning all the shit the last generations have taught us, to stop us from perpetuating the cycle of hate... while also beating the shit outta some baddies

in short its abt cringe-fail women doing cringe-fail things lmaoo. its a like a superhero-action-soap opera taking place in the retro-futuristic city of Chesire Grove, new jersey.

in this world, there's people with powers called Augments, who are just like you and me but due to changes in their DNA due were born with the ability to manifest different abilities (think mutants or metahumans). the tension between augments and humans is a little.. high right now, but allegedly better than they've ever been before. It's a newish era of human-augment relations, for better or worse.

we have an ensemble cast, and we intend on taking the main characters from the ages of 16 to eventually 25. the characters are aging in real-time.

OKAY PLOT TIME: The first few arcs focus on a delinquent teenage girl, Leo, trying to find a cure for one of her best friends who has fallen ill after trying a new drug, by all means necessary. during her quest for it, she meets the elusive newer vigilante Spitfire, who had saved her once before. Despite a rocky start, the two start a mentor-mentee type thing, in hope that the other can help them find what they're looking for. For Leo, she's looking for info on the man who made the drug that's been killing people, desperate to make him reverse engineer it. For Spitfire, they're looking for Chesire Grove's longest-running protector: Nightingale, who has suddenly gone missing. Spitfire's a bit new in town but lucky for them, the kid knows the city like the back of their hand.

At the same time, a sheltered augment teen's life is changing, as her overly protective father has finally realized that keeping her inside wasn't protecting her at all. freshly enrolled in a school for STEM students, Bobbi (also known by his nickname Retro) has to learn how to navigate the world for the first time and solve the full mystery of her past, all while her powers are on the fritz.

there's so much to this world, and we're so excited to share it with everyone!! i tried to be pretty vague cause of spoilers, and like i said, bad with words

#show your spine! #long post #webcomics #oh! one more thing #i know ppl r tired of media with kids. me too #not that its bad im just 22 #the characters have literally grown with us and to reflect that they uh literally grow with the audience #this is a loooong comic and by the end of it the teen characters are in their mid twenties #and the adult main characters are also just as important to the plot as well. because of that a subject matter SYS is pointed YA audiencesl #if u wanna know anymore #please lemme know because i wanna talk about it so bad #SyS is very much looking at superheroes from the lense of marginalized pp #*ppl much like they were intended to be #n for ppl who like it short n sweet its batfam meets x-men but theyre black gay and the worst people you know

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

What do you think of BTS' members latest collabs with non-Hybe Korean artists, such as RM with Tablo and what seems to be the impending Jimin and Taeyang collab? Do you think this era of sociability is good for the fanbase, or does it create more strife, with army accusing collaborators of needing a "hand out" a la Jimin and Sungwoon?

I think it depends on several factors, such as the BTS member involved, who is the Korean artist and more importantly, how Army feels about said artist. Which is ultimately the biggest factor because we know how the fandom thinks and acts, especially towards the people they don't like.

Yoongi's collab with Psy went smoothly and was well received. From what I can recall, mostly everyone was excited about that and it's hard to come out and say that Psy needs Yoongi/BTS to be relevant. We also have to take into consideration the angle from which the collab was promoted. Yoongi produced the song and he has a reputation not only for Army, but also in the K-Pop fandom as well, as this well respected guy with a good solo career on the side as Agust D since 2018. And there is barely any controversy attached to his own name in the last few years (with the exception of the Jim Jones mention in some lyrics back in 2020). Overall, Yoongi is safe, Psy is known by basically everyone and not seen as "dangerous", so in the end, it turned out to be a success. Yoongi acting and dancing in the music video definitely helped.

Let's take a look at RM and his collab with Tablo for Indigo. First and foremost, for the majority of Army, RM can do no wrong, he is the perfect leader and incredibly talented. With few exceptions (because no one is universally loved), but a minority with no actual impact. And once again, the fandom accepted Tablo because he's not considered problematic. They have nothing against him as a person, which means he is worthy of this collab. At least I haven't seen groups of people saying Tablo needed to be relevant again, so the collab with RM could save his career.

The same can be said about Hobi and Crush, although that incident at Crush's concert did have some sort of impact and it didn't really go unnoticed or brushed aside immediately en masse.

