#this masterpiece was way beyond me. way beyond anyone else

[linusbenjamin]

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity. Oppenheimer (2023) dir. Christopher Nolan

#oppenheimer #filmedit #cillian murphy #oppenheimeredit #henricavyll #usersilk #useranimusvox #jokerous #dailyflicks #barbenheimer #nikolatexla #this masterpiece was way beyond me. way beyond anyone else #think of a movie that everything about it is perfect #the soundtrack. the actors. the script. the atmosphere. #i don't remember if i ever watched a scene before where my heartbeat was that fast #there were more than 100 people inside and no one made the slightest sound and it was like i could hear every heartbeat #this was my first nolan movie. i couldn't go tenet (which was amazing too) but i'm glad i didn't bc this was the best one #mind you the only thing i understood at first sight was a scene about black holes in which i was genuinely interested before #you know the movie becomes way more fun when you actually understand it - not as a whole but also the details

[sunboki]

🍸 OFF–DUTY

bodyguard! Christopher Bahng x bartender! f. reader

WARNINGS. cursing, suggestiveness

TROPE. bodyguard au, bartender au, love at first sight, friends to lovers

WORD COUNT. 0.7k

NOTES. if you asked me where this came from i wouldn’t know how to answer.. i just love bodyguard chan an unhealthy amount

Finally free from his usual jam-packed schedule, Chan roamed around an equally jam-packed club to get to Changbin - standing by the stools with girls flogged to his sides, obviously there for nothing but a shortcut into his pants.

Well, he is in a club, so at least their intentions are sensible in some way. Plus, Changbin is good-looking with his naturally charming personality and positively jacked build.

"Hey! If it isn't the bloke himself."

Remind Chan why he ever bothered to teach the man Australian terms. Even better, remind him why he agreed to go clubbing on his day off. Though he didn't complain, playfully ruffling his friend's-otherwise coworkers-hair.

Maneuvering his way to the bar through sweaty bodies, he glanced back to hear Changbin's preference before turning back around. Except his mind went completely haywire after catching sight of you.

Prior to laying eyes on you, Chan preached that the club was an awful place to fall in love, but for the first time in his life, thanks to you, he might consider.

He knows it's your job to entertain in order for better tips, but he seriously cannot get enough. Not with how the neon lights reflect the prettiness of your eyes nor the tightness of your top as you move around, taking orders left and right.

"And for you?"

He's staring and you just smile so sweetly. Fuck.

"Ah—right, one Negroni and a Moscow Mule, thanks," He breathed, frantically averting his eyes anywhere else.

This was beyond embarrassing, both to his ego and his career all at once. Thank god Changbin didn’t hear or he'd never let it go. You wouldn't expect a bodyguard to become so flustered, right? Then there's Chan, the exception.

Sliding his card and ID on the marble countertop, he practically gawked when you momentarily made eye contact, wondering how a masterpiece like yourself ended up bartending in Itaewon.

No. He couldn't think like this. His work required his full attention 24/7, he couldn't afford to get carried away with feelings, especially not under these circumstances.

Unbeknownst to him, Changbin had seen everything.

"Do it.”

He flinched at the voice, too lost in thought to notice his friend now occupying the space to his right.

Despite first impression, Changbin was physic when it came to reading people - granted, his job required nonstop observation of body language so that was an advantage. To him, Chan was an open book.

"You know it’ll end badly," The bodyguard audibly sighed, arms crossed over his chest.

It was true, and anyone in a five mile radius would agree once they got word of his job. You would, unfortunately, have to stay as an artifact behind bulletproof glass tonight. Either way, the probability you were even available had to be slim looking like that.

Admire, he'd just admire.

"I know you're the type of guy that commits, but you don't have to commit. Staying for a night is okay too, big guy." The shorter man patted his shoulder lightly, lifting the strong beverage against his lips.

"'Wish it was that easy," Chan uttered, fixated on your silhouette moving closer.

"It is, watch."

Seo Changbin, what the hell are you doing.

He froze, watching his friend whisper something to you he couldn't make out. It seemed like that wasn't the only thing he wasn't prepared for, mouth senselessly slacked — taking in the fact you motioned for him to come nearer without being a dream.

"Your friend," You gesture towards Changbin who left in the other direction, tipping your head while referring to him like everything you did wasn't detrimental to his mental health.

"Said you wanted to have some drinks after my shift. I'm not busy so stay behind, my shift's about over. Just don't get drunk, I don't babysit handsome men for free."

What kind of bullshit did Changbin say this tim-wait—-did you accept? Scratch that, did you call him handsome?

Pupils blown, he soaks up your smile referring to him, certain he can die happy after this. Although, the sudden burst of confidence he experienced in return came in clutch.

"How much do you charge for the night? I'll pay.”Elbows propped on the cool surface, his full lips parted, giving you a slow once over with those captivating eyes of his.

"You're a funny one, I charge extra for my number." You laugh a response, the sight too adorable for him not to appreciate.

"If it's for you I have money to spare, see you after?"

"Have your wallet ready,” You grin, delivering a wink and wave of your hand as you walk away, leaving him breathless for the billionth time that night.

He already knows you'll be one to remember.

sunboki, may 2022 ©

#stray kids x reader #stray kids x you #stray kids x y/n #straykids x reader #straykids x you #bangchan x you #bangchan x reader #bangchan x y/n #bangchan angst #bangchan fluff #skz bangchan #straykids bangchan #bang chan x you #bang chan x female reader #bang chan x y/n #bang chan fluff #bang chan x reader #bang chan angst #straykids fluff #straykids angst #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #skz bang chan #bang chan #christopher bahng #chris bahng

[littlewomenpodcast]

Laurie's Foot Fetish (Little Women 2019 Roast)

Niina: When you asked me, can we do a ranking I was like, do we have to watch the 2019? No! Christina: No. That movie has grained my brain so much. There are times when I just randomly think about it and I am just like..what in the world. Nobody but me, I am just sitting in my room…I hate that. That moment. Someone brought it up and I was like right I forgot. I told my mom when we were watching it the first time. I said you know. Don’t trick me, because they added these little things and I am like ”Oh that was in the book, I have never seen anyone doing” but then I think about it and it is just not right. Somebody mentioned that in the book, at some point Amy wants to expand her art skills, beyond painting. She tries to do sculpting and she puts plaster into a bucket and puts her foot in it. She is trying to learn how to do that. That is the motivation behind it. In the 2019 film, Amy’s motivation is to do something to Laurie to remind him of her pretty feet. Niina: Jeez. Christina: Just so you know everybody, in 2019 Laurie had a foot fetish. Apparently. When I saw that, I was like Oh my god! It just keeps getting worse. I just look back on it and I re-evaluate a lot of things I thought were okay. I have seen a lot of reviews that are like ”Oh I thought that apron scene was pretty good” and I am like ”Was it though”? Now that I am thinking about it. It wasn’t as hot and heavy as people try to make it be. Pride and Prejudice hand flexing scene it is not! That film is a train wreck and it is rightfully at the bottom of the list.

Niina: It’s funny about that foot thing because I was thinking like..well if we have this Amy who in the movie is twenty-something. Why would a twenty-something person give a sculpture of their foot to a guy? That doesn’t make any sense.

Christina: I have to say, I don’t want to criticize her acting in general, because I only have seen her in one thing but Florence Pugh is the worst Amy. I rather listen to the 1978 Amy whine and screech, than have to deal with Florence Pugh’s Amy, because I feel like hers is almost borderline psychopath. Just the way that she so calmly talks about why she burned the book. I was just like ”Are you kidding me?”. My mom, I have seen few more adaptations than she has. She hasn’t seen the 70s one of the masterpieces theater but she has seen all the other ones and her name is Amy too. She always feels a little defensive towards Amy, but she was like ”Wow this is the first time I don’t like Amy” and that is a problem. She has read the book once or twice when she was younger. She was like ”I am not too familiar with everything in the book, like the way you are”, but even then, she still watches the adaptations, Amy is not so bad of a character but she was like ”This Amy, I don’t like her at all” and I say it is more the script. I don’t exactly want to criticize the actress, because I have not seen her in anything else. So I don’t know how I feel about her acting in general but I just do not like Florence Pugh as Amy here. As a child, definitely not, and I am just kind of ” hemp” as her as an adult, but I think that is again just the script, because she just goes on however she is. On the contrary in the book, it is Laurie that chases Amy down the street, when she is in the carriage, but in this movie, she is the one who chases Laurie down and acts kinda ridiculous. Screaming and whatever else. Not in character with Amy.

Niina: I think it was Greta Gerwig who said” Oh we admire these girls because they don’t want to grow up and I am like No Amy wants to grow up, if you read the book. She wants to know what it is like to be a woman. She wants to become a mature person. A true lady, but then when I watched this movie, I wished that I hadn’t seen it. That moment when Aunt March comes and she says ”Amy is going to go to Europe with me, just so you know”. There isn’t any explanation why Jo can’t go, because they didn’t include the scene from chapter Calls, but Amy is like ”Why nobody is happy for me?” and then Marmee goes like ”My poor Jo. You really should have gotten the trip”. I wanted to smash the screen when I saw that. It is so completely opposite to the book because in the book Amy feels bad for Jo and Marmee says” No Jo. You caused your own misery. You were rude to the aunts, that is why you lost the trip”. It is so confusing because, we are supposed to see Amy as this mature person, who can handle things, and then she just complains that nobody is happy for her. I can not admire this Amy and I can not admire this Jo. It is the woman-child trope that I hate.

#little women #little women 2019 #amy march #jo march #anti greta gerwig #greta gerwig #jo and laurie #timothee chalamet #laurie lawrence #florence pugh #saoirse ronan #little women podcast #Youtube

[thehoneybeet]

top 3 fics I read in 2022

@mintawasalreadytaken what a great idea, and thanks for the tag! I have to preface this by saying my favorite thing is very often also the latest thing I read. However, these fics stand out to me and they also (almost) all happen to have been posted this year.

Favourite published in 2022:

Tapestry by @kbrick (91k)

For everyone who waits to read until a wip is no longer a wip, the last chapter was posted today!!

Summary:

In 2017, Harry is on his way to Pansy and Luna's beach house. He’s a bit terrified of seeing Draco, to be honest. It’s been a while, and then there’s the little matter of Draco having married someone else in the interim.

In 2001, Draco is drunk, wearing Pansy's mother's ermine coat, and afraid to walk into the Leaky because someone might throw a curse at him. So, of course, he runs into his ex-nemesis and hopeless crush, Harry Potter.

This is a love story that isn't perfect, about two people whose timing is never quite right, and all the moments that come together to make something extraordinarily beautiful anyway.

Why I loved it:

Kbrick never fails to write Draco and Harry in a way that just feels so real, so tangible. Her endings are heart-throbbingly resonant. This one brought me to tears (not for the first time--so did the ending (or shall I say beginning?) of Running Mate). I loved the progress of this story--that we get a glimpse of just one summer in 2017, interspersed with nearly two decades of a love story that is imperfect, tragic, and still manages to bring out what I like best in both of them. The friendships are golden. You could even just read this for the jaw-dropping description of what's beyond the veil, and you'd still be satisfied. Just go read it.

Favourite 'New-to-Me' Fic:

This was new-to-me and also published in 2022, so I guess this counts as well. Plus I can't pick absolute favourites, anyway.

A Pocket Full of Stones by @amywaterwings (68k)

Summary:

A curse is spreading through the wizarding world, erasing memories of the war. Harry Potter is on the case!

Where Draco is the DMLE’s most wanted dark wizard and Harry is the private investigator tasked with bringing him in. It goes as well as one might expect.

Why I loved it:

The first sentence of this fic is:

The night was bleeding, the moon a lopped off head.

