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ramblings-of-a-mad-cat · 3 years

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(sees another fandom that I can ask you about and cheers) Orphan Black! Thoughts? I don't know Dr Who but Tatiana is one of my favorite actors period.

Anon you are so sweet! I'm always happy to chat about fandoms and characters and whatnot, and I will never not appreciate the majesty of Tatiana's acting. That is one of the greatest parts of the show hands down.

Orphan Black, to me, is a show that had incredible potential, but didn't really live up to the excitement it created. (Loooong post ahead.)

The thing is, Orphan Black builds a chilling mystery and background, the world it gradually creates as it goes for about the first two seasons, got be very invested and made me wonder a lot about where it was going to go and what the answers were. The setup is brilliant, right from the start with that iconic cold open of Beth's suicide. The unknown is what really helped this show get as thrilling as it was, because the actual answers behind the unknown were kind of hit and miss, and it seemed like far too often, the show just wasn't interested in telling it's story. Hijinks where the clones impersonate each other in slice of life events? That's fun at first and it really works well as they're still getting to know each other. But after a while, it gets tedious, and it seems like the show would rather fuck around and have dance parties (seriously, that scene was such a #BigLippedAlligatorMoment) than focus on the story and the threat that the sisters are facing. Virtually all of Allison's plotlines are like this, they feel like they belong in a different show, and for some reason the writers insisted on giving her one of these storylines like, every season. After Allison passively murders her own friend out of suspecting that she's spying on her, I just don't feel like an arc about her running for some PTA office position even matters. It doesn't feel right.

Speaking of that, here's another example: Donnie. Why did the end of the first season suggest that he was this secret mastermind working for Leekie? The whole idea just deflates in Season 2 and doesn't really go anywhere. He just goes back to being the bumbling sweetheart he was before. Why even have him be the spy? Maybe it should have been Ainsley. Do you want to know the exact moment that I think Orphan Black went wrong? Like, the specific scene? When Leekie was killed off. The character who had thus far been the Big Bad, gets taken out in the stupidest possible way, a literal accident on Donnie's part, and it's even played for laughs. After that point, the show really struggled to regain it's footing, though I don't think it completely went off the rails until about Season 4, and it was still generally hit or miss. Like, some stuff was really good. The introduction of the Castor clones, the development of Rachel's character (I'll get to her, trust me.) and the reveal of Kendall Malone. But it seemed like so much else was just forgotten or otherwise not resolved. Whatever happened to Cal? Sure, the show wanted to focus on the sisters...but Kira deserves to know her father if she wants to. That's just one example. It's a crying shame because this show is sometimes incredible. The metaphor that I always use for situations like this, is a card game. The show has all the right cards in its hand, they're just not being played.

The two strongest characters, at least to me, were Rachel and Helena. One of these characters was superbly written and went through a devastating arc. The other was Helena. We need to talk about her. In Season 1, she really cemented herself as a memorable presence with her trademark accent, her scars, her whole damn personality (again, hats off to Tatiana) and of course, that iconic screechy theme music that accompanied her. Which at first made us jump, but eventually made us cheer. I adored Helena, and I loved the development of her relationship with Sarah. Who went from shooting her in Season 1, to being deadset on rescuring her in Season 3, being furious with Siobhan for betraying her. (This is unrelated but Siobhan has the same " twist villain fakeout" at the end of Season 1 that Donnie does, and it's quite frustrating.) And yet, I swear, the writers just didn't know what to do with Helena half the time. They put her on a bus for long stretches, including one point where she just up and leaves Allison's house in Season 4, for no given reason. And the characters just kind of...don't care. The same thing happens when she gets arrested. No one cares to try and find Helena, even though she's unstable and often a danger to those around her. Even though she's by herself with no real ability to function in society. Even though she's pregnant. There is no excuse for this, and no Sarah, that "I'm sorry, I avoided you" scene in Season 5 is not going to cut it. It's such an afterthought.

I'm being rather critical, but I hope you can tell that this is from a point of passion. I genuinely enjoyed this show and getting to watch it. Just that sometimes it didn't feel like the show cared that I was watching. However, this was not true whenever Rachel was onscreen. Look, I'm a Merula Snyde stan, so you can probably already guess how I feel about Rachel. Despite her crimes, despite her constant slipping back the dark side, I felt so bad for Rachel at the end of it all. That scene with Kira really sums it up. "Who hurt you?" "All of them." And no scene is more intense than when she stabs out the eye cam. Like, I'm sorry, I pitied Rachel pretty much from Season 2 on. Her parents were horrible to her, and I'm supposed to think Ethan is the good guy here? He kills himself in front of his own daughter, telling her that she doesn't deserve him. And then Sarah shoots a pencil through her eye, causing brain damage and requiring a long recovery. I'm not saying that Sarah was wrong to do what she did, just that if I were in her shoes, I'd still feel a degree of guilt for Rachel's condition. In the end, I'm devastated that she was barred from Clone Club, when she made the right decision at the point it mattered. But there's just too much history there, and Sarah won't ever forgive her. (Though again, I do feel as though there's blame to share.) Rachel is my favorite character and I never expected her to be. But she's just so complex. Side note: "Enjoy your oophorectomy" is so damn quotable. I don't know why but I love that line.

So, Rachel's my favorite. Who's my least favorite? It might surprise you. It's Delphine. I'm sorry, but I just...I couldn't get on board with C*phine. Not after Season 3. I was waiting for the point that the show would push to finally redeem Delphine for her turncoat role, for all of the hell that she put Cosima through. By Season 5 though? I realized that as far as the writers were concerned? She already was redeemed. Even though she did nothing to earn it, except be presumed dead by Cosima. The way she treats Cosima in Season 3 is actually disgusting. Her reasoning for breaking up with Cosima is circular. She has to love "all the clones" in order to be with Cosima, and the way to do that is to take over Rachel's job, which means they can't date anymore? I'm not the only one who thought that didn't make sense, right? Oh and let's talk about how she stalks Cosima's date, breaks into her house, and threatens her life. Red. Flags. Cosima even says the line, "If you're not going to be with me, just let me go." I'm sorry, that should not be something she has to beg for. Delphine's behavior made me want her to stay far, far away from Cosima. Who is, incidentally, a sweetie and I absolutely adore her. I legit have trouble remembering that Tatiana's playing her because she just looks and acts so different. That said, even though I immensely disliked Delphine, I am so very glad that they made one of the clones gay. Just like I'm glad that they made one of them trans. (Though...Tony wasn't handled especially well.)

In general, I do think the earlier seasons were stronger. The Brightborn arc, while interesting, didn't really contribute much to the overarching narrative. We got the backstory on Beth's suicide and finally learned the truth about her, I suppose. Still, even though Beth is one of my favorite of the clones, and I never expected her to be either...I feel like the actual reason given for why she took her own life was rather illogical. She apparently did it because the investigation was putting the clones in danger of another Helsinki. Okay, but just because Evie Cho says you should off yourself, doesn't mean you have to. You could just, like...stop investigating. And if you die under mysterious circumstances without explaining anything to the sisters, they're not going to be put off from the investigation. They're going to look into this even more, because they don't know why they're not supposed to. The reveal that she and Art fell in love toward the end adds an extra gut punch, but it also doesn't make sense because wouldn't Art have referenced it during the period that he thought Sarah was Beth? On the other hand, Season 4 also introduced MK. And I have such a soft spot for her. I adore that sheep-masked sweetie. Everyone always asks "Which clone would you date" (because fandoms can think of nothing else I guess) and I never see anyone give any love to MK. Her death absolutely tore me apart. I am glad Siobhan avenged her even if she went down at the same time. Side note, her last word being the affectionate "Chickens..." Broke me.