So, why are the reactions so different when it comes to Jimin and the people he works with, compared with the other members? First of all, the maknae line fans are in general more hardcore and they tend to put their favorite idol on the highest pedestal they can find. Which means, that compared to Jimin, Sungwoon is a nobody. Just as he's a "nobody" compared to Psy or Tablo. He is seen in the fandom as some random guy who used to be in a group and the only reason some Army know his name is because he is a friend of Jimin's. And that led to people (a lot of them Jimin stans) to believe that With You was a favor and Jimin lend a helping hand. Which ultimately proved to not be close to reality at all, but by that time, the narrative was established. I think we also have to take into consideration that the fandom is much more divided when it comes to the maknae line, which doesn't help at all the way Jimin's collabs are being perceived.

And of course the reactions were harsher for the collab with Taeyang because Army hates BigBang. That's the root of the issue and then it just gets added on top of that. But I wrote about this when the first rumor made the rounds, so I'm not going to repeat it here.

So there you have it. I think that what this shows is a fandom in the early stages of accepting or trying to be ok with BTS members wanting to venture outside their own company that held them inside for far too long. Which contributes to the fandom perception as well.

The thing is, if people are exposed to one thing for a long period of time, slowly, they will at least get accustomed to it. It just depends in what way that exposure takes place. And old prejudices are hard to let go, so that might slow down the phase of acceptance.

Either way, Army will always believe that regardless of who they collaborate with, ultimately BTS will always be better. At least in the back of their minds. I do think there is potential for more strife in the future, especially coming from specific subsections of the fandom and die hard solo stans, predominantly in the maknae line.

#bmt asks #bts #bts collab #yoongi #rm #jimin #hobi #bts army #bts fandom

[roses-bel-air-darling]

I have never been so disappointed in a movie.

Spoilers under the cut. I need to let it out. Going full rant mode.

What a disservice to the entire franchise and the fandom who grew up with these films. Not even Michael and Laurie's showdown saved this film. The only good thing about this film was the 1978 flashbacks, that's it.

I never hated a character so much in a film since that religious fanatic woman from The Mist. Yup I'm talking about corey. I hate Corey! Corey is such a waste of character, his character wasn't even relevant to the plot at all. His death served no purpose after making the film about him. I fucking cheered in the theater when Michael put that kid out of his misery. I can only think it could work if they didn't make him into a copycat killer, only have at least 10 minutes screentime, sympathize with him and then he dies tragically without turning him into a K-mart michael myers.

I don't know what the writers were thinking of both Laurie's and Allyson's characterization in this film. There wasn't any development for them other than snippets. Where was Laurie's rage to avenge the death of her daughter Karen? And get revenge on micheal for the trauma she endured for decades and the murders of her friends and loved ones? Why not reverse her back a bit to be overprotective over Allyson and then have the strength and rage again to fight Michael who instead of hiding, throw back into finding laurie or hurt Allyson. To make the showdown more impactful and have something at stake? Karen was practically mentioned only. No mission for Laurie to avenge the daughter she fought to protect from the boogeyman.

No. All of that got thrown away over some whiny white boy who had no relevance to the storyline. And make it his movie when it was supposed to be Micheal's and Laurie's film. Not make allyson be reduced to something of a "dumb love interest". Micheal's funeral could've been more impactful if the writers kept annie's father, tommy, Marion live to see the monster that has also haunted them to rest. There was only 2 characters from the 2018 film and kills that showed up and the rest is just the town when the town had minor time as well. Oh and Lindsay wasn't even in Michael's funeral scene either.

I refuse to believe that this film is canon by any means. I felt like it was a spit in the face to the fans and characters. I wanted to be engaged with the film, cheer and cry and have a feeling of closure of a saga but I felt nothing but frustration and disappointment. A reviewer called this film this generations Halloween 5 and sadly I agree. Knowing the writing of the fifth film was all over the place as the director did not know what to do with the film and added nothing. (Example: Rachel's character in halloween 4 and 5.)

I wish that John was back to fully direct and write the trilogy. Sadly, it's only a dream and it makes the fact to appreciate the original film, the second and h20 a whole lot more. H20 is truly the true ending of Halloween. And that is the only ending I will accept.

#Halloween Ends #halloween 1978

[signor-signor]

The 27th of another month. 74 months after my favorite cartoon show was canceled. Ordinarily, Trending 27th would be happening, but it’s been downplayed as of late. However, there is something that’s resonated with me since SaveWOY’s heyday, long before we heard about Kid Cosmic and its being made at Netflix.