Just look at it! Beautiful! It sets up the tone of the fic, dark in all the beautiful ways, so perfectly, so succinctly. And then it gets better. I loved both Harry and Draco's characterization in this. It felt fresh. It was real. Why should they be complacent with corrupt bullshit? Let the liars burn. They are so obviously made for each other and Amy's writing is beautiful. There is reference to Virginia Woolf. I just can't say enough good things about it.

Wild Card

I just wanted to rec a third fic that was posted in 2022 that I loved.

An Emerald In The Sky by @corvuscrowned (6.6k)

Summary:

The hardest part about shagging an Unspeakable is that they’re not allowed to speak of anything. All Draco knows is that Harry works in Time. Harry works in Time, and while he’s out there in all of that time, it is as unforgiving to him as it is to anyone.

Somewhere along the way, Draco realizes he's been thinking in lines, when he should have been thinking in circles.

Why I loved it:

It's beautiful, obviously, because Crow wrote it. But I especially loved it because it's clever. The ending is delightful because everything makes sense. Circles. I loved the angst, the pining, Draco as an astronomer, contemplating the heavens. Re-reading it is a completely new experience. Harry suddenly makes perfect sense. All I can say is that it's a masterpiece, and that I'm seriously impressed with the mental flexibility it required to write.

Honourable mentions:

Posted in 2022:

Hollow by @writandromance. 52k. I love everything written by her and this is no exception. A halloween story set during eighth year about pumpkins, growth, and healing. The way the POV is crafted is sheer genius.

New to me:

there will be time, there will be time by @amywaterwings. 20k. Amy is a master of alternate universes. Enough said.

A hag, a hex, a tale of redemption by @aibidil (2018, 43k)

Wild card/Re-read:

Stop All the Clocks by @firethesound. (2014, 45k) MCD, will break your heart, but you'll be thankful it's broken. Re-read and fell back in love.

In the Bleak Midwinter by @the-fools-errand. 105k. I got to beta this one and if you like the idea of the boys in the Peaky Blinders world of organised crime, this is the fic for you.

Landlocked, Oceanbound by @nanneramma. 7.5k. An utterly beautiful Luna/Pansy story about grief and home and the sea. And there's birds. I love birds.

#fic rec #honeybeet recs #top three of 2022 #but I couldn't pick three #mintaminta

[thecameronchronicles]

Dominant

TW: Dominant Pope! Rough Sex, Smut, language, bondage.

SUMMARY: After a series of events leave Pope frustrated at every sense of the word, you become his outlet…

WORD COUNT: 2100

*Requested*

Dominant

Anyone who knew Pope Heyward, knew he was rarely outspoken. Passionate for those he loves, he kept his own desires and emotions in such check that he was often seen as being more reserved. Even those closest to him would only be able to count his outbursts on a single hand, all of which had been from frustrations and pressures he took to heart. And as his girlfriend, nobody knew this better than you. Because on the surface, as demure and controlled he led others to believe he had been, he exercised a specific form of sovereignty when in need of his own release. And for this, you would be his conduit-and a willing one at that as all you wanted to do was please him. 

“Sit on the bed.” He ordered, closing the door behind him as he licked your lips to what was to come. You knew that he only behaved this way when he was rightfully frustrated, whether it was guilt from his parents, a row with one of the other pogues, or perhaps an undeserving grade on a college paper, you would graciously offer yourself as consolation for life’s unfair blows. For this, you didn’t care to ask the reason behind his behaviors as you would otherwise just bask in it. You did this not only because of your love for him but also for how it excited you to know that only you got to see this side of him. It was almost as if you were allowed a behind-the-scenes look at a masterpiece or even a sneak peek before anyone else and it sent your heart a million miles a minute as you currently sat in wait to his steps slowly approaching you. 

“You remember the rules, baby?” He asked, a soft hand to your cheek as you nodded, the ones he was in reference to having been that of your limitations. That if at any given point anything became too much, a single word would be uttered and he’d return to his usual saccharine self he was with you. And yet, it was a word you’d never have to use, but you bowed your head in agreement anyway. 

“You know I love you, right?” You nodded. 

“I want to hear you say it for me…”

“I know you love me.”

“Good…” He released a deep breath before pulling his belt from his slacks, having been dressed up a bit for a dinner, now dismantled exclusively for your gaze. You swallowed hard as that soft hand to your cheek was now in your hair as he guided you to your knees. 

“You know what to do…” You nodded, licking your lips one final time for lubrication before preparing yourself for him. 

“Breathe through your nose baby…I’m not going easy-” 

“Yes.” He took your hair backwards so you were forced to look up at him. 

“Yes, what?” You licked your lips. 

“Yes Sir.” 

“Good girl…” He motioned to begin as your fingers would pull down the remainder of the cloth keeping him from you. As if unwrapping a gift, your digits moved gingerly until you could have him within your grasp. 

“I don’t want your hand-Are you gonna listen to me or test me?” 

“Listen-” His brow raised. “Sir.” You spoke quickly in correction as he nodded. 

“Then close those pretty little lips around me…Take me like I’m going to give it to you…and let me use that tight throat for my liking.” You nodded as you opened your mouth to him, his hand immediately gripped within your hair, forcing you into place as you breathed through your nose. 

Even if the tears streamed down your cheeks and the mix of gagging and gasping was worrisome to anyone in earshot, you both continued as the sounds of his moans had been enough to push beyond your own limitations. And yet, you would get carried away as your fingers rounded to his ass, the perfect firmness tempting your claw as he was quick to reprimand you by withdrawing from you. 

“Can’t keep your hands to yourself? I can rectify that.” For this, he used his belt to bring your hands behind your back, locking you in place. 

“Keep going.” He motioned towards his ockc as you paused for a second, knowing how this would now prove to be a struggle with your lack of mobility. And yet, up to the challenge, as always, you took him between your lips once again. Only now, it would be with great strain as his shaft was much larger and deeper than your mouth, making you drool and cry without a means of support as he continued to bask in the tension leaving his body with your motions. 

“Good girl…Fuck…” He grunted behind his teeth. 

“I want to come inside you…so slow down-s-slow the fuck down!” But you couldn’t due to a lack of control, his thrusts making it difficult as he would pull you by your hair, a tap to your cheek correcting you as he brought you to your feet. 

“Just don’t want to behave today, do you?”

“I’m sorry sir-”

“No you aren’t…” He rivaled you breathlessly, forcing you to your feet and back onto the bed, pushing you back so you rested uncomfortably on your wrapped wrists. Sensing this, he would turn you into a bend over the bed. 

“You are supposed to be my good girl…” He began, a harsh slap to your ass making you gasp and react against the bed, its mattress at a mercy from your mutual force against it. 

“You are supposed to make me feel better and all you’re doing is testing my patience…so you know it’s only fair that I test yours…” He kicked your ankles apart, moving to his own knees and carrying his tongue between your folds. 

His hot breath against your thigh as he seemed to try and swallow you whole, his motions then turned intricate with each flick of his tongue and penetration of his fingers. But as you attempted to move against him to allow your body the pleasure it yearned for, another strike to your cheek left you with another gasp that was interrupted by his name. 

“POPE!” And to this, he lifted behind you, leaving you on the edge of your release before teasing you with the head of his cock between your needy lower lips. 

“Always so ready for me, aren’t you baby? It’s a shame you just don’t want to behave….” He was rough with this first thrust, bottoming out but giving you no time to adjust before he began his paces behind you. With a hold to the binds of your wrists, he lifted you just enough to where you were left in a strain, his hand coming to your breast and squeezing in his own neediness as he cursed behind you, mourning his knee to your side for a deeper angle, 

“You’re gonna make me come inside you, right baby? You’re gonna take it no matter how deep I am, how hard?”

“Yes, sir…” You breathed. 

“And you’re going to be quiet about it because nobody else gets to know how good you feel but me…how good you sound…wouldn’t want them to have fantasies about my girl, would we?”

“No…” He slapped your ass. 

“No sir.” You bit your lip, already half exhausted from his motions. 

“Shit, you take me so fucking well…But this ass looks so fucking good all red for me…” The grip pulling your hands as reins had now been pulled upwards until your back rested against his chest. 

“But I want to take my time…got a lot of shit to work out…” You nodded, moaning to the feeling of his large hands taking hold of your breast, kneading and fondling the soft skin and hardened nipples, making you groan to each and every one of his motions as he remained inside of you, but was stationary. 

“You move an inch and you don’t get to come at all.” He warned as you nodded, muttering a ‘yes, sir’ before his hand moved to your clit. 

“I love touching you…I love the little sounds you make and the way you move against me…but for right now, you’re gonna stay quiet and still for me…because I need to use you for ME…”

You nodded, fearful to speak to break against his command. 

“And you keep being my good girl and I’ll make you squirt all over these sheets to show you how grateful I am…” You repressed the moan from leaving your lips as you nodded. 

“Good…Now don’t come. Don’t move. Don’t say a fucking word. You let me do what I need to…” His hand sashed between your breasts, his fingers at a rest around your throat as his second hand kept at your clit, pinching and rubbing in a change from vertical and horizontal motions, testing your patience, as you struggled to obey him. All you wanted was to belt his name, make him move inside of you, even just feel his kiss. But to all, you were denied. For this, your body began to betray you. 

“God, you’re desperate for it, aren't you?” You pressed your lips together with your teeth before being turned to face him. 

“You can answer me baby, you know how much I love to hear you beg.”

“Please, sir-”

“Say my name, baby…I wanna make sure you know who’s making you so desperate…who is gonna come inside this pussy, and who is gonna make you soak these sheets-”

“Pope…” You mewled. 

“One more time for me…quietly…” He warned as you nodded. 

“Pope…” You breathed his name desperately as he nodded, finally moving inside of you. But it was only to retract as you gasped. 

“I wanna see your face while I’m inside of you…when I come-when I make YOU come…” You nodded, being turned to him in a straddle as he would keep your hands behind your back while positioning you over him. Guiding you with a grip to your hands, you sunk onto him with a groan as he scoffed. 

“Now you let me use this pussy-my pussy to feel better, okay?”

“Please…”

“Whose pussy?”

“Yours-Sir-Pope” You struggled to formulate anything as you were becoming too drunk off of his fulfillment to remain intelligible in any sense. He would chuckle at this before beginning his pace. He rooted your hips in place as you were used exclusively for his motions, your body trembling against him. 

“You gonna come?”

“Yes!”

“NO!” He breathed, his motions stilled as he pulled your hair tighter, threatening a bite to your throat as you groaned. “Not until I say-” He boomed into your skin, returning to his motions as you begged. 

“Keep begging…keep convincing me you deserve it…”

“Please, please, please Pope..Please, oh my god, please-” You moaned and groaned in desperation as he smirked and winced against you. 

“Pussy so good you’re making me come-you want my cum, baby?”

“Yes, Pope, please!” He now unbound your hands, but pulled the belt between you, making it wet with your mix of slick, before taking it between your lips and binding it at the back of your head.

“Good girl…” He purred before leading his hand to the tail left behind, pulling it until you were forced to look towards the ceiling. 

“Then make me…” You made your motions swift and deep, rolling your hips as he adored while he met against you, bringing you both to the edge. 

“Don’t come-”

“Pope-” You muttered beneath the leather of the belt. 

“Don’t fucking come yet-”

“POPE!”

At the very cusp of his release, he would finally grant you yours, “Now, baby-Right now, let go!” And to this ,he released the tail of the belt and baked in the pleasure washing over your face as you continued to ride him through your high. Once removing the belt from your clenched jaw, he pressed a soft kiss to your lips. 

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you, too, Pope…” You spoke wholeheartedly as he grinned widely before turning you against him. 

“What are you-”

“I promised you’d soak these sheets…and you were such a good girl for me…as always…and I’m a man of my word-” His fingers came to your clit, rubbing viciously before sliding those same digits into a bed, thrusting into vicious pumps. 