Season 5 was a strange beast. In general, it seemed like we were finally getting some answers to the questions that were hanging over us. Exploring the deep mythos. But then they kind of turned it around and made it just be a Wizard of Oz style fraud twist. Westmoreland isn't really inhumanly old, he's a charlatan. I don't know why that was necessary in a science fictional show. I've seen the interviews and I get what they were going for, it just feels like it would have been cooler and far creepier if he was actually that old. The puppet master pulling the strings the whole time. We also finally get some answers for Kira's superhuman healing abilities (though we never learn how she's telepathically connected to the clones) and I'm loving it, but the trouble is, it's inconsistent. Ethan "Why is this guy so popular, he's an asshole" Duncan told Rachel specifically that Sarah being able to have children was a fluke, that the clones were "barren by design." I don't know, the whole concept of Revival and of the "magical island" was really foreboding and tied in with the earlier references to The Island of Doctor Moreau. Especially that song about "Revival's Children" just...the shudders, man. But just having it be a regular old scam is...a letdown. I know it may be more realistic, but I don't always need realism in my scifi. The finale is interesting, in that it's mostly an epilogue. I'm glad the clones (sans Rachel) got to live happily ever after, but there are two gut punches right at the end that are total nitpicks but they bother me. Helena naming her kids after Art and Donnie? And writing a memoir that she names "Orphan Black?" Those two tropes can go die in a hole. They can enjoy an oophorectomy, because I'm so sick of them.

The potential of Orphan Black was practically infinite. The results of Orphan Black fell frustratingly short.

#Orphan Black #Alison Hendrix #Rachel Duncan #Helena Orphan Black #Sarah Manning #Cosima Niehaus #Long Post #Beth Childs #Ramblings #Veera Suominen #Donnie Hendrix #Aldous Leekie #Ethan Duncan #Delphine Cormier #Siobhan Sadler #Clone Club #Arthur Bell #Tatiana Maslany

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales Final Four!: The Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker!

Hello You Happy People. SPIN IT! OHOHOHOHOHOHO LETS’ BEGIN IT!

After 10,000 years we’re finally at the motherducking Talespin episode! And only 8000 of those years were the last 14 months as Ducktales 2017 has been working toward this for a while with Cape Suzette being prominently mentioned in both the first episode and the season 1 finale, and Don Karnage being a regular part of the rouges gallery, voiced by the wonderous Jamie Camil. So this episode was less a matter of “If”, since Don’s presence meant Disney wasn’t really against it happening, and more a matter of “When and How.” The how, to a point was settled at the big NYCC panel for Ducktales that revealed Daisy and Goofy... as it also revealed aged up versions of Kit and Molly, meaning a proper tailspin episode was on the way. I could not have been more pumped. While I didn’t remember the cartoon well, i’d always loved Talespin since I was a kid and as an adult my curosity only grew. Still need to watch way more of it mind you, I really have slept on most of the Disney Plus Libarary and that’s dumb of me, but what i’ve seen is impressive. The story of an irresponsible bear forced to work with a buisnesswoman bear after she buys his seaplane, his loveable kid sidekick and said buisness bear’s daughter whose cute as a button but suprisingly tolerable for a little kid character. Opposing them were masterful buisnessman Shere Kahn, who sadly does not show up here and could be friend , foe or neutral depending on the episode, and Don Karnage, a kooky sky pirate who as mentioned is already in this series and was Balloo’s arch enemy. The series was colorful, creative, had a great premise and cast and in general was just awesome and out of the Disney Afternoon shows is honestly my faviorite, though Darkwing is getting close. I even recently finally got the Shere Kahn funko, which is starring into my soul as I type this review! Hurrah!

So I waited impatiently like I did for Daisy and Goofy, both also things I’d wanted in the series since the start. Thing was.. Goofy showed up in the second episode of the season, that was part of the premiere, and while the wait for Daisy was agonizing, she still showed up pretty early into the season at episode five. Gosalyn showed up at episode 12. This is episode 20.

I do get it: This season was built to be the last just in case.. and ended up being the last so good job there. There was a LOT to wrap up in one season and on top of that they had a double and TRIPLE length episode taking up 5 episodes of the season, AND two holiday episodes. So that gave them only 18 normal episodes they had to place very carefully. So likely, given that they had some episodes important to the finale that couldn’t wait for the last minute in “The First Adventure” and “The Battle for Castle McDuck!”, as I highly doubt pepper was given such a build up to not be important in the finale, still think she’s webby’s mom, we’ll see soon enough. And New Gods on the Block, while not as important was probably not swapped with this one because they wanted a lighter episode after three plot important episodes in a row, two of which are fairly intense and had lasting consequences and one of which, while a bit of a breather, was still indulging in the new FOWL status quo. This one ended up crammed into the last block.. because they likely really wanted to do this one, wanted it to tie into FOWL... and had nowhere else to put it, with Life and Crimes likely serving as one last break from FOWL, if it doesn’t end up tying into it, before the finale movie. Doesn’t make waiting forever for it any less grating, but hey it’s finally here. So how was it? Was it worth the hype? And how do the Wuzzles factor into this? Join me under the cut and spin it with me to find out and count down to 3!

So we open with an adult Kid Cloudkicker at work, voiced by Adam Pally!

If you haven’t heard of him, and one of my Patreons had not, he was on Happy Endings and the Mindy Project, and has a very distinct voice and is very funny, so it was a pleasant surprise to have him pop up here as Kit and given aforementioned roles were messes in some way shape or form, especially Max from happy endings whose essentially Oscar the Grouch, just as gay only not living in a trash can. Though if he had to he would.

Since he was a kid KIt’s picked up the old family business, and is now running hire for hire.. and has also picked up his Dad’s old enemies as Don Karnage chases after Kit, his second greatest nemesis, who freely mocks him. It’s a lovely sequence but shows Kit isn’t the best pilot, and his fancy flying, while beating Don, also opens both crates, freeing the livestock he’s carrying.. and the other cargo, a mysterious stone that was in a F.O.W.L. crate that merges the chicken with a goat, and scares kit, and he ends up causing his cargo to drop out of the plane. Cue titles.

Back with our heroes for this series, Della is recroding Dewey as he flies solo the first time!

That is so precious. Huey is along for the ride and is taking having his reckless brother with the attention span of a coked up ferret at the helm exactly how you’d expect.

Of course his helmet says safety boy and of course he has a helmet on over his hat. Awww. Dewey, while good at it, he’s a 12 year old flying a rather sizeable plane with no difficulty that’s pretty impressive.. he’s also Dewey so just flying a plane normally isn’t enough and he wants to Dewey it instead and do all the fancy stuff. He wants to be special as is usual for him, not realizing this is how you get to being good as his mom or Launchpad. And he’s 12 so that makes sense just on the basic level.. but it also makes sense on a comparison level: Dewey’s done a LOT of impressive stuff over the course of the series: rattling it off because why not, and this is just things he acomplished himself: he found the Lost Jewel of Atlantis (Getting it home was still a team effort but he is the one who identified it), is a golf pro better than his uncle whose played the game for centuries at this point, defeated Don Karnage in a sword fight with little to no sword training, was crucial in beating Magica during the Shadow War, travled through time, by accident or not, consulted on a major motion picture, defeated a Gandra, even if she was going easy on him, BLIND, and biggest of all defeated the World Serpent Jormunngandr, by himself, a GOD that’s fought Scrooge evenly for decades. AND FINISHED HIM WITH A PILEDRIVER. To reitirate this was ONLY the stuff he did himself. So I get why he’d think just flying a plane when his mom and best friend have done so much more with it is boring and that being a pilot when two people he looks up to are already one is just.. boring. I’ts not special or unique and given his family name is built on the two, I can see why he’d chafe under this.