I’m not sure what happened, but a fan video by fluffy-raccoon-artist (formerly cerise-the-traveling-artist) called “SaveWOY: The Story So Far” is gone. It came out on March 31, 2017, and I think it’s been absent for the past 2 years or so. Fortunately, I have much of the dialogue memorized. I also remember the fellow who voiced Wander tried the best he could to channel Jack McBrayer accent-wise. If you see the name Cerise, that’s the artist herself depicted as her ‘WOY-sona.’ A real world person as a non-canon character, if you will.

Cerise: (to a cat onscreen) Oh, Biscuit! Shoo! Get out of the frame!

Wander: Wasn’t that a little mean? I mean, he wasn’t bothering anyone.

Cerise: Yeah, I know, but he’d still distract you.

(Title)

Wander: Well, hi there, you fine internet goers! Folks call me Wander, and I’m ever so thrilled that you clicked on this here video! Why? Well, lemme tell ya! I just so happen to come from this cute little cartoon show called Wander Over Yonder, which just so happens to be one of the many WONDERFUL creations of… Drumroll, please.

Cerise: Oh! Oh, oh, right, right.

(Drumroll)

Wander: … Craig McCracken! The very same mastermind behind such classics as The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. And believe it or not, while he was working on those two amazing shows, he was also doodling little ol’ me in his sketchbook, buuhhhht that’s not what this video is about. It’s about the show and just how great of a show it is. Okay, so this show is about me and my best pal Sylvia, traveling the universe and helping folks, with the occasional saving of an entire planet or a space worm trying to eat us, all while being chased by the fierce Lord Hater and his army of Watchdogs. You see, Hater’s the villain of the peace, but in reality, he’s just a big softy who just really wants attention.

Lord Hater: No I’m NOT!

Wander: Did I mention the music and the animation? Because it’s simply… AMAZING! Not to mention that this little show won three Annie Awards.

Cerise: And Weird Al plays a character in Season 2. He even gets a song.

Wander: The songs! Oh, how could I forget? Yes! This show has so many lovely songs! We even got an entire musical episode! This show has so many amazing things and so much potential! Too bad that… Disney canceled it. Yes, as sad as it is, Disney felt that two seasons were enough for our little show, much to the crew’s disagreement. They had a whole third season planned out, and it would’ve wrapped everything up in a perfect little bow. Of course, Craig and his hard-working crew tried their hardest to convince Disney to let them have a third season, but alas, it was no use. Now you all might be thinking, “Why are you telling us this?” “How can we help?” Well, I am so happy to say that the answer will be in the next video. Or if you’re impatient, in the description of THIS very video. Well, that was all for now. I hope to see you fine folks again real soon.* Bye!

*I’m not sure if this is how the line went, but just bear with me.

This “answer,” of course, turned out to be sending letters to Disney during the holidays in 2018. I must have sent roughly 8 total during that time.

If there’s a song that pretty much sums up how much I wish for WOY to be given the same amount of fairness given to the DTVA shows that got way too much love and/or more than two seasons, it’s “Waiting on a Miracle,” sung by Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) in Encanto. I immediately thought thought of everything SaveWOY has been trying to do when I first experienced the song and got a grasp of Mirabel’s longing to have a special gift since she’s a descendant of the Family Madrigal.

I realize the video might be a little dated, but the message is still clear. WOY is still incomplete, and it could surely be just as influential as most of DTVA’s overappreciated shows if Disney’s current bosses give it a chance.

While we’re on the subject, I have watched Seasons 1 and 2 for the 8th time on Disney+ on my one-season-per-month run. As glad as I was that WOY got a second season, I still don’t think two seasons are enough for the show. Any true fan would be quick to realize Fish Hooks, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Amphibia, and any other 11-22-minute episode show that got more than two seasons have more episodes than WOY does. Heck, I’m pretty sure the people who worked on those more fortunate shows never had to try their hardest to convince Disney to let the shows have their third season. At this point, I’d still settle for a PDF attachment of the plans for Season 3 even if it means ruling out “movement, music, and McBrayer” among other things. We fans must keep support for the show alive regardless of Craig’s current status with Cartoon Network.