“Stay quiet, though…I know it’s hard…but let me give you this reward, okay?”

“Pope…Pope I’m gonna-”

“I know baby, let me have it…come on..make me proud…”

“Fuck!” You belted behind clenched teeth as he nodded. 

“Good girl baby…good fucking girl…” He smacked your ass as you coated your own thighs and the sheets as promised, a final kiss to your lips showing just how proud he was of you as you knew you’d pleased him yet again…

Taglist: @hopebaker @iovdrew @penny4yourthoughts @magnificantmermaid @pickingviolets @lovedetlost @trikigirl271 @my-baexht-ls @slut4starkey @slvtherinseeker @obxiskewl @obxxrxfes @bluesongbird @slut-era @ailee-celeste @rafesbae

#popeheyward #pope heyward #pope heyward fanfiction #pope heyward smut #outerbanks smut #outer banks #obx

[bookwyrm35]

My rant about how complicatedly beautiful Locklyle is:

(Disclaimer: this was written at 3 am and I tend to get weirdly poetic in the wee hours. 🤷‍♀️ Just so you know.)

Let us begin with our components of this ship: Lucy Carlyle and Anthony Lockwood. Lucy comes from a home practically devoid of love. Her father is gone, her mother might as well be, and every sister (save possibly Mary) has left her life completely. When she went to London, she was searching stability, shelter and yes, she got that but she also got so much more. She found a family. She found friendship. She found love.

That, in my book is such a vital part of any relationship. Before you are anything else (not more because romance is not above platonic, but simply different), you must have friendship. It might sound cheesy or a little weird but it is true. And it was true for them.

It is important, when analyzing Lockwood and Co. characters, to remeber that Lucy, as much as we love her, is an unrediable narrator. She tells us what she notices and nothing more. As the books go on you can see her dwelling on Lockwood's description, going into more detail of how he looks, how he acts, she even starts to catagorize his smiles. It's slow and she'll never be caught dead admitting it, but you can see how her attraction to him grows and for once I love it. One, because the girl doesn't even notice and two, because it's natural. The pace they move at can be seen by others as miniscule and tortuous, but to me it is right. If there is to be romance, let it be done slowly. Let it be shown at the pace of opening spring and with the steps of shaky feet.

Turning to her counterpart in Lockwood, the first thing I would like to address is his focus. His ambition and drive, though seemingly strictly personal at first, is another vital thing I think plays into the masterpiece that is their relationship. He (for reasons you know if you've read the books) is laser focused on doing his job as an agent and doing it well. His country is plauged by a scourge and he will stop at nothing to alleviate the pain is brings. His whole life since...well, spoilers, has been devoted to fighting the dead, removing their spirits and doing it with flair. But then... along comes this Listener, this girl named Lucy, and everything changes. Suddenly he finds himself with his attention spilt, his once single mindedness gone like it never existed. For the first time in so, so long he thinks about something outside the Problem. This is all speculation, mere drivel on my part, but I truly belive that Lucy changed Lockwood in a way no one else could. She grounds him, gives him a reason to live beyond the next case. She becomes like his sun, a beacon of hope and light he can always turn back to.

I've heard people say that Lockwood fell first but Lucy fell harder. I think that fits. Though we don't see it clearly through Lucy's eyes, from the moment they met, Lockwood would do anything for her. Even when he barely knew her, he gave her his childhood room, a place in his home, his agency and his heart. He never pushed her to talk about her past, never took her Talents for granted, always tried to make sure she felt she belonged. He won't realize until much later, but I think he fell for her before she even accepted the job.

What about Lucy though? Why do people say that she fell harder? I can't say much, don't want to give away anything to those who have yet to read the books, but just know that she would do anything, anything, to keep Lockwood safe. Even if it meant torture and pain and loneliness beyond belief, if she thought it would help him-she would do it. She loves him so much, and she doesn't even realize it.

But does this devotion, the immediate connection make void the point I just made about things needing to be slow? No, because of the ever important detail of their ignorance. It is this inability to make that connection that I find so endearing, even nigh amusing. Anyone else could have told them they love each other, but the fact that they can't see it is delicious to me. It makes them act like fumbling fools, but they're teenagers. What do you expect? Their world is dark and dreary and full of death, but they have each other, and to them that's enough.

I think another reason I love Locklyle is because they never delude themselves into believing they're the only two people on this earth that matter. Never is there a moment where they shut out their friends in favor of being with the other. George (and later a few other characters) are so dear to them, and you never doubt that. Lucy and Lockwood have a special connection, that cannot be denied, but it is never put above thier friendships with others. Like I said before, romance is not more. It is simply different.

#save lockwood and co #bring back lockwood and co #lockwood and co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #locklyle #george karim #renew lockwood and co #DisneyForLockwoodandCo #lockwood and co books

[wejustvibing]

Hello again!

Sorry for being in here so much! I wanted to ask your opinion on something about Lewis and his interactions with people he is interviewed by or who he meets for the first time. What i mean is, when Lewis met Takashi Murkami and he described him as a nugget of love or something of those words or when the Mercedes E Sports boys met Lewis and Marcel said meeting Lewis is like an experience you can’t put into words (again im not sure of his exact words) what do you think it is about Lewis that makes people feel that way? Because no offence, i don’t often see anyone else being spoken about in this manner, so I wonder what it is about Lewis that has people feeling this way. And in your opinion, why do you think, despite this, people still want to call his character into question and imply or blatantly say he is the opposite of what so many other people have said he is?

I also would like to ask, what are a couple of things about Lewis that you appreciate?

Have a good day!

hey you! sorry for getting to this so late. i needed a breather. yes!!! people's reaction to meeting him is my absolute favorite thing. the way murakami has described him is a masterpiece in itself. it's so overwhelmingly priceless. he must be magic, this guy <3

well i've never met him so it wouldn't be right for me to try and guess the feeling or vouch for any of these experiences. at least not without bringing out my inner parasocial crazies. but in my opinion, aside from the obvious personality and aura, he's highly intuitive and excellent at reading energies around him and more often than not he reflects them back, probably drawing people in. he's super respectful and attentive when they're engaging him which must be refreshing. also he never ever does what's expected of him—including expectations based on perceptions, media reports or hearsay that always paint him a certain way. it probably surprises them the most i guess?

i appreciate and love a whole lotta things about him but let me try and stick to the topic and context here. i love that he is compassionate and often tries to show it through actions. he will ask interviewers about their day or lives, in a curious yet respectful way. will try to make them feel comfortable by being calm and soft-spoken. will try to make time for fans and not just through sheer obligation. i like that he's intentional with every single thing he does in public eye. it comes from hard learned lessons i'm sure and must take a whole team of people to make it work so well. but i love it, especially when you know the level of unnecessary scrutiny he faces.

i love the fact that he's not perfect. don't think i'd be a fan if he was. as someone learning to live with maladaptive perfectionism i take solace sometimes knowing it's okay to be less than perfect and it's okay to learn and improve, it's okay to keep striving in ways that might never reach perfection. you're allowed to be wrong and you can always be/do better the next time. i love it when he's spontaneous, lets out normal human emotions and passionate reactions. i love that he's one petty mf if and when he decides to be. love that he's always curious and ready to learn. he's not afraid of expressing himself, being himself (anymore), i really admire that. he could have easily gotten jaded by now with the amount of success as well as negativity but instead he's elevated himself beyond both and has nurtured his heart to be the best version of himself and enjoy the journey he's on.

but, one thing that i love the most about him is how easy he makes everything look. if there's one thing about him it's that he is going to make everything look effortless—hard work, driving, winning, success, fashion, attitude, reaction to criticism & hate, and most of all living (and living rent free in so many heads). it's probably what pisses some people off too. must need heaps of discipline, focus and strength to achieve it. but he does it anyway and you have to appreciate that.

#anonymous #can't tell you how much that empty space above read more is pissing me off rn but i'll try to ignore 🥲 #and sorry again<3

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts: 370 — HIStory

Sorry for how late this one is, all. Between Spinaraki Week, Life In General, and having, holy crap, SO MUCH I want to talk about this chapter, I'm running a bit behind. I may come back to try to finish out some fills for the rest of Spinaraki Week eventually, but I wrote all my really burning ideas at the start, so my desire to get back to my reams of meta was much more pressing. I'll try to hit the ask backlog before the next big post! (As you might be able to guess, I'm going to have a lot to say about Chapter 371, too.)

That said, hey, guys, guess who’s in hella Talking Point instead of Bullet Point Mode this chapter; that’s right, it’s me.  WHAT a chapter.  I’ll work my way through it in a broadly chronological fashion; the big stuff starts in the third section.

Kurogiri At the Hospital:

The narration calls Kurogiri “the closest thing to a masterpiece out of all the High Ends,” and I wonder just whose value judgment that is?  After all, Kurogiri was completed years ago and Ujiko clearly isn’t the type to rest on his laurels.  He’s never called Kurogiri his masterpiece; indeed, he explicitly says Hood-chan and the other High Ends are his finest work to date.  So who else would talk about Kurogiri like that?

The narration tends to default to Deku, but it’s a weird statement to give to anyone other than AFO or Ujiko.  What exactly makes Kurogiri the nearest thing to a masterpiece in the narrator’s opinion, anyway?  His capacity for independent action is the only thing he really has up on his competition, and his independent action has been shut down since Aizawa and Mic pulled out the might-as-well-call-it-a-vestige of Shirakumo Oboro.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that if the story’s going to call Kurogiri the most advanced High End, the only thing Kurogiri can be said to be the best at is his ability to mimic a human being, so we’d damn well better see him getting another chance to do that as Kurogiri, not as the remnant of Shirakumo.

While we’re talking about Kurogiri, I do have to ask who tipped off AFO about his location and when.  Per Chapter 325, if you’ll recall, it was supposed to be a secret.(1)  Of course, AFO has ever so many conveniently placed friends who can do anything the plot needs them to do, but I can’t help but think that if he found out where Kurogiri was prior to this clash, he’d probably have done better to, I dunno, send in Toga or something, especially if he could have had her rendezvous with someone on the inside.

(Note that if we get AFO’s inside man next week, it will make for a nice parallel to Endeavor and company being greeted by their plant inside Jakku General Hospital in 259.  Since a certain 1-A student wants to bring up hospital raids and all.)

As to Present Mic thinking of Kurogiri solely as Shirakumo, I can only continue to hope that this stubborn refusal to acknowledge even the possibility that Kurogiri might in some way be a meaningful existence will be back to properly bite him and Aizawa in the ass.  The heroes have a consistent pattern of refusing to acknowledge the humanity in villains—their trauma, their motivations, their close relationships—beyond whatever little personal tidbit they trip over that they can’t look beyond.  I would very much love it if, with Kurogiri, we get a direct consequence of that via Kurogiri choosing the boy he basically raised for a decade+ over the school friends the person he was constructed from knew for like a year and a half.

In and About The Crowd:

First things first, I want to mention that I got a few asks about racism in response to the leaks for this chapter—one about the way the fandom talks about this plotline and one about how the story itself is handling it.  I do want to answer those, as I definitely have thoughts on both fronts (especially considering the content of Chapter 371), but I also want to do some research first.

If I haven’t said as much before, I’m white myself, so when I talk about these topics, I always want to make sure I’m doing so carefully and respectfully.  In the case of Rock Lock's role this week, that’s going to take me some time.  Be expecting an ask round-up about fandom shorthand, the iconography of the CRC, the heteromorphs shouting ignorance at Rock Lock, and anything else I get on that topic in the interim, sometime in early-ish November.

That said, this certainly is a crowd with some…accessories, isn’t it?  CRC heads on pikes!  Or possibly just masks, though if that’s the case, they’ve stuffed something else in there that fills the cowls out more than just the bare pole. 