Della for her part isn’t doing things wrong entirely, she wants him to start with the basics, the fact he can DO those basics at such a young age with minimal training shows he has a true knack for it, and it takes experince to pull off death defying stunts. The First Adventure backs this up as while Della was so talented as a kid she could land a plane herself.. that was all she did. And it’s still incredibly impressive a ten year old landed a seaplane with no real world training or hours in a full on flight simulator. The issue that’s never really adressed is while she’s mostly doing it right she dosen’t get that despite his talent, Dewey just dosen’t find this INTRESTING or get how impressive he is, and that dressing it up a bit migh’tve helped. It’s an understandable mistake though, teaching someone something in any context is hard. It’s one of many, MANY reasons like currently horribly hazzarodus conditions, long hours, having to buy their own suplies at times, that teachers are badly underpayed.

Before we get into why their headed to Cape Suzette at long last, there is one notiacble absence in this episode I can’t really ignore: Launchpad. While he has been absent in every episode since Let’s Get Dangerous, not counting “How Santa Stole Christmas!” as the two holiday episodes were made to fit in anywhere story wise and timeline and production wise take place before the rest of Season 3 , which takes place during Spring given both the March note on Boyd and Huey’s photos in Astro BOYD, and Forbidden Fountain taking place during spring break. At most it’s currently running into Summer. I put too much thought into this with someone i’ve lost contact with.

My point, I had one trust me, is that Launchpad has just been gone for the second half of the season . And up till now it wasn’t necesarily a bad thing: He was a major part of Let’s Get Dangerous and wasn’t really needed for any of the episodes so far: The Manor side of things in ImpossiBin was purposfully intense and while he would’ve had some thoughts on Beakly’s actions, it just worked better with him gone and the only other adult in the house at the moment busy doing other stuff for their protection till the climax. Split Sword was kid focused, New Gods didn’t really involve him at all, though I am sad he and Storkules never met as far as I can tell, The First Adventure was a flashback, Fight for CastleMcDuck was about the family unit more, and Beaks in the Shell is the only one so far I think he could’ve been included in at all and again shoving him in would’ve just cluttered things up. Like a lot of character ballance issues of the series, there’s a good enough reason.. this is just the one exception in the last batch I think would’ve been improved by having him. He’s Dewey’s best friend, he’s been there for him, he would’ve been a good counterpoint as a teacher and it could’ve been intersting having both he and della have constrasting styles but valuable things to teach and I would’ve loved to see him interact with Kit. It also just feels really weird to be down a pilot in the episode about the franchise about a pilot. \

The fact Dewey ends up crashing while landing after Huey applauds him on his safe normal landing, which ticks him off because he dosen’t want to be normal, hammers in it in a bit as he missed his buddy’s first crash. I get leaving him out as Kit is just as irresponsible and the episodes just as much about Kit if not more so as it is about Dewey, so I understand it but it dosne’t make it feel like any less of a lost opportunity.

As for why their in the cape at last, it’s unsuprsingly another missing mystery, the stone of what is which can combine two things, the stone seen in the intro. Kit loosing it turns out to be a good thing as it meant FOWL didn’t get it, and they can find it, and are in town to find him. They pass the hire for hire offices which have a ton of notices on the door, and Dewey is entranced by the idea of cloud kicking, aka sky surfing, aka that thing kit did in the original. We also get to see updated versions of Baloo, Kit and Molly. Sadly no Rebecca. Can’t win em all.

Our trio find Kit whose asleep, clearly having no customers and trying to pass it off like he does. It turns out he knows Della, as they went to flight school together, though she only vaugely remembers him at best. She does remember Molly though, wouldn’t be suprised if that’s another ex of hers either, and wonders what happen to her.. and not just because htere’s always room in Della’s harem. Kit dodges.. and it’s likely in large part because it’s clear to anyone looking despite his statments he’s kinda stalled as an adult. It’s very clear from his surroudings, him being a pilot for hire, and him eagerly taking Dewey on as a sidekick when Dewey shows intresting in Cloud Kicking, that he’s trying to be Baloo. This idea was, according to Frank, the brainchild of the episode’s director, and one of it’s writers and storyboarders, Tanner Johnson. Tanner pitched “What if Kit never outgrew his Baloo fanboying?”.

It’s an intresting idea: while it is sad we don’t get to see the old boy at any point and I do wonder where he is now and what he’s up to in his retirment, probably just flying about free as a bird would be my guess given how he never liked working to begin with, I applaud them for doing something unique with the Tailspin cast that fits into the themes of the season rather than just have them show up. By making it Kit instead of Baloo cargoing them, it gives us more of an arc to work with character wise as Kit has become so obessed with becoming his dad, he never stopped to consider if he was even good at it or enjoyed it.

Using Della is part of what makes this work as she too grew up with a larger than life mentor and adopted dad.. but unlike Kit, she grew up a bit and saw the flaws in her dad. His greed, his selfishness, his tendency to hog the glory, his ego.. she stopped putting him on a pedestal. She still loves him, still wants his respect and admiration to this day, but she gets he’s not perfect and not who she wants to be. Kit clearly never got this message. He never grew out of putting Baloo on a pedsteal and wanting ot literally be him instead of his own man. So he ignored the many flaws in how Baloo lived: Baloo started Talespin having lost his plane because he was so obessed with freedom and doing what he wanted, he didn’t bother actually paying on it and chafed under actually doing work half the time. He’s talented, fun to be around and a hell of pilot bar none, he honestly outclasses Della, but he was entirely irresponsible. Kit’s found himself in the same position Baloo was in: living alone, having not a lot going on, and on the verge of loosing his plane. Not only that he’s worse off because Baloo at least, while lazy, had enough talent. Kit.. isn’t a good pilot as we’ve seen and will see again, and clearly not only dosen’t have a knack for it, but is only doing it because Baloo did. He’s so obsessed with being who he THINKS baloo would want him to be, he never stopped to think that the actual Baloo would just want him to be happy and has probably told him this, or was probably too proud of what Kit was doing to realize what he was doing to his life.

But Della dosen’t have time to get him a therapist, they need to find that stone before FOWL, and Kit offers to take them.. if they hire him. Della scoffs at this and insults the Sea Duck

Yeah Della your fantastic.. but you do NOT insult the Sea Duck and your very, VERY lucky it’s not Baloo you were dealing with as he would’ve turned you down out of principal. The Sea Duck is fucking awesome, and a national treasure. Thankfully Kit instead points out the Sunchaser isn’t in a better place after Dewey Dewed what he dew, so they really don’t have a choice.