That being said, I’ll be taking a little break from watching WOY - I have started taking an online master’s program in art and technology, so I’ll need to focus for the next few months. If any of you fans out there have Hulu and/or Disney+ and a whole lot of time on your hands, give the show tons of viewership. Maybe in time, you’ll come up with theories about S3, uncover more clues online, and create your own interpretation of Star Force Enforcement Force, like I did.

#Wander Over Yonder #SaveWOY

[ask-dcf]

Why do you like masked rider so much? And can you give an example of masked riderxundertale?

I’m not sure if I said this before but I can say it again cuz I’m a huge fan weeb for this 50 year old series.

Kamen rider presented itself to me in literally golden showmanship showing off many previous riders back in 2018. Since then I got hooked. Down the rabbit hole I went and love it soooo much.

And kamen rider teaches people through stories how to be better no matter who what or even where you come from. For instance Revice teaches about dealing with your devils but also seeing them as a part of your family to protect eachother. Saber is about keeping promises to people while writing out your own stories. And Zero one teaches about leaping towards your dream even if you believe you can’t have one. And that’s just a few examples with very broad summaries.

Kamen rider hits all the good points in undertale while at the same time DEFYING some points.

*undertale=fighting is always wrong speak with words to win battles.

*Kamen rider=fight hard to protect those you love and for a better future for everyone.

*undertale=even with the powers you have you can never go back on the bad choices you make and live with the consequences.

*Kamen rider=Everyone makes bad choices. What matters is that you learn from them to be better then who you were before.

*undertale=humanity is rotten and always do harm to anyone they fear.

*Kamen rider=Humanity is humanity. It is flawed. There is no such thing as a perfect species. It’s what makes us truly human that we choose to love things rather then fear.

*undertale=you lose your soul, you lose your feelings and who you are as a person.

*Kamen rider=You don’t need a soul do good in the world nor to have a dream.

*undertale=not everyone can be saved.

*Kamen rider=not everyone can be saved, but it doesn’t mean you still can try and reach out.

*undertale=Humans will always persecute Monsters because of who they are.

*kamen rider=Human, monster, androids, Ais, living viruses, and aliens, even demons. We all live on this planet that we love. If one lives on this planet with us. Then you are loved to and even become a hero yourself.

I’m not sure if you get my point XD but I hope I made sense of what Kamen rider is like and it’s potential for undertale in the fandom and multiverse. Trust me with the rider knowledge I have you all would be surprised how much they could fit into certain AUs. (Fourze and Outertale oml that would be so much fun XD) If anything Kamen rider actually influences me with these AUs I make when I put my heart and soul into them. Their teachings their ideals their codes it all helps me not only become a better person but helps me write my stories and feel connected to them. Plus Kamen rider actually acknowledges the multiverse aswell so that’s fun~ owo Not to mention their songs fit so many things in undertale multiverse to the point where it’s like “WHY IS THIS NOT APART OF THE GAME?! XD”Kamen rider really has done a lot for me. So in a way I wanna do a lot for the fandom that welcomed me back as if I was coming home ^^

Think that’s all I have in mind. Can still ask me more or ask which riders would fit into which AUs to change stories a bit.or he’ll even ask match ups. That be fun to. X3

#mod talks #undertale #kamen rider

[thetaekookcloset]

Late 2018 till mid 2019 was the most suspicious time for me. There was a period when I genuinely thought taekook are not as close as they were behind the curtains. On one hand we were getting continuous updates of Tae with his other friends (Park Bogum, vacation with wooga) Jungkook was spending more time with jhope, BTS members and jimin in particular (no i never thought jikook was possible, never gave me that vibe) but it made me think if some differences are going on between taekook. Especially when in BV4 jungkook said he only met jimin and jhope in a month holiday. I know partners don't have to be attached at hip but a month without meeting was too much. I was upset so I went back to 2018 timeline where Taekook were more freer. The whole timeline became clear to me.

If you remember 2017 was a separation stage of taekook by Bighit we only got a selca but a lot of scenes were edited but atleast we had so many things to pacify us like dispatch posting about them, their interactions at award shows, them slipping sometimes but 2019 was so weird. Nothing behind the scenes, superficial interactions which can be called fan service or interactions as a band member. Yes they both reacted to each other but everything was so normalised if you look at their interactions with others and it was non-frequent. Especially Jungkook was shown non-approaching on camera when he is told to do so, otherwise with edits.