If it is just the masks, though, it’s in line with something the mob does three times in this chapter: unmasking.  They pull Koda’s mask and mouthguard off, tear the helmet off one of the police officers, and, of course, my favorite pint-sized firebrand consciously chooses to unmask himself.  The count goes up yet again if you include Shouji’s mask being torn apart, though in his case, it’s just the rigors of battle, not anyone specifically removing it.

(The above is another post I might write eventually on the extremely consistent pattern of heroes only being unmasked against their will, while villains—usually—choose when and under what circumstances to unmask themselves, and how that ties to the overarching themes of heroes staunchly resisting any sign of weakness while villains are more open to showing vulnerability, be it for the strategic value of doing so or out of a genuine desire to connect. Keep an eye out!)

On top of the crowd’s growing mask collection, they also have Spinner flags!  You love to see it.  Or you would, if Spinner weren’t in such dire straits right now.  I’d still buy one, though.

As to the actual characters present, it’s nice to see some familiar faces with the Spinner fanboys and the USJ guy, who’s particularly notable here for being the very first person in the series to use the term heteromorph.  He self-identified with it, exhibiting—at least on the surface—none of the distaste Spinner would later express for the word.

I’d love to know what the percentage breakdown is on this crowd’s membership.  We have dissatisfied civilians, PLF remnants and, as evinced by the USJ guy, also some prison escapees, for the completely wild total of 15,000 people.  While my primary response to that is, “I don’t think Horikoshi understands numbers very well,” taking it at face value, no matter how you cut the numbers, it is a bad look for the heroes.

I suppose we can assume there aren’t too many prison escapees here, since the narration didn’t even see fit to mention them as a factor, so that leaves mainly PLF and civilians.  So is what we have here mostly civilians—nearly fifteen thousand people willing to take their lives and their futures into their hands for this cause?  Or do we instead have many thousands of escaped PLF members, quite contrary to the pathetic number we were told were in the wind after the war arc?(2)  Or is it about half and half?

There’s no good answer!  It’s Real Bad no matter what!

That all said, we all know who I’m really here for, right?  Let’s talk about the returning PLFers.  (Alert: Incoming non-canonical advisor names.)

It’s long been eyebrow-raising to me that Spinner’s Number 2 advisor (hereafter called Scarecrow) does all the talking, while his Number 1 advisor (hereafter Nimble) never says a single word.  While I appreciate that it’s yet to joss my headcanon that she actually can’t talk because she doesn’t have a mouth, I would really like it if we could get some demonstration as to why she outranks her extremely verbal subordinate.

We saw her exactly once in this chapter, on the second page, advancing through the crowd just ahead of Spinner.  If she’s managed to keep up with him, this would seem to suggest that Shouji ought to be getting up close and personal with her next week, especially if the pattern of MLA types getting very angry when people attack their leaders holds (and it seems to be doing so; more on that below).  I’d be really quite happy to watch her and Scarecrow tag team this, with her taking on Shouji physically while Scarecrow fights him for the crowd’s morale.

(Edit in light of Chapter 371: *pause for bitter laughter*  Well, maybe she can be sneaking into the hospital instead.)

As to Scarecrow, while I didn’t get everything right, I’m thrilled that I did call him correctly as an insect heteromorph!  I initially thought that his hands and fingers looked the way they did because they were prosthetic replacements for missing limbs; now I think it’s just that they’re segmented in an insectile fashion.  Here, they look more consistent with the way his shoulder-mounted bug legs are drawn than they did at first,(3) and, with the clarity of the official scans, you can see that his knees and possibly his ankles are also segmented.

I love his row of mandibles, I love his head stripes (and wonder what color the anime will make them, since his coloring as of Season 6 Episode 2 is a very uninteresting light gray), and I have definitely noticed the prominent scar.

But enough about how Scarecrow looks.  Far more interesting are all the things he says.

Scarecrow’s Speech | Historical and Modern Discrimination:

Everyone and their mother has talked about the Star Wars references, and I don’t have enough Star Wars knowledge to say anything new or compelling there, save to note that the implications are incredibly grim.

Much more interesting to me is the variety of phrases that crop up this week in regard to heteromorphic discrimination.  The first of those was the phrase the Viz translation renders as “those who don’t fit the mold”—the same phrasing Re-Destro used when he was talking to Giran back in Deika about how societal mores lag behind the new reality of the world.  I immediately wanted to know if the wording was the same in Japanese as well, as that would be a good tell about how consistent the MLA messaging is.

Having checked the raws, as it turns out, the wording is completely different!  I can’t be mad, though, because the language Scarecrow’s using is exactly in line with a phrase I’ve been using in my (ongoing) evidence-gathering about heteromorphobia, and I love it when I’m right about things.

So, the phrase Scarecrow uses there is kotonaru katachi, katachi meaning form or shape, kotonaru meaning to differ/vary/disagree.  Thus, being more accurate to Scarecrow’s use of punctuation: “The history of the Paranormal is that of oppression of ‘differing forms.’”

This is important because one of the big gotchas a lot of people try to use to discredit this whole plotline is the protestation that people like Hawks and Jirou and Iida are all technically heteromorphs, and they aren’t being discriminated against, so clearly heteromorphobia is totally bogus.  If you look back through the series with Scarecrow’s phrasing in mind, however, the pattern becomes much clearer.  It isn’t about quirk types; it’s about body types.  There’s overlap between the two categories, the same way there’s overlap between heteromorphic quirks and “villain quirks”, but they’re distinct categories nonetheless.

Interestingly, if you look at the kanji—異なる形—the phrase is very close to the kanji used for “heteromorph”: 異形, igyou.  Literally all the phrase does is tack in some verb conjugation and use different readings of the kanji, and suddenly the whole tenor changes!

Speaking of igyou, though, for a chapter that’s all about anti-igyou discrimination, the term hardly crops up at all this week—even in the narration!  It calls the civilians there, “ordinary citizens who sympathize with [the PLF’s] cause.”  Scarecrow, as discussed above, uses “differing forms.”  There’s also a lot of “our kind” in the Viz release that’s implicit rather than explicit in the Japanese text (e.g. the old man who snarls at Koda calls him merely a traitor, not “traitor to your kind.”  But “heteromorph”?  It’s used exactly once: by one of the people throwing rocks at Shouji in his chapter-opening flashback.

Yikes.

The flashback people use much worse language than that, though, language the Viz translation particularly gets at it when it uses the word “defiled.”  As that word choice implies, the vitriol being hurled at Shouji in that scene is specifically telling of religious belief.  The two terms to consider are kegare (汚れ) and imi (忌み), both more tied up with Shinto practice than Buddhist.

Imi was translated simply as “dirty” in the line about “dirty blood.”  Online dictionaries give translations such as mourning, abstinence, or even holiness or religious purification, but the throughline—and another offered translation—is simply “taboo.”  Imi isn't necessarily a bad thing,(4) but it is that which is to be shunned and denied, especially in the context of religious rituals. It is clearly intended as a negative thing here, though!

Even more charged is kegare, a concept of spiritual uncleanliness that is thought to further be spiritually contagious, the sort of thing that can spread if not purified and/or contained.  Crucially, kegare is not nominally about moral failing necessarily; it’s not quite the same thing as sin.(5)  Kegare is a natural state that one picks up via exposure to things like death, disease, and waste, but also childbirth, menstruation, and so on.  Obviously, those are things that everyone is going to encounter eventually; the solution is appropriate acts of purification and boundary-setting.

…Except that’s just the party line on kegare.  People who have enough sustained exposure to sources of kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners, morticians—came to be considered incapable of purification, and so were classed prior to the pre-Meiji period as something very like an untouchable caste,(6) eventually coming to be called burakumin, and subject to severe discrimination in housing, marriage, and employment, as well as more generalized oppression that endures even today to those of burakumin lineage.

Shouji’s story here feels very akin to that.  The people hounding him are not doing so because of any exposure he’s had to a source of kegare, but because he himself is said source!  If he personally is the source of the corruption—corruption that will spread to his entire village, spiritually polluting other people and even the land itself—that is not something that can be purified.  Rather, the only thing to be done is A) drive him away or B) force him to never leave his house.

More on this next chapter, where we get even more awful details.

The last bit of descriptive terminology I want to touch on is ”human-faced people.”  I’ll talk about it more in the ask round-up, but I’d really love to know where the phrase came from, in-universe.  The heteromorphs are human, too!  Therefore their faces must de facto be considered human faces!  But that Spinner fanboy sure is yelling it with enough vitriol to suggest that he doesn’t agree, and I wonder how many times he had to be told that himself to internalize it in such a raw way.

Terminology aside, what else can be gathered from Scarecrow's speech?  Well, one thing that stands out is the conflation of the history of quirks with the history of heteromorphic discrimination.  And he's obviously over-simplifying—there are emitters in some of those early images of meta-abilities, and there are cases where it can be difficult to tell transformers and heteromorphs apart when a transformer's quirk is active, so they'd have been targets as well.  Still, whether Scarecrow is omitting that because he's priming this specific crowd to be angry or because he truly believes it himself, the words are not entirely without basis.

I can't remember if I've talked about this before here, but something that's always been very striking to me about the timeline of quirk acceptance and historical villainy is the suggestion that the original Meta Liberation Army and the Creature Rejection Clan are contemporaries.  Both groups are dated to the period in which society was beginning to stabilize after the chaos of the advent of quirks. 

So, while Destro and his cohort were getting angry about laws that would restrict the outside-the-home use of natural-born abilities to only those with a license, the CRC were getting angry about laws that would tacitly admit the equal humanity of people the CRC considered to be much less than human.  They started with protests, but soon moved into hate crimes, and in that, we get to something else that's very notable about the group: they were never banned.

The volume extra note on them says that, because people disapproved of their turn to violence, they lost popularity and splintered off into factions.  But this is a group that was and is committing hate crimes, that bases their whole identity around that hatred.  Why in heaven's name weren't they targeted legally?

Well, firstly, because while Japan has ways to limit the freedoms and financial prospects of certain groups (primarily organized crime and terrorist groups), it doesn't actually criminalize membership in such organizations.(7)  Still, there's no indication that even the controls the government can enact were ever utilized against the CRC—again, the thing that led to their diminished influence is simply that people at large thought they were going too far.

This, I think, is down to the other issue: Japan has basically no interest in anti-hate crime legislation.  From my research, there is exactly one federal law about hate crimes, one activists regard as woefully insufficient because it contained absolutely zero criminal provisions targeting offenders; the only things it actually required at the time of its ratification were that the government "begin implementing preventative measures"—things like community education or banning displays of hate speech/writing in public areas—as well as respond to "requests for consultation" from victims.  Consequences for offenders?  Absolutely none.

There have been one or two prefectures that have gone one small step farther in the institution of fines for repeat offenders, but one crucial thing that's nowhere to be found is one of the most basic features in hate crime legislation: the enactment of stricter sentencing guidelines for crimes proven to be committed due to demographic bias.

Finally, if those laws have remained unchanged in HeroAca Land Japan, none of them would protect heteromorphs anyway, because they're only aimed at discrimination against those of non-Japanese ethnicities!  Which plainly doesn't apply to ethnically Japanese heteromorphs!  Here again, we can connect heteromorphs to burakumin, who have only been granted legal equality (way back in the Meiji Era, when the laws declaring them a separate caste were repealed), but no greater legal protection.

Small wonder this crowd is so big.

Moving on, Nedzu's presence in that image of accepted-and-well-off heteromorphs is really fascinating—Nedzu is really fascinating.  Like, we know he has a nasty history with humans, and he certainly doesn't consider himself to be one of them, as we see when he talks about the various failings of humanity as a species.  But there he is, being considered a successful and integrated heteromorph.