Della does draw the line at letting Kit fly as she eventually realizes he’s not good at this, mostly letting Crowby his crowbar do all the work, and finds he has a map to where he dropped the stone, so he dosen’t even have that leg to stand on and throws him out of his own cockpit before he gets them all killed. Okay that time on her side. Kit takes this time to try and train Dewey on cloudkicking... but despite being encaustic at the idea of it the reality leaves Dewford scared shitless.. and doubles up on bad things as Don Karnage and his crew are closing in on the island. FOWL hired them to get it for them, though why FOWL didn’t do so themselves I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong i’m happy to have Jamie back and it really wouldn’t feel right ot have a Tailspin ep without Don Karnage, I just find it odd Bradford would hire outside contractors for this given he has a full staff and not at least send Heron or Steelbeak along to supervise. Regardless, Don puts pleasure before buisness spotting Kit.. and fully commits after finding out Dewey is ALSO involved. I also find it hilarous DEWEY outranks Kit on Don Karnage’s enemy list. So naturally he goes after him, int he personal plane he used in the series which also showed up in the cold open, and with Dewey not having the skill to take Don on, Kit is forced ot step in. He also calls him “Little briches” which while another sign of how much he wants to be his own dad.. is still too awesome not to apricate. Don cuts the line but thanks to Kit’s fancy footwork, they make it out alive and wash up on an island. Della soon joins them, thanks kit for saving her kid then rightfully slaps him for putting him in danger in the first place. Dewey also has to stop her from punching him when he explains he had no idea the stone ended up on this island, which granted she is justified in but Dewey , of all people, rightly saw this means they don’t have to drag a unconcious bear around who probably hasn’t showered in a while. I mean the smell will be there either way but there’s less chance of accidnetlly inhaling too much while he’s conconcious. They also find out what the Stone’s been doing: combining the wildlife leading to rhino monkey hybrid trying to murder them. So at the last minute Frank also squeezed in another disney aftenroon show but one tha’ts not streaming and most don’t care about: the wuzzles, a bunch of hybrids of various animals... Frank couldn’t do much with that as is and just decided to rightfully play it for horror.

Our heroes find Don, whose found the stone.. and is simply throwing most of hi crew at it rather than doing anything productive, with them turning into just.. utterly horrifying combinations. Hands for heads and everything, bug legs, a non-anthro parrot head. it’s pretty tough to watch and I question why the episode did this as Don’s crew did not deserve this and this episode is mostly lightearted before and after this. A tailspin tribute episode episode should not pair well with the song no spill blood.. seroiusly you paid for all I do is win, and rightfully but you couldn’t get this?

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Regardless the kids and manchild are told to stay put while the slightly more functional womanchild takes care of Don. Dewey and Kit naturally don’t, which is fair: what did della expect, the sugared up rabbit in a small duck’s body and the incompitent but charming manchild she’s insulted repedadtly to listen? Naturally they both beef it as Dewey can’t board and while Kit does get Don’s plane, he ends up crashing it instead of doing anything productive. I mean even Launchpad would’ve at least got back to the seaduck.. he would’ve crashed into it but still. Look when you make Launchpad look compietnet you really need to rethink your life. Della has bigger problems though as it turns out the thing they were on.. was a coocoon.. for a butterbear. Oh no. Thankfully this goes better than you’d expect as she’s able to ride the thing and it tangles up some rope, taking the stone of what was with it and Don takes off after it with what pirates he has left.

Our remaining heros return to the Sea Duck. Dewey and Kit plan to do the same thing again and expect diffrent results but Huey.. has some words for them.

He’s fed up with this and points out they need to swap jobs. Dewey CAN fly, and Kit really is good at cloudkicking, it’s in the name, and he needs to return to it. While Dewey balks again stating anyone can be a pilot.. Kit finally admits that’s not true and he’s just not good at it and Huey finally snaps them out o fthier neurosis, Kit a bit late but better late than never given the state of his life, and points out the episode’s aseop: YOU make something special just by doing what you like to do and are good at well. I’ts been hard making these reviews, but I feel i’m getting the hang at it and it’s what I was meant to do, I just had to find it. It’s not always easy to find your calling but when you got it, go for it instead of some version of you you think you should be. So we get pured distilled awesome for the climax. Besides Della again riding a bear that’s also a butterfly, Kit, also a bear I did not miss that gag, proceeds to finally spin it and begin again it as he tears through them with Crowby and easily deispatches the planes finally earning Della’s respect and finally back in his element, using his newfound size and strength combined with his still inherent acrobatics to easily take them out and land on Carnage’s plane and beat him.

So the day is saved: The stone lands on the plane and our heroes properly secure it. Della releases her bear fly but it’ll find it’s way home i’m sure... so majestic. Or it’ll eat all the world’s seagulls. Good news either way.

Back at the bay Kit packs up the stone safetly and gives them the bill. Which Della grumbles at but whiel he didn’t fly he did save their asses.. after endagenring them but still and does have a buisness to run. Plus he has to save his plane.

But it turns out someone’s already bought it. And you can probably guess who.

No not you sweetie.. though he is an investor for the person who DID buy it: Molly, whose taken being danger woman from a 4 year old’s play time to her career running an air stunt show. This is the other thing that cemented the whole aged up versions of these guys working for me: HIstory Repeating itself. Once again an enterprising young woman with a lot of ideas has bought the seaduck from it’s incompitent owner and hires the former owner to work for her. But things are warmer this time: Kit wasn’t happy doing what he was doing, and it’s clear unlike Rebecca, who just bought the first plane she could get and hired baloo because he was who she could afford, they became friends with time and patience if not more but that’s still vauge... Molly did this out of love. She knew Kit was struggling and probably has as many fond memories of the sea duck and baloo as he does and didn’t want someone else to get the old girl. Her air show seems to be going fine, she apparently has a full crew, fans and enough money to purchase another plane on a whim from the bank to expand the show.. she wanted her old plane back and her old brother back. And wheras again Rebecca offered Baloo the job because he wanted to keep his baby safe from some half assed pilot she could afford and she knew it and thus could manipulate him with that. Plus he worked cheap so there. Here Molly just admires her brothers skills and hires them on it and he’s frankly more comfortable being a sidekick than the main star anyway.

He TRIES to brush it off but gladly accepts. God another possible spinoff.. please make this Disney.. and if not at least Reboot tailspin I miss it. Still it’s a very satisfying ending. But what of Don Karnage? Well he’s lost everything as a result of this, unable to get back to his carrier, his crew mostly gone, and FOWL sure to be gunning for him. This is seemingly the end for him.. until he finds a chunk of the stone. “Or the start of an encore”. Wether this was a setup for a possible part of season 4, a possible spinoff or is going to come back in the finale.. we’re just going to have to wait and see won’t we?

Final Thoughts: I really liked this one. It’s not the best of the season: Kit’s arc is kinda telegraphed and Dewey’s arc while intresting isn’t focused on enough to really be that engaging. But the ideas at the core are solid and fit into the series well, the idea to age up our kid heroes from Talespin was really clever and paid off and as usual Adam Pally is a delight and as I said at the top was pitch perfect casting. Couldn’t figure out who played molly and the credits cut out on me, so let mek now if you do but yeah I enjoyed this one> It wasn’t the series at it’s best but given the last two are liable to get pretty intense it was a nice breezy break. And it got me wanting to watch Talespin again and there’s nothing bad about that.

NEXT WEEK: In our penultimate adventure, Ducktales reinacts that one episode of Batman the Animated Series where all of Batman’s foes put him on Trial, as Scrooge’s Rogues put him on trial with Doofus as prosecuter and Louie for the defense. Well at least it’s not Lionel Hutz.

This Week: Lots of Ducks! The lena retrospective continues as we take a detour for some comix, and we begin the Della arc as we go back to the start. It’s finally time to talk about Woo-Ooo!.

If any of this sounds appealing follow my blog for more. If you like these reviews head over to my patreon, patreon.com/popculturebuffet, and become a patreon. At the 5 dollar level you get a review a month and even a dollar helps get to my stretch goals. I’m up to 15 a month so 20 is next and that means a darkwing duck review every month! And if you really like Talespin like I do, 25 nets you a tailspin review a month and a review of the pilot. Ohohohohohohoo. See you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #talespin #the lost cargo of kit cloudkicker #della duck #dewey duck #kit cloudkicker #molly cunningham #danger woman #huey duck #don karnage #disney channel #the disney afternoon

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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Psycho Analysis: Lucifer/Satan

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Please allow me to introduce this villain. He’s a man of wealth and taste...