2019 was an altogether different separation era for me. Especially former months. They hardly had any interactions on concert. Anpanman interaction stopped, DNA interaction stopped. Infact so show me, I show you stopped for a while. I think Brazil we got better interaction and Japan too (no fancams allowed). Dispatch who was notorious in posting about taekook started posting them with other members, that I love you sign which was a sort of secret sign between taekook now became a group sign. Bighit was smart, it gave us taekook moments sporadically and so edited but hyped jikook so much in 2019 that it looked to me like they were trying to tell see they are band members but their bond isn't that great as compared to other members. I think concert moments were restrained due to the fact they wanted to believe even though members were performing fan service it's on the spur moment between members who are close and comfortable to do it. That jikook walk in the concert was directed by Tae himself smh. So people who are smart enough understand fan service moments are directed earlier even taekook ones what brings beauty to them is creativity they add on stage.

I think this agressiveness by the company took a toll on Taehyung. He really wasn't up with things. Their exclusive things were made public, they are not allowed to sit together, have to blantatly lie on camera, all of this was maybe difficult for a free soul like Tae. Jungkook on the other hand was engaged in so many group activities I think there was a disbalance at one point in 2019.

My saving grace was Tae's subtle eye moments in award shows, his body intune with Jungkook, that iconic vlive one anon mentioned and them trying to be near each other at concerts despite constrained interactions. But it was really bad to the point army in general noticed Jungkook's awkwardness in taekook interactions and that is why I think Tae's imagination comment on weverse blew up so much. I'll come to this but I want to touch in the topic why I think this happened.

After 2017 seperation by bighit, it was surprising we got all those cut scenes in the form of bangtan bombs from January 2018. I think two factors were at play- one disbandment talks (taekook relationship was a part at play) the other their contract renewal in May 2018. This was to pacify members especially taekook. Remember when Jungkook kept on telling he wanted to tell us something I am still waiting on that coz it stopped after contract renewal. They became so agressive in floating their ship, after contact renewal, that they butchered taekook moments, focus shifted from hyung line. As RM said, they would have disbanded again if Covid didn't happen.

Coming back to that Tae's comment when #taekookisoverParty trended you can see the shift in their interactions. Taehyung started responding in English so people don't take things out of context and taekook moments started happening again.

You see 2019 was utter load of shit (pardon my language) because of Bighit and their horse's vision. Can you imagine two people who are not sitting together in award shows, not interacting in concerts so much, not meeting behind the scenes according to company are sharing hotel rooms (may 2019), their interactions became so natural, their content has increased, now they are hugging in GDA. If that seperation publicly was not fabricated, I don't know what is true anymore. They had to do that SOOP conversation to not take any blame on themselves.

That's why I don't really like the company and BangPD. Protecting Taekook I understand, protecting the company I also understand but butchering characters of real people to the point people misunderstand them I don't.

I am sorry what started as Suspicious moment turned into a rant. I was with them during this period and it did hurt like hell.

Thank you for sharing your perspective as someone who was around through all of that time!  I was not, so I always find it interesting to hear from people who were.

I especially want to emphasize this part of what you said because it really seems this way to me too:

If that seperation publicly was not fabricated, I don't know what is true anymore. They had to do that SOOP conversation to not take any blame on themselves.

I feel like the separation itself is obvious if you watch Big Hit content critically and watch non-BH content at all.  I could see maybe believing they were genuinely less close for a few years if there wasn’t so much footage of them being extremely close in non-official content.  I could see maybe buying the ITS conversation if I had been taking it for granted that they were less close.

But after noticing all the discrepancies between official and non-official content, paying attention to all those little details, that narrative -- the one that huge factions of this fandom believe -- simply doesn’t make sense to me.  It doesn’t fit the facts if I look at all of them together.

Personally, though, I have a hard time making blanket statements about the morality of how the situation was handled.  I certainly think that it could have been handled better, and obviously the whole idea of needing to hide because of bigoted social norms is incredibly messed up, but with the exception of physically separating Taehyung and Jungkook from each other with the double standards that they did, it’s just too hard to know who was making which decisions.

As far as the character assassination (which is probably an extreme way of putting it, but hopefully you know what I mean) of Taehyung and Jungkook as a result of all of this, I honestly kind of doubt anyone foresaw the way all of that would play out, and it’s clear that there are always going to be people who hate on the members or have understandings of the members that don’t align with those of other fans.  That’s inevitable.  So even though it’s frustrating that a lot of people dismiss their bond, whether they even care about shipping or any of that side of things, it’s hard to lay the blame for that in any one particular place.