And sure, by the base considerations that go into determining quirk type, he is a heteromorph: his body is permanently altered from the baseline state of his species(?) by his quirk.  But I wonder how much oversight he's subject to, what his citizenship (if he even has it) was contingent on, and stuff like that.  Nedzu feels very much like someone whose acceptance could be revoked at any time it became inconvenient, so he's worked hard to make himself as indispensable as he can.  And, in fact, he's done such a good job of it that he can even push back against government officials sometimes!

As the heteromorph giantess demonstrates, however, no matter how stable such positions seem, there's always a level of chaos that can destabilize them.  (More on her next time.)

As a final note on the content of Scarecrow's speech, I will point out that we can see just a smidge of his MLA origins here.  He doesn't ask for justice or reparations; what he says Spinner and this movement will do is lead heteromorphs to "prominence in society."  It's not enough that they be equal; they have to be, if you will, the new main characters.

That aaaaall said, let's turn to Shouji's response.

Shouji’s Response: 

It’s a mess.  The whole scene is, but since I’m running behind, I’ll save the full breakdown on why for next time, as 371 will round out Shouji’s response somewhat more than just the little we get here.  Focusing just on that little opening, then, let’s break down—as a lot of people already have—the fallacies involved here.  Because there are a ton of them in only the one penultimate page, holy shit.

“What’s any of that got to do with attacking a hospital?”

Shouji, please.  Spinner said it right before you hit him with a x8 punch multiplier: they’re here for Kurogiri, without whom they won’t win this, and society won’t change.  It’s the exact same reason the heroes raided a hospital at the start of the last arc; they believed that securing the creator of the Noumu was an essential part of guaranteeing their victory.

The villains are not just attacking a hospital for kicks; they are doing it to secure a valuable strategic asset.  And it’s not as if this hospital is completely defenseless, so the heroes can’t claim ignorance of this outcome!  They saw an attack coming because an attack was easy to predict, and they chose to leave Kurogiri here anyway, rather than—at least temporarily—moving him back to more secure holding.

That doesn’t magically make the people who masterminded this attack blameless, of course, but the heroes do have to take some of the responsibility here for the same reason UA had to take responsibility for Bakugou’s kidnapping(8) and police had to do the same for the League’s highway attack on the convoy transporting Overhaul.

Bakugou’s safety was UA’s responsibility just as much as a prisoner’s safekeeping is the responsibility of the state once they’re in custody.  That’s why it’s called custody—because it confers custodianship.

“Back in Jaku, the first thing the heroes did was take action to make sure the patients and staff were safe.”

No.  No, it was not.  In fact what happened was that they stormed the building without warning with part of the team dedicated to evacuation and the other part dedicated to securing Ujiko.  The two teams took action simultaneously.  They didn’t even have everyone out when they confronted Clone!Ujiko in the middle of a hallway within line of sight of two innocent (and clearly not notified of the ongoing evacuation!) staff members. They still didn’t have everyone out when the Noumu came up through the floor.

The fact is, the heroes couldn’t spring their trap with a more generous lead time to guarantee civilian safety because doing so would have tipped off Ujiko.  And, indeed, given that Ujiko was already talking about the heroes' presence when the POV cut to the real man in the lab, he clearly did get tipped off, though the story doesn’t say how exactly.

*** Minor tangent:

I might guess he found out via Mandalay’s telepathy, but, again, it didn’t seem like the pair of staff members that came to his defense had been notified of an emergency, which suggests the telepathic message only initially went out to the people in the immediate lobby, rather than "everyone on the premises except Garaki Kyudai the clone I have mistaken for Garaki Kyudai."

When I worked at a hospital, there were emergency codes for various circumstances; I would think something like that being called would be the immediate reaction to a bunch of heroes showing up and saying to evacuate the building, and yeah, of course a facility-wide evacuation code would do the trick for alerting him!

Frankly, it’s a heap of nonsense that the heroes got everyone out as quickly as they did.  For heaven’s sake, given Mirko’s speed and the ease with which she ripped through the Noumu in the basement, it cannot possibly have been more than ten minutes between her leaping through the main entrance and her kicking down Ujiko’s front door, and Mandalay reported a completed evacuation mere moments after that.  The hospital is four stories with at least two sizeable wings, and given that it was the middle of the day, it’s very likely that there would have been surgeries and other such procedures in progress.  Unless the heroes snuck Quicksilver onto their team, evacuation categorically could not have happened in ten or so minutes. 

But, me griping about how flawlessly the heroes’ raid plans tend to go off given the hurdles they ought realistically to be facing is not new. I now return to the rest of the chapter post. ***

Shouji, in any case, wasn’t at the hospital, so his word on what the heroes did is unreliable.  The students didn’t even know what they were doing at the start of that day, so anything he knows about the details of the Jakku raid is going to rely on hearsay from classmates or the media, none of whom were in the hospital advance team, either.

Moving back to the hospital currently in question, I have to ask Shouji how much authority over the space does he think a mob of 15K people actually has?  Even though the Jakku team wasn’t holding the building to start with, they still had the societal cachet to walk unimpeded into a bustling hospital, say, “Everybody out,” and be listened to with minimum fuss and maximum police backup.

The mob, conversely, is attacking a building from which they are being vigorously denied entry.  Their number is composed of malcontents and villains, people who have no authority to make any demands of those inside the building save whatever obedience they can brute force their way into commanding with numbers and threats.

And even so, you know what the mob spends most of the chapter saying?  Spoilers: it’s not screaming for blood and vengeance.  They have a few very common refrains—make way, clear a path, push the enemy back.  When they come up against Rock Lock, there are calls to get his hands, to tie him up.  Their intent is to restrain him, not to kill him, not even to knock him out!  When the crowd briefly overwhelms Koda, the elderly beaked heteromorph does nothing but tear off the kid’s mask and call him a traitor.

I’m not saying no one would get killed in the case of a villain victory; certainly, when violence has already broken out and emotions are running that high, with so many angry people there, it’s entirely likely that things would continue to escalate (though if Scarecrow were able to continue rallying the crowd, he would likely be able to direct them somewhat(9)).  Still, Shouji asks what their plan is to avoid innocent suffering, and I would point out that their modus operandi seems to be to not inflict undue suffering even on the people actively opposing them, much less the civilians inside!

No, one thing changes the mood of the crowd for the worse, and that’s Shouji’s attack on Spinner.(10)

That’s when the content of the cries suddenly gets more bloody-minded, calling explicitly for death, just like back in Deika when the MLA rank-and-file would go nuts when their leaders were attacked.  (Though, honestly, Spinner’s guesses back then notwithstanding, it’s not like that’s so strange or cult-like.  Attacking leaders of social or political movements directly is always going to piss off their followers.  Feels a bit like a foul, you know?)

I don’t have a lot to say about Spinner this week, because frankly the situation with him is just too damn depressing.  More on that—and on the matter of who’s expected to plan and who gets away without plans—next time.

“Do you have a plan here?  Because if not, I won’t let this stand!”

“I won’t let this stand” lolol does that mean Shouji would let this stand—just step back and roll out the red carpet for them—if they did have a plan?

Well, no, because his actual line there is the well-worn, “I won’t forgive you.”  According to Translator Sis, it’s kind of a Whole Thing in the American translator community that no one wants to just translate that line straight, so you see all kinds of weird permutations to get around it.  I'd venture to guess this is because the phrase has Cultural Baggage in Japanese that it lacks in English; I remember reading once, years ago, that the reason Sailor Moon concludes her speech every episode with, "I won't forgive you!" is that forgiveness is considered a Very Big Deal in Japan.

Of course, I should think forgiveness is a pretty big deal in most parts of the world, but Japan values societal harmony very highly, so yeah, I can see that declaring one's refusal to forgive someone (et tu, Natsuo?) would be regarded as a very grave statement indeed.

(More on that next time, too.)

Stray Notes: 

O  The chapter opens with, “Turning back the clock a bit…” and it strikes me that there’s not much point in turning back the clock if Spinner isn’t going to win here.  I mean, I obviously thought that already—there are far too many loose plot threads on this battle for it to be wrapping up yet—but as VFO foreshadowed last chapter, I think we must be right on the cusp of a shift in fortunes.

After all, if Spinner and the rest were just going to be defeated here, it wouldn’t matter that all this was happening slightly earlier than the (seeming) climax of ShigAFO’s defeat.  So while things look dire here, and look even worse in 371, I’m all but positive at this point that the hospital fight will represent the tides turning again.  We wound back the clock so that no one would be confused when Kurogiri and whoever-all else teleport into the middle of the UA battlefield right where we left Deku and ShigAFO last time.

O My schadenfreude at the police and Rock Lock’s complaints about how organized the mob is cannot be overstated.  Lolol, “There’re only 200 of us, we’re so short-handed, and they’re so mean for splitting us up, weeeeh!”  YEAH, THAT’S HOW IT FEELS.  SUCKS WHEN THE ENEMY SPLITS UP YOUR FORCES AND CUTS YOU OFF FROM BACKUP, DUNNIT?

O A point to Horikoshi.  I’ve been complaining for months now that the alleged shortage of heroes is empty talk because Team Hero still always had all the people they could ever need to attack and defend all their objectives.  Well, here we finally, finally have a shortage that matters: not enough people to defend Kurogiri is going to mean they fail to defend Kurogiri, with all the consequences that come after.  It’s about time.

O Koda is a sweetheart, and he doesn’t deserve to be called a race class allegorical discrimination victim traitor to his face.  I do, however, feel less bad for him in the wake of 371 than I did just after this chapter.

O The blood splashed on the ground is an evocative touch, and I particularly like the panel layout of Scarecrow, arms up and reciting his toll of grievances as the image of the crowd he’s talking to today gives way to that image of spilled blood, and then to a crowd from times past, where heteromorphs are on the opposite end of the violence, and then even further to the image of the surface peace people fool themselves into believing exists today.

It’s really excellent in the way that it matches Scarecrow's verbal addressing of all this—the crowd, the history, the social veneer—with an image of his visually addressing it.  He’s even the only one who isn’t contained in a panel, the ledge he’s standing on jutting out subtly in front of the other images, giving the impression that he’s standing in front of this gallery of horrors and explaining them to an audience like a particularly fire-and-brimstone museum guide.

Fantastic work!

O In terms of translation, I don’t love the choice to render Spinner’s broken language as caveman-speak.  I realize that it’s not really possible to get at the same effect in English—indeed, it wouldn’t be possible to get across the effect in spoken Japanese, either!  Still, I think a closer equivalent would be to leave Spinner’s language as-is, but spell it all phonetically, like a grade-schooler trying to write words they’ve heard but haven’t learned how to spell yet.  That’s a much closer replica of the way regular kanji are broken down into their component sounds or the wrong system of writing is used.

O With Scarecrow waving Spinner onward like that, I have to wonder how cognizant he is of Spinner’s dysfunction, and what he thinks of it if he does know?  Next week’s chapter is unclear on this as well.

O Someone please save me from civilians standing around with slack looks of shock on their dumb faces the moment a hero makes an ill-considered rhetorical point.  Cripes, I’m so tired of civilians in this story not being allowed to have opinions, beliefs, or motivations that are well-considered enough to stand up to a single conversational parry.

----FOOTNOTES----

1:  So much a secret that Horikoshi himself hadn’t figured it out at first, judging by Kurogiri’s presence in Tartarus circa Chapter 297.

2: “Gigantomachia’s rampage allowed one hundred and thirty-two of them to escape.  Their bases scattered around the country were hit too, and the sympathizers were rounded up.”

3:  In his villa raid appearances, his shoulder-mounted bug legs and his hands looked different enough that I didn’t read them as being of the same material.  In particular, the segments of his bug legs had a very ball-and-socket joint look, whereas his hands and fingers looked connected by cables in between their individual segments.

4:  I might compare a sacred avoidance to, say, the Jewish prohibitions on how the names of God are to be written or not written.

5:  Tsumi would be a better word for that concept.