Satan, or Lucifer, or whatever of the hundreds of names across multiple religions, folk tales, urban legends, movies, books, songs, video games, and more that you choose to call him, is without a doubt the biggest bad of them all. He is not just a villain; he is the villain, the bad guy your other bad guys answer to, the lord of Hell. If there’s a bad deed, he’s done it, if there’s a problem, he’s behind it. There’s nothing beneath him, and that’s not just because he’s at the very bottom of Hell. He is the root cause of all the misery in the entire world.

And if we’re talking about Satan, we gotta talk about Lucifer too. They weren’t always supposed to be one and the same, but over centuries of artistic depictions and reimaginings they’ve been conflated into one being, a being that is a lot more layered and interesting than just a simple adversary for the good to overcome when handled properly.

Motivation/Goals: Look, it’s Satan. His main goal is to be as evil as possible, do bad things, cause mischief and mayhem. Rarely does anything good come from Satan being around. If he is one and the same as Lucifer, expect there to be some sort of plot about him rebelling against God, as according to modern interpretations Lucifer fought against God in battle and was then cast out, falling from grace like lightning. When the Lucifer persona is front and center, raging against the heavens tends to be a big part of his schemes, but when the big red devil persona is out and about, expect temptations to sin, birthing the Antichrist, or tempting people to sell their souls.

Performance: Satan has been portrayed by far too many people over the years to even consider keeping count of, though some notable performances of the character or at least characters who are clearly meant to be Satan include the nuanced anti-villain take of the character Viggo Mortensen portrayed in The Prophecy; the sympathetic homosexual man portrayed by Trey Parker in South Park and its film; the hard-rocking badass Dave Grohl portrayed in Tencaious D’s movie; Robin Hughes as a sneaky, double-crossing bastard in “The Howling Man” episode of The Twilight Zone; the big red devil from Legend known as Darkness, played by Tim Curry; the shapeshifting angel named Satan from The Adventures of Mark Train who will make you crap your pants; and while not portrayed by anyone due to being entirely voiceless, Chernabog from Disney’s Fantasia is definitely noteworthy in regards to cinematic depictions of the devil.

Final Thoughts & Score: Satan is a villain whose sheer scope dwarfs almost every other villain in history. It’s not even remotely close, either; Satan pops up in stories all around the world, is the greater-scope villain of most varieties of three major religions, and his very name is shorthand for “really, really evil.” Every other villain I have ever discussed and reviewed wishes they could be a byword for being bad to the bone. Even Dracula, one of the single most important villains in fiction, looks puny in comparison to Satans villainous accomplishments.

Satan in old religious texts tended to be an utterly horrifying force of nature, until Medieval times began portray him as a dopey demon trying to tempt the faithful (and failing). Folklore and media have gone back and forth, portraying both in equal measure – you have the desperate, fiddle-playing devil from “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and the unseen, unfathomable Satan who may or may not exist in the Marvel comics universe who other demons live in fear of the return of. Satan is just a very interesting and malleable antagonist, one who is defined just enough that he can make a massive, formidable force while still being enough of a blank slate that you can project any sort of personality traits onto him to build an intriguing foe.

One of the most famous examples of this in action is the common depiction of Satan as the king of hell. This doesn’t really have much basis in religion; he’s as much a prisoner as anyone else, though considering how impressive a prisoner he is, he’d be like the big guy at the top of the pecking order in any jail for sure. But still, the idea of Satan as the ruler of hell was clearly conceived by someone and proved such an intriguing concept that so many decided to run with it.

I think that’s what truly makes Satan such an interesting villain, in that he’s almost a community-built antagonist. People over the ages have added so much lore, personality, and power to him that is only vaguely alluded to in old religions to the point where they have all become commonplace in depictions of the big guy, and there really isn’t any other villain to have quite this magnitude on culture as a whole. It shouldn’t be any shock that Satan is an 11/10; rating him any lower would be a heinous crime only he is capable of.

But see, the true sign of how amazing he is is the sheer number of ways one can interpret him. You have versions that are just vague embodiments of all that is bad and unholy, such as Chernabog from Fantasia, you have more nuanced portrayals like the one Viggo Mortensen played in The Prophecy, you have outright sympathetic ones like the one from South Park… Satan is just a villain who can be reshaped and reworked as a creator sees fit and molded into something that fits the narrative they want. I guess what I’m trying to say is that not only is Lucifer/Satan one of the greatest villains of all, he’s also one of the single greatest characters of all time.

Now, there are far too many depictions of Satan for me to have seen them all, but I have seen quite a lot. Here’s how Old Scratch has fared over the millennia in media of various forms, though keep in mind this is by no means a comprehensive or exhaustive lsit:

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” Devil:

I think this is one of my favorite devils in any fiction ever, simply because of what a good sport he is. Like, there is really no denying that Johnny’s stupid little fiddle ditty about chickens or whatever sucks major ass, and yet Satan (who had moments before summoned up demonic hordes to rip out some Doom-esque metal for the contest) gave him the win and the golden fiddle. What a gracious guy! He’s a 9/10 for sure, though I still wish we knew how his rematch ended…

Chernabog:

Chernabog technically doesn’t do anything evil, and he never says a word, and yet everything about him is framed as inherently sinister. It’s really no wonder Chernabog has become one of the most famous and beloved parts of Fantasia alongside Yen Sid and Sorcerer Mickey; he’s infinitely memorable, and really, how can he not be? He’s the devil in a Disney film, not played for laughs and instead made as nightmarishly terrifying as an ancient demon god should be. Everything about him oozes style, and every movement and gesture begets a personality that goes beyond words. Chernabog doesn’t need to speak to tell you that he is evil incarnate; you just know, on sight, that he is up to no good.

Quite frankly, the implications of Chernabog’s existence in the Disney canon are rather terrifying. Is he the one Maleficent called upon for power? Is he the one all the villains answer to? Do you think Frollo saw him after God smote him? And what exactly did he gain by attacking Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts? All I know for sure is that Chernabog is a 10/10.

Lucifer (The Prophecy):

Viggo Mortensen has limited screentime, but in that time he manages to be incredibly creepy, misanthropic… and yet, also, on the side of good. Of course, he’s doing it entirely for self-serving reasons (he wants humanity around so he can make them suffer), but credit where credit is due. The man manages to steal a scene from under Christopher Walken, I think that’s worth a 10/10.

Satan (South Park):

Portraying Satan as a sympathetic gay man was a pretty bold choice, and while he certainly does fall into some stereotypes, he’s not really painted as bad or morally wrong for being gay, and ends up more often than not being a good (if sometimes misguided) guy who just wants to live his life. Plus he gets a pretty sweet villain song, though technically it’s more of an “I want” song than anything. Ah well, a solid 8/10 for him is good.

Satan (Tenacious D):

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It’s Dave Grohl as Satan competing in a rock-off against JB and KG. Literally everything about this is perfect, even if he’s only in the one scene. 10/10 for sure.

Robot Devil:

Futurama’s take on the devil is pretty hilarious and hammy, but then Futurama was always pretty on point. He’s a solid 8/10, because much like South Park’s devil he gets a fun little villain song with a guest apearance by the Beastie Boys, not to mention his numerous scams like when he stole Fry’s hands. He’s just a fun, hilarious asshole.

The Howling Man:

The Twilight Zone has many iconic episodes, and this one is absolutely one of them. While the devil is the big twist, that scene of him transforming as he walks between the pillars is absolutely iconic, and was even used by real-life villain Kevin Spacey in the big reveal of The Usual Suspects. This one is a 9/10 for sure, especially given the ending that implies this will all happen again (as per usual with the show).