#ask #taekook

[thegamecollection]

CHECKING OUT THE MURDER HOTEL!

It’s very fitting to us that after seeing the first in this collection of horrifying, interactive drama survival games make its debut at Gamescom 2018 with Man of Medan, we then got to experience hands-on the final chapter in Part One of the Anthology with The Devil In Me at Gamescom 2022!

From the moment we felt the fear on deck way back when, to last week’s short stay at The Murder Hotel, we knew we’d be hooked on this range of offerings from Supermassive Games. The team of course behind 2015 horror classic ‘Until Dawn’ were never going to let any of us down when it came to choice-based terror... And true to form with the previous 3 releases in Part One, The Devil In Me ticks the boxes in eerily strong fashion.

Firstly we’d like to thank our friends at Bandai Namco Entertainment for providing us with the fast pass to play the game! We’d also like to extend an apology to the (many) disgruntled fans of the series that we walked past to get to the front of the queue. A special mention to the guy that said “yeah, you’re really sorry”... Honestly, we were!

Now that our apologies are out of the way, let us get down to the nitty gritty and tell you about our experience in-game...

If you’re familiar with The Dark Pictures titles then you need no introduction to how they play. This sounds like we’re saying “it’s just more of the same” and whilst that may be true, that is by no means a negative slant! The consistently strong pacing is unshakable, and the life or death (sometimes death or death) choices that leave you feeling genuinely responsible for a friend’s untimely demise, is as raw a feeling now as it was in 2018.

I found myself playing as Jamie, one of a group of documentary film makers that have been invited to a modern replica of H.H. Holmes’ infamous Murder Hotel. A real-life serial killer from the 1800s and a wild one at that. If you’ve seen the initial trailer for this release then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the story feels scarily like a SAW movie! From the off I felt like I was indeed playing a game in which there are no rules, only death... And that quickly became apparent.

Wandering the abandoned halls, climbing over strewn objects, shimmying across tiny ledges and jumping gaps with nothing but a torch for guidance, all felt like a familiar yet shuddering experience. Cut-scenes playing in between my movements showed a dark figure in the shadows, watching my every decision and revealing the evil behind this whole gruesome setup... Again I revert back to my SAW link and how it felt influential in this story.

True to form, jump scares are never far away! I found myself stepping backwards in a painfully uncool manner when a mannequin in front of me was sharply pulled into a vent by chains. The headset I was wearing really played it’s role of scaring me half to death brilliantly. Nice one, headset. I’d have thrown you if you were mine.

(I wasn’t allowed to take photos in here so this is the only one I managed to get! Sorry, Bandai!)

Continuing my move through this not-so-fun house of fun, examining clues, getting separated from other characters by collapsing floors, finding keys, and shuffling bravely in the dark, all lead me to the climax of this gameplay demo. Two compressed chambers with my friends, Erin and Kate, stuck inside side-by-side... Of course, the oxygen supply began to seize. Of course, I had to choose. Sorry, Erin. It wasn’t personal. Truth be told I didn’t even mean to choose you to die. But as she spluttered, coughed her guts up and faded away in front of my eyes, she wrote a clue in her own blood on the window:

“NOT PENNY’S BOAT”

If you’re not a LOST fan then this will instead be lost on you. It’s also of course NOT what she wrote, but we won’t spoil things for you too much!

Here is a *SPOILER ALERT* however... My colleague who played at the station behind me later informed that he chose to save Kate instead. This in turn saved Erin too... I say it again... Sorry, Erin. I barely even knew you.

Feast your eyes on the Gamescom Trailer above for The Devil In Me and don’t just take our word for it... Whilst its the last in Part One of The Dark Pictures Anthology, it’s by no means least.

Pre-order on all formats ahead of its launch on 18th November, right here at The Game Collection!

Fans of the SAW franchise and The Dark Pictures alike will all find themselves saying “Yes, I want to play a game.”

-Jack

#gamescom #the dark pictures anthology #bandai namco entertainment #tgc #thegamecollection #18th november #the devil in me #gameplay review #gaming news #gameplay #supermassive games #review #news #Gamers #gamers of tumblr