6: There's a certain amount of scholarship around exactly how the burakumin came to be, and to what degree their status was as a result of a sincere belief in kegare or more political in nature. Much of said scholarship is paywalled or in Japanese, but from what I can find, kegare was certainly used as a justification, even if there were other factors in play at the time.

7:  Largely because the idea of giving the government the power to start reenacting the March 15 Incident is massively unpopular with the voter base.

8:  It shares a lot of circumstances with that, in fact.  Both the location of the training camp and Kurogiri being moved to Central Hospital were supposed to be cloaked in secrecy.  Both the training camp and Kurogiri were recognized as possible targets.  The training camp attack involved the villains getting information from an inside source, which is likely how AFO found out Kurogiri’s location as well.

9:  Direct them to do what?  Well, he’s got no reason other than crowd morale management to spare the hospital’s defenders, but much less reason than that to call for anything very awful to be done to the hospital’s civilian occupants.  I’d have said the same thing about Hose Face bringing up Midnight’s death, though, so far be it for me to deny the possibility of nonsensical cruelty from the villains Horikoshi isn’t asking us to care about.

10:  In fairness, because Spinner is about to crush a pair of cops with his Mega Sword-Sword.  Spinner is not thinking straight enough to be thinking at all about incapacitation versus maiming versus death; he’s just cutting a path ahead.

#bnha #bnha 370 #plf advisors #octolad #heteromorph discrimination plot #bnha civilians #chapter thoughts #bnha meta #my writing #bnha worldbuilding #(musing about the canon's worldbuilding that is) #stillness chanting that advisor's name like she's cheering him on at a cage match #SCARE-CROW SCARE-CROW SCARE-CROW

[dirty-droid]

🗣️Talk about your favourite WIP, please!

FUCK YEAH

It can't be anything other than Brotherhood, I honestly thought I was done working on the Corruption series, that my muse had left, that I just wasn't going to be able to finish it and maybe I wasn't going to be writing much anymore at all, but I got a lovely serial commenter who spurred me back into it and now I'm even hoping and planning to go above and beyond.

It honestly feels like it's my masterpiece, it's something new that I am bringing to the fandom, as the Hankconkus OT3 is pretty underground, so I'm very proud of myself for putting an entire long ass chapter fic out there. PLUS I've put at least 13,000 words into chapter 4 alone, which feels fucking insane, I'm honestly dumbfounded about it still, especially because it's not done yet?? Someone pinch me.

And honestly I think a lot of it is some of the best writing I've done, I'm not the same guy I was when I started posting on AO3, I've got my head so much more on my shoulders now.

I've got so many little characterization things that I stumbled upon that I think are really clever, (has anyone ever had Markus be sensitive about his knees being touched in a fic before? Man lost his fucking legs at the knees, don't push his legs back like that, don't trigger my boy). Like I'm not going to say that it's not still clumsy, I don't think I'm ever going to post something that isn't, but it's always worth the mortifying ordeal of being seen.

It still just makes me fucking feral, Hank and Connor and Markus all coming together and getting things they didn't know they needed, becoming so much stronger together, balancing each other out, providing more support than any of them could get from only one of them.

Actually, the entire corruption series has evolved even further, after Brotherhood, I want Connor to start experimenting with his sexuality and his comfort zone outside of the little sci fi age play program I gave him, and start attempting sexual interaction totally sober, no training wheels. Poor boy has a panic attack planned for him, trying to give himself pleasure in front of his lovely boyfriends, feeling as though he doesn't deserve pleasure, or attention or affection. That he wasn't made for it and it wasn't made for him... And Markus can help walk him out of that in a way that Hank can't. Maybe by interface, but also just because I think it is so beautiful that Connor could be so loved by both of the men who helped him choose deviancy and a life for himself, they saved him and they're saving him everyday.

It's just so fucking sweet and also at some point, he'll finally lose his virginity with both of his lovers, and he'll be able to enjoy it completely. And Markus gets sloppy seconds because fuck that's hot and also anal double penetration and of course Connor eventually gets a vag and Markus and Connor fuck about him placing the order in Markus' office and when it arrives they show it to Hank together and MORE double penetration... Listen, Hank is just a lucky guy, these dudes keep him busy and on his toes, he loves feeling needed and a couple of very intense robots who just got feelings sometimes just need a set of hairy old man tits to scream into it, what else would he possibly be doing if not providing that?

Thank you so much for asking!!!

#You know I could probably go on but I have to go do my job now and that's probably more than enough 🤣 #dean talks to himself #ask game #hankcon #hankus #rk1k #hankconkus

[creechurfoundincheckerboardvoid]

What’s your fave ep of the og and the new series?

DREAMS. the tv show was great dont get me wrong but the og series is a goddamn masterpiece and i will be beyond amazed if any piece of media EVER surpasses it. dreams is my favorite ever because i LOVE when stories do the thing where they Break the Medium and shift the visual style and it feels so inherently wrong. that shift to the red's office, the change in aspect ratio, GOODBYE PLAYING IN THE STAIRS SCENE, it is beautiful and it is art. the overt symbolism of the golden glitter curtain falling in checkerboard void, the machine just a little ways beyond it and roy within the fog, the so many different ways anyone can interpret that final minute because it could be anything and it is different to everyone. ooh hey i've got something to write soon about the color changed trio don't i!! i believe we may have some new context for that ending. anyway dreams is the most satisfying conclusion to any story in the entire world and i have very normal taste i have normal taste i have normal taste (what i repeat to myself in my head when the dentist asks my favorite tv show)

and in the new series!

TRANSPORTATION.

i've seen a lot of mixed feedback on this one, which i can't claim to understand!!! it is my favorite by far. perhaps improved by the fact i saw it around five in the morning after having been awake 26 hours and then slept for 3 hours after that (very good day i had) but jeez this one was a trip (pun very much intended!!). something special about this one is that the train didn't actually... do anything to them. at all. he just kinda showed up and then died. everything that went wrong the trio did to themselves. or, more accurately, red did to the trio. this episode was about them. no one else. hell there's even the joke with the time child and tony. they're not here. they've left and they've never tried to do that before.

this episode also happens to house The Only Part that made me cry lmao (although admittedly it was more in that fridge-horror way where it only hits you later). when red yelled "i'm not going back to that house." yeah that destroyed me i think. that whole part though, from the dead bird to the glitch, with the increasingly mounting tension starting from the repetitive beeping of the fuel meter to the train waking up to yellow and duck not understanding what's going on to red very outwardly becoming increasingly desperate because he doesn't want to go back and it just builds until it snaps and the last time dhmis managed to do that was in that most beloved "stranger's plate" sequence, wasn't it? yeah <3

transportation also has the very best Duck Autism Moments (everything with the clipboard). that petty little "i have my own system, don't get involved." and then how it comes back at the very end... its the last shred of normalcy he's able to create for himself. and for the others. there's a sort of comfort in some things never changing.

#dhmis #dhmis spoilers #perhaps the reason the duck clipboard is so beloved to me is because when i was a little kid my favorite hobby in the entire world was #cutting up sheets of printer paper into hundreds of even little squares and just. counting them. over and over #that's as fun as it gets apparently <3 #oh yeah and then when i was a slightly older kid my Comfort Item was ah. a collection of several sheets of specifically folded #paper and some ticonderoga 2b pencils #i carried those around literally everywhere i went #yknow. in case i had something i wanted to write down (i always had something i wanted to write down)

[terribletoonietuesday]

Heartland of Darkness (1992) aka Blood Church

Oh my GOD why did I wait so long to watch this? It is so laugh out loud funny and for all the beautiful accidental reasons. If it wasn't for the prosperous acting, the insanely intense pacing and absurd complexity of making Children of the Corn take over suburbia. Tell me if you heard this before but a single dad reporter takes over a newspaper in a small middle america town only to find he is not wanted there because the innocent looking townspeople are all deep in a satanic conspiracy. One of the best parts is that the main lead is a much better actor than anyone else in this movie, thus making everyone else in the town sound like they are crazy (which is both accidental and on purpose). The evil reverend whose church has brainwashed the town with his satanic rite is played by Nick Baldasare the star of Beyond Dreams Doors and he is equally hilarious as he is legit scary, creating a perfect b movie character. I'm also a big fan of his wardrobe choices in this movie. This never had a full release until last year when Visual Vengeance released it on blu ray and it looks so good in this complete package. Which is why it is such a shame this movie has not been seen since now as I believe Nick Baldasares life would be different if more people saw this. In honesty if it wasn't for the overly intensely played moments in every goddamn scene I might say this movie was boring. No far out fantasy and no major action until the final quarter where the film legit falls into madness (as it should) . However every scene is played so over the top in its dialogue, its improper casting choices (Linnea Quigley as a highschool teacher yet she is dressed like she always is and the leads teenage daughter played a woman way too old to be his daughter) and the dumbed down dialogue that every second is entertaining. Every scene feels like it is systematically made to be riffed on purpose. I literally could hear the voices of Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett from RiffTrax in my head dishing out comments every 10 seconds during this masterpiece of something. It feels like they got real local people to be the towns folks in this movie and their sheer confusion of what is going on in each scene works perfectly to give them all a dunwich coocoos vibe (even though they obviously don't know they are doing it). There's a sex scene that is borderline Nightbeasts levels of awkwardness. Beyond all that it is the very fact that 80s and 90s suburban "nuclear" households were really living in fear that this kind of "Satanic Panic" was happening and with this movie playing it so straight while also so insane should ,i can only hope, will prove to people how stupid it is to believe in this kind of conspiracy. It's like an NBC tv movie with the three Bs added in Blood , Boobs and Baldasare. This is B movie gold that should be seen in a group where you and your friends yell and laugh at the screen to help in some of the slower spots because right up until the very last line in the movie it is extremely quotable and when it's done all your confusion will make you say that it was god damn brilliant… yeah I said god damn alot tonight. Blame the movie.

[unlikelyjedi]

My Hero Academia Pride Headcanons (Pro Hero Edition)

If you'd like to see my headcanons for the 1-A kids plus Shinsou, it's linked here!!!

This is all about the Pro Heroes!!

Except, not all the Pro Heroes because that would be ridiculously long, and there are a lot of Pros I don't care about or just plain don't know what their sexuality would be.

You think I know the romantic trysts of a washing machine??

You think I know who Best Jeanist likes?? Mans too busy dying and resurrecting over and over to go on any dates.

So, this list will talk about only the Pros I'm interested in covering.

Disclaimer: These are my own thoughts and opinions. This is how I’m choosing to engage with this media in this post. There are other ways to engage with a chosen media and neither way of engagement invalidates the other. Art is subjective. Fandom is ultimately for fun! Don’t take me too seriously!

Now that the long introduction is out of the way:

Yagi Toshinori | All Might (he/him): Bisexual

Not only did All Might have an American Romance™️ with David Shield, not only did he have an on again/off again with Sir Nighteye, but I'm here to convince you that he is married to his Good Friend™️ Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa.

Go on, tell me I'm wrong. Why does this random police officer know the OFA secret when not even David Shield does, huh??? Tell me. You can't. They're married.

Oh and some people ship All Might with Midoriya's mom and that's valid, I guess. You do your thing, people!

I just don't think All Might is straight. I gave him the Bi-label arbitrarily. He could be pan or gay or something else feasibly. That's the fun thing about headcanons. you can make it the Fuck up!

(but I do like to be realistic within a certain parameter to how the character is written and I just think All Might and the Detective are sus)

Todoroki Enji | Endeavor (he/him): Straight

Some people write Endeavor as homophobic and while I think that's not an out of there interpretation, I think it's more nuanced.

I don't think he's homophobic in the outright hate sense. I think he's obsessed with power and lineage, and that manifests in his control of Shouto specifically.

So, if Fuyumi brought home a girlfriend or Natsuo brought home a boyfriend, it wouldn't be a big deal.