The Darkness:

While he’s more devil-adjacent than anything and is more likely to be the son of Satan rather than the actual man himself, it’s hard not to give a shout-out to the big, buff demon played by Tim Curry in some of the most fantastic prosthetics and makeup you will ever see. He gets a 9/10 for the design alone, the facty he’s Tim Curry is icing on the cake.

#Psycho Analysis #Satan #Lucifer

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peterstanslizzie · 4 years

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Reacting To: The Hollow (Season 2 Episode 2)

Episode Title: Hollow Games

Key Highlights (Spoiler Warning): Kindly proceed if you’ve already seen the episode or simply don’t care about spoilers.

This episode was amazingly gay, wasn’t it? Let’s begin:

1. The episode picks up where things left off in episode 1. Our favorite trio are being cornered by their greatest childhood fears.

2. Mira decides to confront Adam’s fears for him and the rest of them follow her lead with Adam taking on Mabel, the giant chicken and Kai taking on creepy doll. The guys take on a physical approach but Mira tries to reason with the bullies. Unfortunately, none of their methods are working.

3. Amidst all of this, we find out that Mira has an older sister on top of her younger brother, Miles.

4. At one point, Adam is pinned down by Mabel with its foot and Kai sees that he’s in trouble and goes to rescue him.

5. Kai yells and tells Mabel that he’s not afraid of it and as it’s about to charge right at him, it disintegrates. I like how Kai is the one to save Adam this time around instead of the opposite because it’s usually Adam who saves him. Basically, they discover that facing their own fears is the way to go. Well, it’s pretty obvious, no? But it seems a little too easy for all of them to conquer their fears by just yelling at them. Oh well...

6. After the showdown, they head back to Kai’s big mansion to make sense of what’s happening to them. During their discussion, Kai seems to regret having had a crush on Mira because she’s Miles’s sister. What’s the deal with her brother, Miles? Oh right, we’ll find out later in the episode.

7. Hold up, hold up, hold up! Kai still thinks that Adam and Mira have a ‘thing’ for each other and he doesn’t want to get in between them. Is this going where I think it’s going?

8. OMFG!!! Stop everything! Drop everything. Kai said “I’m gay”. He said the word GAY. And he said it so casually! I didn’t expect this coming out to happen so early on in the season. I love it! Kai’s reaction was cute and totally chill. But poor Mira almost had forgotten that she actually kissed Adam. She apologizes to him and blames it on the memory block she had due to the game. Sure Mira :)

9. But seriously; It’s pretty clear Mira knew that he was gay all along and I’m sure if she had her memories with her at that time, she wouldn’t have kissed him. Oh and Adam is aware he’s attractive. Of course he is! How can anyone resist someone who is as tall, dark and handsome as he is.

10. I’m smiling so hard right now. But anyways, back to the situation at hand; They’re now talking about the glitch they saw when they were playing the game (back in season 1) and how the glitch was able to create such an accurate depiction of their lives. Adam thinks that they’re now on Level 2 of ‘The Hollow’ but Mira isn’t buying that theory. Master Kai still thinks it’s all a dream. Will he just stop?! LOL

11. They call for The Weird Guy’s help but nothing happened. Mira thinks they should look for him at The Hollow Games studio. But before they could all leave for the studio, they’re stopped by Davis, Kai’s butler. He insists that Miles should head to bed and that Mira and Adam leave the mansion.

12. If you look closely at his sleeves, the initials K P are on it. That means Kai’s last name starts with a P. I wonder what it is? Maybe it’s Parnall for Connor Parnall, the voice actor for Kai? I think it’s adorable how he says, “Silly Adam” before going to bed.

13. Mira drops Adam outside his home but she’s too wary of everything that’s happening around them and isn’t convinced that Adam should trust his parents and stay with them. I completely understand Mira. She really wants everything to be solved asap and she wants to go to the studio to see The Weird Guy tonight. But there are too many uncertainties and she has to consider what both Adam and Kai want as well. She also feels like she can’t trust Adam because she doesn’t know if he’s real or part of the game mechanics.

14. On the other hand, Adam thinks that they’re on Level 2 of the game and they just need to live like they usually do and wait for quests or challenges to appear before them. It’s sad to watch them argue. I guess that’s how being in a complex game/experiment-thingy does to your mind; You can’t help but to come up with any sort of scenario.

15. Okay, so we now know that Mira and Adam are actually childhood best friends prior to starting the game. They even carved their initials on a sidewalk.

16. Remember in my episode 1 review when I said Adam’s mom is creepy. This scene right here takes the entire cake for me. *Shudders

17. Adam is busy searching for clues in his room and finds a Moby Dick book but with completely blank pages. How strange. This world is really messed up. Mira is driving through town and sees Skeet speed-running on the streets. This should be interesting. Since last season, I’ve always thought of Skeet to potentially work with the main trio one day since he was so reluctant to fight them. We shall see what happens deeper into the season.

18. The next morning, Adam and Kai meet up outside the donut shop and Kai is freaking out because he says he hasn’t woken up from his dream. He tells him about a new theory he has to explain why everyone is acting so weird: an Alien Invasion. I honestly can believe any explanation at this point because everything is so messed up.

19. Mira didn’t show up and they become worried. They walk over to Mira’s house and ring the doorbell. It’s Miles! And he immediately recognizes Kai. Miles and Kai seem to be gaming buddies.

QUESTION: I’m now wondering about how long Kai has known Mira and Adam prior to ‘The Hollow’. I guess he could be childhood friends with them too?

20. Adam thinks that Mira probably went to the Hollow Games studio last night and they make their way over there. They are stopped by a security guard who doesn’t even know what building she’s guarding and isn’t aware of ‘The Hollow’. I guess this supports my theory that only current game players know what ‘The Hollow’ is.

21. Is it just me or does Adam always feels like he has to touch Kai in some way or form, every chance he gets? I’m not complaining though.

22. Darla is hilarious and I totally stan her. We need to see more from her and her ex, Steve. Apparently Reeve is or was friends with Adam and Mira in real life. From my understanding, all three of them were in a team (for The Hollow?) before something happened and they had to recruit Kai as his replacement. I love all the backstory we’re getting. This season is doing a good job with that. And this explains the picture of the 3 of them in Adam’s room last episode. It’s such a contrast because they were kinda direct enemies last season.

23. They sneak into the building to find Mira and they’re pretty sure she’s in there because her scooter is parked outside.

24. It looks like it’s ‘The Hollow’ champions wall. We see a picture of Gretchen Aguilar and her team but no sign of Adam, Mira and Kai on that wall. This further confirms their suspicion that they haven’t actually won the game yet.

25. They head to the stage room where the participants would wear their VR-looking googles and play ‘The Hollow’. Kai trips on a cable that he suspects is connected to a server room that powers the game. But Adam calls him from what it appears to be the control room as he is looking through files to gather more information.

26. After surviving a random and sudden earthquake, they come across the server room but they are swarmed by a bunch of laser-shooting bots. They barricade themselves inside the room, which has a broken wall that leads to a big portal. They suspect that Mira jumped through that very portal.

27. Adam isn’t sure if they should enter that portal but time is running out and they need to make a decision fast.

28. Any excuse to touch Kai huh? He is so smitten by him (I need to stop lol)

29. The episode ends with the two of them literally taking a leap of faith into the portal. Stay tuned for my reaction to episode 3, which will be out very soon. BTW y’all, I’m still not over Adam’s coming out scene to Kai! Cue me replaying that scene over and over again.

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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It’s no secret that Republicans are anti-intellectual, but it makes you wonder what their end goal is? Why do they keep electing dumber and dumber presidents? Is it just to own the libs? Do they just not care? They’ll get what they want regardless of how smart their presidents are, so why always pick the low hanging fruit?

The only smart Republican of the last 60 years was Bush Sr, and he was a one-term wonder who rode Reagan’s coattails into office.