But Shouto bringing a boyfriend would be an issue because Endeavor wants the Ultimate Hero. To do what he couldn't do. That would be hard if his masterpiece brought a boy home.

This is beyond the scope of this discussion, but I do think Endeavor is allowed to atone for his mistakes and abuse. I don't believe he's afforded forgiveness from anyone he's hurt, and he absolutely deserves consequences, but Enji himself is allowed to do better and want to do better.

Where it's relevant to this discussion is I believe he'd drop that mindset against Shouto once he realized it was an overreach of his power and hurting his son. He'd eventually get to a point where he's not as controlling and not as much of an asshole.

Takami Keigo | Hawks (he/him): Bisexual

He's got the charisma! The flamboyance! The Trauma! He's Pro Hero Hawks! All the women and men swoon for him and he's got his pick of the market!

That is, if he actually had time. No, he's too busy making sure his city's safe. Too busy being held in a cage by a combination of Hero Commission conditioning and his own ideals.

Oh and let's not forget that he's spending all his off-hours at the behest of his side-job as a LOV spy.

It's a good thing one of their members is hot. Literally and figuratively. At least it gives him something to look at while he's trying to keep himself together, and oh no, he's caught feelings-

Usagiyama Rumi | Mirko (she/her): Sapphic

She's a lesbian. Most of the time. She likes girls. Loves them. Would date them.

So why is she sleeping with wanted criminal Shigaraki Tomura-

ijessbest on insta made me like this cursed ship so much!! To me, at least, it's a purely physical thing for both parties.

I think she's romantically and physically attracted to women, but also physically attracted to men?? That's my idea, anyway.

Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead (he/him): Gay

Aizawa would be happy with just his cats and coffee, really, but he just had to like men. And specifically the loudest blond on the planet.

Aizawa absolutely had a crush on Oboro in high school. It's not clear what would've happened if he'd survived. Maybe he would have ended up with Oboro. Maybe they'd have split up. Maybe he was always meant to end up with Hizashi. Aizawa doesn't dwell on it. What happened happened and he wouldn't trade what he has now with Hizashi for anything.

Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic (he/him): Bisexual

On the opposite side of things, Hizashi laid eyes on the transfer student from the support course and was immediately smitten. He was not subtle about it either. He made Shouta a playlist, a playlist, and Shouta said "thanks, but I don't use spotfiy" and Hizashi cried for weeks. Nemuri won't let him live it down even to this day.

Years later, when Shouta asked him out, he nearly busted both their eardrums from the shock of it. He really thought all this time it had been unrequited, and he wasn't about to even attempt to bring up the idea of a relationship after Oboro.

Now they're happily married and Hizashi makes them do cute couple-y things together all the time. But not in front of the kids.

They're actually pretty subtle about it. Not even Midoriya picked up on it, and he picks up on everything. He only realized after Aizawa adopted Shinsou and noticed Hizashi also treating Shinsou like his own.

Kayama Nemuri | Midnight (she/her): Bisexual

Mostly men-attracted, but that doesn't make her any less bi. I also like the idea of her quirk working best on people who are attracted to her, not necessarily guys. I personally ship her with Ms. Joke actually.

Fukukado Emi | Ms. Joke (she/her): Lesbian

Emi (a lesbian) continually asks Aizawa (a gay man) to marry her because she finds it very funny! She likes annoying the shit out of Aizawa. But she likes women. When Emi asked Mic for his friend's number, Mic was about to have a fit before Emi explained it was Midnight's number she wanted. Mic quickly got with the program and (not-so-subtly) encouraged their relationship along.

Nishiya Shinji | Kamui Woods (he/him): Pansexual

As my Pan sister says: Everyone's eligible but none have applied. (or so he thinks)

I don't think he's had much luck with dating, despite being a pro. Is it because of his costume? Will he ever find love? He just hopes it's someone he likes and not someone egotistical like Mt. Lady. Could you imagine him dating her-

Tatsuma Ryuuko | Ryukyu (she/her): Lesbian

Lesbian Dragon Lady!!! Why, you may ask? Vibes. Would marry the Lesbian Dragon Lady.

Sakamata Kugo | Gang Orca (he/him): Aro/Ace

Despite his harsh exterior, he's really a people person, but not a relationship person. He'd love to make a queer-platonic connection and maybe raise a kid one day.

Takeyama Yu | Mt. Lady (she/her): Pansexual

Her ass is out for all genders. You know, like, "Nice to meet your assquaintance"?? No?? (I'm not tryna sexualize her I promise)

I think she's much more worried about ratings and numbers than a relationship. And if she did decide to start dating, she'd have her pick of the pool. She might like people regardless of gender, but she also has standards. She'd never settle for someone like Kamui Woods. Could you imagine her dating him-

Toyomitsu Taishiro | Fat Gum (he/him): Pansexual

He just loves who he loves. Comfortable in his sexuality and his body image. Truly someone to look up to.

Chatora Yawara | Tiger (he/him): Trans

Actually Canon!!! Tiger is a trans man!! It's so nice to see him open and visible! Even if it's just a small blurb. He's treated with respect by the narrative and I appreciate that!

That's it for the Pros!! Next time I'll tackle characters I've missed including some from the LOV and some students in other classes!

Until Next Time!!!

#bnha #pro heroes #all might #erasermic #aizawa shōta #presentation michael #ms. joke #kamui woods #mt lady #lgbt pride #pride month #lgbtq #bisexual #pansexual #gay #lesbian #trans #aromantic #hawks #mha mirko #endeavor #dabihawks

[steelycunt]

ridi ridi hiiii !!! how are youuu how was yr dayyy i started mine off by rereading yr otiofad ficc did you know every sentence in it is a masterpiece did you know every word is like worthy of an auditoriumesque applause now yk i wanted to ask you to talk about that particular bit tho (if you wouldn't mind ofc !!) where sirius slams the book shut on an insect bc it's sooo like it's sooo !! it reads like premonition and also like r can't help but be wary of s and s can't help but be just like capable of harm regardless of intention & carelessly and i think it's sooo genius I think yr soooo genius for that and if you have more to say abt what that bit meant to youu + process of writing it + foreshadowing you wanted to get across w it etc. etc. i would be vv interested to hear <333 mwah love you loads xx

hello my lovely omg!!! my day was GOOD actually surprisingly good i am recovering from my illnesses and i played badminton and ate tangerines it was a very content day!! how was yours!! also warning you now in advance i wrote way too long a reply to this. like WAY too long NOBODY needed this im so sorry!! the very final paragraph provides like a little tl;dr you DO NOT need to read the essay that is under the cut!! im so sorry!!

okay firstly the idea that someone would not only read one of my little stories but read it more than once?? crazy actually!! insane!! so glad that it could be a part of ur morning n i would love to talk abt it!! hang on opening it in a new tab rn let me remember what it was i actually wrote huh lol

firstly with the flashback scenes in otiofad in general they had to serve two different purposes. they obviously needed to show the intense love and intimacy between the boys prior to The Incident, in order to juxtapose the post-prank scenes and serve as a marker for measuring the size of the rift in their relationship that its caused (which is why theres lots of kissing and cuddling and cloying monologues in the flashback scenes), but at the same time they had to demonstrate the little parts of their relationship which are a little bit fucked! a little bit unhealthy and obsessive. and they had to portray sirius as a person who has the capacity to do what he ends up doing. i didnt want to accidentally work against myself by over-idealizing their relationship to the point where it became difficult to believe sirius could be so thoughtless as to do what he does. like if ive just made you read fifteen hundred words of him being the Best Boyfriend Ever and then switch to him begging forgiveness for an attempted murder, his character becomes a little disjointed, and i really wanted it to feel like you're consistently reading the same people, just in very different circumstances. so the flashbacks very much needed to stress their intensity rather than their health as a couple.

im definitely roaming beyond the parameters of your question (but i promise it all circles back xx) but some of the sort of. i dont want to say red flag as much as cause for concern moments that i tried to include especially in the flashbacks include for instance: [Sirius says that sort of thing often, and with a confidence that Remus cannot ever fathom. Good god, how he would like to ask Sirius, them or me, that or me, and never fear the answer.] in the first scene, because i think remus' low self-esteem and his insecurity definitely affects their relationship + how he perceives it, which isn't anyone's fault as much as it is just them being young and imperfect like. theyre like sixteen here nobody had it together when they were sixteen right :-/ you have sirius utterly utterly obsessed with being in love with remus declaring that he doesnt want anything else from life and he's. sixteen years old. he's got no idea. like its that sort of rashness and impulsivity when he's speaking and acting which ends up fucking him over :-/

TO GET BACK to the bit you actually asked about (im so sorry for how long this is <3) the part where he closes the book on the spider. i mean honestly ur interpretation in the ask is pretty spot on!! its another one of the little stitches in the flashback scenes that sort of...slightly changes/sobers/brings the tone back down the reality a little, after theyve spent most of the scene cuddling and kissing etc. i'd already sort of tried (and i want to emphasise try at every point in this answer sfdghsh because i am not necessarily claiming that any of this was necessarily successful lol) to show sirius' capacity for being rash and obsessive, and the spider moment was just this tiny act of unnecessary, arguably cruel? violence that was meant to be jarring against the very over-sweet and gentle affection he's just shown remus. and although theyre acts of violence on such different scales, he gives just as much thought to sending snape to the willow as he does to squashing the spider. one of the things about sirius that i love soooo much is his relationship with violence and the way his anger translates into violence and cruelty (which remus mentions in the final scene when he says “You’ve got to stop being the kind of person who hurts people when they’re angry.”). its why hes SO fun to write angry because his anger is so distinctive lol. so the spider moment is just meant to serve as a little reminder of this random, mindless aggression that sirius carries around with him and that exists in tandem with all the affection we've seen him show remus, who starts in surprise when sirius slams the book shut. (i'll let u in on a super little fun (or not) fact that in my head when i was writing it i always drew a little parallel between the twitching insect leg thats left on the page and the similarly uncomfortable sensation of the eyelash that remus feels scratching his own eye immediately afterwards. thats not necessarily meant to come across n i expect it doesnt because i didnt develope the idea...at all...but in my head they were always a little linked teehee like even sirius' smallest acts of violence still have an effect on remus somehow xx)

but yeah!! apologies i didnt think this would be such a long explanation for a simple question fbhsdfhs im very embarrassed by this but like!! in short the spider was another little jarring moment designed to tether the version of sirius you get in the flashback to the version you get in the post-prank scenes, because ultimately he's the same guy with the same flaws both before and after the prank!! there was no reason for him to kill the spider like that and thats why hes so fucked. it was just his instinctive response to seeing it there.

#this is embarrassing im sorry. i wrote this more for me mostly which figures because this is fun for precisely nobody else xx #BUT thank you for the question layla i hope my answer somewhat makes sense xx at least this is what i was TRYING to do #regardless of whether or not i pulled it off yknow xx thank you for giving me a chance to give a little ted talk tho mwah love u xx #layla tag #telegram #otiofad

[themattress]

Damn it, this movie just won’t leave me alone!

This is sort of a follow-up to this post, where I analyzed that the primary reason critics of the film hated it, beyond getting overtly invested in the culture war surrounding TLJ, was due to them realizing that Disney/Lucasfilm never had a solid plan for the trilogy (not that George Lucas did for his movies either, but still) and no overarching creative vision other than one that was tragically sabotaged by life (make Carrie Fisher / Leia the star of Episode IX and the one who holds the key to resolving the trilogy and whole saga). That’s what leads to them accentuating the negative qualities of the movie while downplaying or flat-out ignoring the positive qualities (and sometimes turning positives into negatives due to their willful lack of understanding or imagination). And they’re entitled to their opinions, though I wish they’d fully own it rather than hold any pretense of objectivity, but what I am coming to realize more and more is that I don’t just disagree; I am the diametric opposite in how I see the whole situation.