Nixon was notoriously incompetent as VP, almost beat Kennedy in 1960, threw what should have been a career ending shit fit in 1962 after losing the California governor’s race, but not only came back in 68 and win because Goldwater was so unpopular in 64, but won 72 in the greatest landslide in history up to that point. Corrupt to the bone, he resigned before he could be impeached for hiring burglars to steal dirt on a political opponent, covering it up, and lying about it.

Ford was appointed VP to replace scandal stricken Spiro Agnew, specifically chosen because he was known as an honest politician. His reputation evaporated the second he became president because his first act was to pardon the guiltiest man in the country; he lost handily in 76.

Reagan was an actor who wanted to play politician so he could hurt the people he didn’t like; blacks people, poor people, gay people, women. It was a power trip for him, and because he was good at reading cue cards and delivering jokes written by other people, everyone let him get away with murder. He committed treason by selling weapons to Iran; this isn’t hyperbole, the actual definition of treason includes giving aid to out enemies, and after the oil and hostage crises of the 70s, Iran was an enemy first and foremost. Oliver North took the blame and had his secretary shred the evidence, the President Bush pardoned everyone involved. Reagan won in an even bigger landslide than 72 in 84, and Bush won in a major upset against Dukakis in 88.

Bush lost in 92 in no small part because of Ross Perot splitting the ticket; no third party candidate has ever done better nationwide than Perot in 92, with 19% of the vote (though he didn’t win a single state, which some minor candidates have done). Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote. Forty-three percent! 57% of people voted against him, and he won. 92 was a farce, as was 96 with less than 50% voter turnout, the lowest in modern history. Perot ran again and got 8.4% of the vote, Republican Bob Dole only got 40.7%, and Clinton got 49.2%. This means that less than a quarter of eligible voters voted for Bill Clinton, and he still won. FARCE!

Al Gore rightfully won in 2000, but the conservative majority Supreme Court stole it from him. Florida was too close to call; whichever candidate won it would become president. George W. Bush’s brother Jeb was governor, and he ordered the federally mandated recount be stopped, breaking the law. The Supreme Court decided not to restart the recount for no discernible reason besides they wanted Bush to win. He was notoriously dumb, stereotypically dumb, so dumb a lot of people thought it was an act and voted for him because they thought he was a secret genius who was just pretending to be a cowboy running for president off his daddy’s legacy. He was the stupidest president we had ever had up to that point, and hired a lot of smart people to do horrible things so he could claim plausible deniability. That Obama didn’t send Dick Cheney to the Hague was a deafening silence. Bush only won re-election in 2004 because he started a war in Iraq in 2003 and the country didn’t want to change horses midstream; same exact tactic his daddy used, only this war lasted longer than the Gulf and “worked” as planned.

2008 was a ceremonial race; McCain didn’t stand a chance. He was not incompetent, but his running mate was. Sarah Palin was even dumber than Bush, and like Gingrich in the 90s was responsible for a conservative revolution we’re still feeling today. Barack Obama wasn’t an amazing president, but he was an AMAZING candidate. Everybody loved Obama in 2008, he won more votes than any candidate in history until 2020. McCain was a career moderate, and after the last 8 years of failure both parties were running on a platform of “I am not George W. Bush.” Turns out a young charismatic smart black man is less like Bush than another old white guy.

Obama lost a ton of momentum going into 2012 because he didn’t really DO anything his first term. His only major accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act, which was an act of the Democratic congress than anything else, and it still wasn’t nearly as progressive as it needed to be (the US is still the only developed nation without universal healthcare). Romney, a Republican governor from the Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts, could have beaten him were he not a classist piece of shit. Romney hated poor people more than Reagan, and once wore brown face to a campaign event to make himself look more like Obama (they didn’t paint his hands or neck, just his face). Obama made a lot of promises he didn’t keep, in no small part because of the Tea Party and the devastating losses in 2014 (we suffer under Mitch McConnell because of that).

2016 was a dumpster fire that shouldn’t have happened, and if either party had run a different candidate, it wouldn’t have. Sanders would have beaten Trump, Clinton would have beaten Cruz. It was a perfect storm of a very unpopular and insincere grandma running against a cartoon supervillain. You couldn’t repeat that with what we know now. Your vote in 2016 came to represent who you were as a person; people took it to the extremes, and the sunk cost fallacy made the entire Republican party shift so far rightward that we have actual concentration camps now and NOBODY GIVES A SHIT! Trump was a game show host, a used car salesman famous for being tacky and dumb and offensive. He was KNOWN for running his companies into the ground, that was his MO, he made a career out of bankruptcy, and Republicans still can’t believe that he drove us into the worst economic depression since the last Republican (history repeat itself, whoop-dee-doo). Biden won in 2020 because of record turnout, though 2020 was closer to the intentional walk of 2012 than the home run of 2008 in terms of enthusiasm for the candidates.

If we’ve learned anything its that Republicans just keep getting worse and worse, so it’s getting hard for me to imagine what 2024 has in store. Will Trump risk losing the popular vote 3 times in a row for a second term? i think he’ll pretend to so he can scam millions of dollars out of his base, but he’ll either lost the primaries and tank the Republicans by running third-party, or he’ll drop out and endorse one of his spawn. If Biden decides not to run in 2024, the nomination will almost certainly go to Kamala Harris, at which point I expect the Republicans to run a woman as well, so that we’re guaranteed the first woman president; she’ll be young, and white, and blonde. My money’s on Ivanka. Kamala vs. Ivanka will be a repeat of the 2016 dumpster fire, only worse because then everyone would be acting like both candidates are feminist icons, #GirlPower #SheRunsTheWorld #WarCrimesAreBetterWithTwoXChromosomes If Biden DOES run again, then I suspect the Republican pool will be wide early on (Prick Scott, Ron DeathSantis, Uncle Tom Cotton, Nikkki Haley, you name it), only to shrink before the primaries as they all coordinate to get behind someone strong enough to defeat an incumbent.

Republicans are very good at coordinating; they are the party of “Follow the Leader.” Whoever is in charge has 100% authority, no ifs, ands, or buts, no questions asked, just follow orders. It would be easy to call them lemmings, but it’s more insidious than this. They run dumb candidates for president, but have very smart people working behind the scenes to do horrible things. They’re willing to follow orders blindly to ensure that the party prospers, whereas Democrats are chicken running around with their heads cut off. There are no Democratic leaders. Pelosi? Schumer? Nobody likes those dinosaurs! The only really popular Democrats are progressives, and they will never have power as long as the moderates have a majority of the caucus. AOC could be a senator someday; she could replace Schumer whenever he retires, but that would hinge on her not having any moderate primary challengers. Moderates are still very popular because they are seen as “electable,” even though they never DO anything once elected. Progressives have big ideas and the concrete plans to get them done, but the moderate establishment is afraid of losing power, and would rather placate the other side doing nothing, changing nothing, making no waves. The party needs to shift leftward, or the country is doomed.

I would suggest the progressives splitting off to form a third party, but that would almost certainly destroy left-wing politics in this country as every safe seat would become split. In an ideal world, it would be a nominal change; they would be the Progressive Democratic Party, they would continue to run in blue districts and caucus with Democrats on votes, but would advertise themselves as anti-establishment. They would be like the New Democrats in Canada, which now that I think about it is a very bad idea because the New Democrats have no power and end up giving more votes to the Liberals and Conservatives instead. The Progressive solution is intended to show the caucus that the moderates don’t have total control, but it would end up with the moderate Democrats shooting themselves in the foot, running against Progressives in every seat, handing them to the Republicans. Every election cycle people act like a loss would spell “the end of the _____ party,” but this would actually be it for the Democrats. It would be a turning point, like the 1960s, with millions of people changing parties out of principle, a major shift. A Red Scare

I just want to crawl in a hole and die. I hate politics.