Critics and fans were so invested in this idea of a super cohesive trilogy following a planned story, but I wasn't because I knew almost immediately that this wasn't the case. There were different directors attached to each movie and no single screenwriter attached to all of them, plus Kathleen Kennedy was not in a creative oversight position nor did she have anyone else like, say, Dave Filoni filling one. Obviously they were making it up as they went along, so my main concern was on the films individually and whether they created a good Star Wars experience. And TROS is the purest of Star Wars experiences: no quasi-remaking of a previous film or pushing an eccentric auteur-driven agenda, it just has fun and revels in its cheesy goofiness and wholesomeness; it’s what the franchise was literally founded upon.

Critics and fans were invested in the internal lore lining up and making sense; in the usage, behavior and outcomes of certain characters; in the culture war and social ramifications following TLJ, and I was absolutely not. I knew that the lore is Play-Doh prone to being remolded on a whim and that all the finer details in the movies rarely make sense until supplementary material is made to do so; I knew that finding the characters interesting and enjoyable was more of a priority to me than holding firm to any pre-conceived notions; and I fucking hated the culture war and felt like for the most part both sides were making mountains out of molehills. Freed from those burdens, TROS’ creative choices didn’t bother me much.

Critics and fans HATED Palpatine being brought back since he wasn’t anywhere to be found in the previous movies, he brought the trilogy’s conflict back to familiar ground after TLJ started breaking new ground, and he was used as a key puzzle piece to elements such as Rey’s lineage and Kylo Ren’s redemption. But I concur with this post; Palpatine is one of the greatest fictional villains of all time and I am 100% OK with any means of getting to see him and Ian McDiarmid’s pitch-perfect performance as him on screen, and if Disney/Lucasfilm wanted me to buy this new trilogy as the final third of a nine-part “Skywalker Saga”, there was no better way to do it than having its Big Bad be the same one from the previous trilogies. 

Critics and fans just adored TFA and TLJ and I just didn't get it. Not that I don't also like them or think they're bad movies; far from it! But a modern remake of A New Hope and a deliberate attempt to make a new The Empire Strikes Back (in a different way than literally remaking it) just don't strike me as cinematic masterpieces. TROS certainly isn't one either, but it's not trying to be, it's just trying to be a good time. And while critics and fans deem TROS to be a disappointing ending because it didn't meet their expectations, my expectations were low. Barring a complete perversion of Star Wars' core morality come straight out of a bad fanfic or old EU project (so, what Colin Trevorrow's plan was), I was willing to accept any ending, and I was pleasantly surprised I enjoyed the one we got as much as I did. It helps that, like J.J Abrams and Chris Terrio, I did my homework on the creation of Star Wars and all the junk it borrowed for inspiration with reckless abandon, so I caught on to what TROS was up to right away; from a purely out-of-universe perspective it’s the perfect way for Star Wars to end!

It really is exactly what this post said, except that I didn’t have to “unlearn what I have learned” because I never let myself learn it to begin with. I just looked at Star Wars with unclouded eyes and took it for all that it is, the good and the bad. That’s why I love TROS.

#Star Wars #The Rise of Skywalker #Opinion #Analysis #Comparison #This has been a PSA

[cdmagic1408]

Quest Masters! (and fair warning this is going to be a long one lol)

as of right now at this date and time…

it has officially been ONE YEAR since I joined the ✨Onward✨ fandom! 🤯

I am just shocked beyond words at how fast the time has gone by…

seriously I feel like it was just yesterday I was sitting on my bed, reading over my first announcement post for If You Trust Me again and again on my laptop, making sure what was on it was exactly what I wanted to say, and then nervicitedly—nervous and excited—clicking on that post button at exactly 3:00pm (cause perfectionist autistic me thought it was best to share at an on-the-hour time lol) 😌💭

I have to say I feel like what I remember most about that day was my nervicitedness…I had worked so hard on IYTM and was so proud of it, but it was also my very first fanfic and really, the very first piece of writing I had ever shared with the whole entire world! I really wanted to advertise it the right way (you know…with facts, knowledge, tags, and language only Quest Masters could understand, lol)

I had been an Onward fan since day one, but I was coming out about it a year and a half late. So I really wasn’t sure if you guys would believe me if I said: “I love Onward, its lore, and Ian and Barley as much as you do!” ✨

I went into it thinking I had prove myself with all these silly “what ifs” floating around in my head….but as it turned out, I really had nothing to fear!

I didn’t have to come into this fandom with something big and important to show. And I didn’t even need to wait for a special day where I thought I could have everyone’s attention to share something. That day being Barley’s birthday, of course…today

Really, as long as I loved the movie and Ian and Barley, that was all I needed. But this isn’t to say I wish I could’ve joined the fandom sooner. Back then—back when it first came out—I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure if Onward was going to stay with me for as long as it has. But writing IYTM, buying the merchandise, how much I relate to this movie more than any other Pixar movie to date, wanting more from this world—in time it became clear to me that this beautiful, inspiring, magical film was never going to leave my brain 😅

And in the end, I did have an absolutely epic novel to share with you all that I was just dying to let someone ANYONE who loved this film as much as I did read, and Holy Tooth of Zadar…read it you all did! Your excitement for its release, the release of every chapter, and anything else I had to share brought my nervicited energy down to just excited…and something I kept secret for 18 months was finally out! it really shouldn’t feel so surreal anymore but in some ways it still is lol

So today I am absolutely happy and blessed to still be here expressing my love for Onward after all this time and would like to thank everyone here for sticking by me and supporting me, my rambles, my detail scouts, my fanart-sharing series and everything else in between even after IYTM’s publication! 💜💙

I’ve met some really incredible people here who are all absolutely amazing! And I want to go as far as saying you’ve been some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had in my life! We may be all over the world, but our friendship and our commitment to give this film the respect it deserves is strong! 💓

And since day one of being here, I’ve really loved supporting you guys and your content too! Your art and writing for this magical world of wonder puts a smile and a laugh on my face everyday. It cheers me up when I’m feeling down and brings me as much excitement as an Onward sequel could! 😄

So I am going to keep being here and to keep speaking out for how magical, wonderful, and amazing the world of Onward truly is with you all! Cause let’s be real, if we don’t let the world know what an amazing masterpiece this film is, who will? ✊✊✊

And heck, until our day of justice arrives, who knows? I may or may not have just started development on another epic piece of multi-chapter writing in my notes and in my Google docs…but I’ll leave it at that for now… 👀

So here’s to another great year of being a Quest Master and to spreading even more Onward love!

#onward #fandom anniversary #cd's 1st anniversary #one year #cd's rambles #pixar onward #cdmagic1408

[aprillynskuhrovec]

Hell of a View||Prologue

Pairing: Jax Teller x Original Female Character

Synopsis: Jax Teller, former prince of Charming, left the only life he's ever known at 18 years old, determined to honor his father's wishes and make a life for himself outside of SAMCRO. 10 years later, he is involved in a near-fatal motorcycle accident that places him in a coma. When he wakes up with severe memory loss and no recollection of the life he currently lives, his wife is left to pick up the pieces and win his heart back, and help him remember why he left the MC in the first place, despite his mind telling him to head back to Charming and to the only life he truly knows.

Loosely based on the movie The Vow.

Rating: M. Minors, don’t even think about it.

Warnings for chapter: cursing, questioning of faith and religion, mentions of a motorcycle accident, mentions of a loved one being in the hospital.

Author’s Note: Thank you guys for all of the love that you’ve shown on my little sneak peek! I’m super excited to finally be writing this - it’s several years in the making! Please note, that while I am a MAJOR Sons fan (I’ve seen it seven times all of the way through, it’s a masterpiece) this story is heavy alternate universe and out of character for some of our boys (more-so Jax than anyone else). If you’d like to be added to the tag list, please message me and I’d be happy to add you!

Song suggestion for this chapter: If Tomorrow Never Comes by Garth Brooks

••

HOSPITALS HAVE always felt similar to a place of worship for me. In my lifetime, which, albeit has not been very long, I have always seemed to do the most praying within the confines of these four walls. The invocation that I was doing at Anna Maria Memorial Hospital extended far beyond that of customary bedtime prayers to the Man upstairs.

The praying that I was doing - that I have continued to do, despite my doubts, ever since I got the call - was that of a matter of life and death.

At this point in what has been the longest day of my life thus far, I don't know if I still believe in Him - in God - enough to keep praying.

I do, however, believe in my husband. I know that he is the strongest man on the face of this Earth, despite the amount of machines that are working overtime to keep him alive.

I also believe in love.

To some, love is just a four-letter word, but to me, love means so much more. Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 8 tells us that love is patient and kind. It does not envy, it does not boast; it is not proud. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails.

That though.... that's the watered-down version of what love is supposed to be. Those words are nothing but a load of fucking bullshit.

Love is complicated. It's messy, and at times, turbulent. Sometimes, love can be calm and quiet, like the stillness of morning as the world awakens for the day. Love is vulnerable, and it is showing the worst parts of yourself to someone, and having them still accept you. Love is your partner making the parts of you that you think are the most ugly, those riddled with scars, and pain, and hurt, feel beautiful. Love is the comforting, warm sensation that you get from a good glass of wine, or hearing the opening chords of your favorite song. Love is forgiving.

Love, too, can sometimes make you feel like the people that were still playing music as the Titanic began to sink. It's gorgeous, selfless, and essential, but it can be temporary and heart-wrenchingly sad, all at the same time.

Love is not perfect. It is not an illusion, and it is not smoke and mirrors. Love is flawed.

But, then again, so is life, and faith, and destiny; all of which I believe in much more than God, and prayers, and bible verses right now.

Destiny is the idea that the events in our life follow a set plan - one that has a purpose. It is a pre-determined course of events far beyond human power or control. I may not have known it then, but, I know now that I was always meant to walk into LAX at exactly 5:21 PM on the evening of May 17th, 2016 and randomly choose Sarasota, Florida as my vacation destination. It wasn't a coincidence after all that I was aboard the only plane in over two years - that's what the flight attendant for Southwest Airlines said at least - that made an abrupt landing due to mechanical issues. It was written somewhere in the stars that the state of Nevada just so happened to change their laws, and wouldn’t allow annulments of marriages until six months after the wedding date. That one, small change gave Jax and I a chance to see if we could thrive together in the real world, outside of the bubble that he and I created with one-another over those few short days in Sin City.

All of these events - these moments, these bits of high intensity that turn our lives upside down, define who we are. Each of us is the sum total of every moment that we have ever experienced with everyone that we have ever known. These moments are the ones that become our history, and these moments are the ones that lead us to our destiny. They seal our fate for how life is supposed to turn out.

But, what if you fuck up, take the path that you were never supposed to, and piss destiny off?

What happens to you then?

Jax Teller was destined to be the heir of the throne - the president of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. He was never supposed to leave Charming, even though that's what his late father, John Teller, wanted for him. His destiny was never supposed to include two tours in Iraq, a small beach house in Florida, his own auto body shop, and a little girl that he loves more than anyone else in this world.

Especially if it led to him laying in a hospital bed in a fucking coma.

I don't know how we are going to get through this. I don't know what I'm supposed to tell our daughter, who thinks that this man hung the moon and stars - which he did, there's no doubt it my mind that he did, especially for her. She has been wrapped around his finger since the day she was born.

I don't know how much longer he can keep holding on. I don't know how many times I can keep praying for him to wake up and squeeze my hand, just like he's done a thousand times before.

One thing I know is that at least we will get through this together, as a family. We will face this head on, as husband and wife; as Jax and Alana Teller, just like we have every other curve ball that has been thrown our way these past seven years.

Because, I also believe in us.

And that’s the most important thing I needed to believe in right now.

#sons of anarchy fanfiction #sons of anarchy #jax teller #jax x oc #the vow #fanfiction