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poeticallyunkind · 5 years

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A Marriage Proposal - Chardelia

[side note: this is a repost of a story i’ve already published because, like the idiot that i am, i accidentally deleted the original post that this oneshot was under :( sorry for the confusion!]

By the time Cordelia takes the chicken out of the oven, her kitchen looks something like a hurricane. Pots and pans are strewn about the unkempt counter space, left unclean as the blonde rushes from one dish to the next. She runs through her messy checklist for the umpteenth time. Roasted chicken? Check. Charlotte's favorite soup? Check. Red wine, which she may or may not have found in the clearance section? Check. Fancy candles, white tablecloth, and the fine china she'd "borrowed" from her mother's house? Check, check, check.

Sighing, she takes in her hard work. The dining room looks even better than she'd expected. Elegant music flows through the radio, filling the apartment with a symphony of violins and gentle notes. Their table is decked in porcelain serving platters and crystalline wine glasses— the best she could find. In the center stands a candelabra, its light flickering softly in contrast to the darkened walls. She'd even gone as far as to deck the counter space with roses from their local florist.

After checking once more that everything is set, the caterer allows herself a moment to sit and breathe. It briefly calms the nerves tugging at her stomach, but one look at the clock on the wall confirms that Charlotte will be home any time now. In a matter of minutes, she'll give what just might be the biggest, most life-changing speech ever: a proposal to the woman she's madly in love with. No pressure, right?

Wrong.

Cordelia produces a small velvet box from her pocket. A glance at the ring she'd purchased nearly a week ago makes her heart pump with excitement. Admittedly, she'd had quite a bit of trouble finding something at the jewelry store to fit her tiny budget. She ended up with perhaps the most basic engagement ring possible: a sterling silver band that holds a diamond roughly the size of a pebble. The salesperson (who would occasionally throw the blonde a disgusted glance, as if horrified that a woman was going to propose to another woman) had described it as budget-friendly, but Cordelia figures that was the polite way of saying "perfect for people with shitty salaries". She had almost feared that Charlotte would reject her because of the gemstone, but Cordelia knew in her heart that her doctor would never be so materialistic and vain.

A smile creeps onto the caterer's lips as she thinks of her partner of three years. There's not a single doubt in her mind that Charlotte's the woman she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Sure, not everything in their relationship is perfect, but she adores her doctor and couldn't imagine a life without her. Her intelligence, her smile, her loyalty and maturity, the way she looks at Cordelia as though she's a goddess... Charlotte is breathtaking in every sense of the word. Despite her nervousness, Cordelia knows that she's about to make the best decision of her life.

Just then, a subtle click of the doorknob fills the cramped apartment. Cordelia quickly crams the box back into her pocket, taking a moment to smooth out her blue blouse. As the door opens, she's blessed with the sight of her beautiful soon-to-be fiancé, who runs a hand through her hair and offers a tired grin.

Unable to wipe the anxious smile off her face, Cordelia coos a greeting. "Charlotte, baby! You're finally home!"

"'Delia, how are y—" the doctor falters, her eyes slowly trailing to the candlelit dining table. "Oh, what's all this?"

"Surprise! This is all for you!"

Charlotte raises an eyebrow. "It's not already my birthday, is it? And Valentine's day was two months ago, and our anniversary isn't for—"

"Sheesh, can't a woman do something nice for her girlfriend without any particular reason?" Cordelia interrupts, heart beating a tad faster than what's considered normal.

Before the brunette can respond, she leads her into the dining room and pulls out a chair, gesturing for Charlotte to take a seat. In the dim candlelight, her partner looks positively radiant.

"Honey, you really didn't have to go through all of this effort," Charlotte says, looking a little bewildered she sits. "You already work your ass off cooking at work, the last thing I'd want you to do is wear yourself out trying to do the same thing at home for me."

Cordelia scoffs. "Oh, shush. It was really nothing. And besides, my favorite girl deserves the best."

Okay, perhaps "nothing" is a bit of a lie, but the exhausted look on Charlotte's face suggests that the last thing she needs to hear about is the grueling time Cordelia spent on this surprise.

Hand on her hip, she leans down to give Charlotte a kiss on the cheek. It isn't until after they've pulled apart and Cordelia has already waltzed into the kitchen that the doctor speaks again.

"...Is that matzo ball soup that I'm smelling?"

Giggling, Cordelia steps back into the room with two plates of food. She sets one on either side of the table and sits across from her partner. "Yep! I made your favorites— matzo ball soup, roasted chicken and veggies, even bought some red wine. Also, there's cookies that I baked with my family's secret recipe!"

"That must've taken forever..." Charlotte trails off, gazing at her dinner with a wide range of emotions. "I really don't deserve you, 'Delia."

"Hey, don't talk like that. We're in this together, sweetheart. I deserve you and you deserve me!"

"Sure, but I still—"

Cordelia interrupts once more. "No 'buts'! We deserve each other, and that's final. Now tell me, is the food good?"

Normally, it isn't. The caterer isn't necessarily the greatest chef of all time, and more often than not her meals are considerably less than great. Sure, her food was edible... but not much more could be said about her cooking.

Maybe a homemade dinner wasn't the best idea for this, she thinks, growing more nervous by the second. Everything has to go perfectly tonight! Shit, what if she says no to my proposal because of how bad my cooking is?

Tentatively, Charlotte takes a bite of chicken. Cordelia half expects her to spit it out when she isn't looking, but surprisingly, the doctor's features light up. "Honey, this is delicious. You made this?"

Cordelia has to resist the urge to break into a happy dance, choosing instead to beam. "I did! I made it all by myself!"

"I'm proud of you, 'Delia. This is absolutely perfect— no, you're perfect."

At that moment, Cordelia becomes uncomfortably aware of the small box's presence in her pocket. Her throat goes dry. Her nerves are telling her to simply take it out and get the proposal over with, but something deep within her forbids it. She needs the perfect moment, the perfect opportunity to confess her undying devotion to the woman in front of her.

In other words, she'll need to wait a little longer to get things moving.

The couple eats in relative calm for the next several minutes, occasionally exchanging bits of small talk between bites. They talk of Charlotte's day at work, of how things are going at the catering business, of their friends— anything to keep the conversation alive. All the while, Cordelia plasters a nervous smile on her face and keeps a hand tucked firmly on her jeans.

"How's Marvin?" Cordelia asks, the topic now settled on the lives of their mutual friends. Marvin is Charlotte's closest friend, but lord knows Cordelia doesn't get to hear enough about him. "I haven't heard from the poor guy in a while."

"Oh, he's... adjusting," Charlotte offers. "I try to talk to him on my lunch breaks as often as I can. All things considered, I guess he's doing well enough."

"Poor thing. It can't be easy, living a situation like that. Suddenly coming to terms with your sexuality, having to go through with a divorce..." Cordelia shudders, the word divorce leaving an unpleasant taste on her tongue.

"I think he's lonely. He's had time to cope with everything and make amends with the people in his life, but what I think he needs is to start getting out more, experiencing things with people."

"We could always invite him over for dinner," Cordelia muses. "Or, hell, I could grab Whizzer and force them to finally meet."

Charlotte huffs out a laugh, making Cordelia's heart flutter with glee. "Now that's an idea. Putting the two most different men in the world in the same room."

"Oh, come on, they're not that different! They're both gay, for starters. Both of them like to, uh, y'know..." Cordelia wracks her brain for any similarities between her best friend and Marvin, and comes up with nothing of substance. "Okay, maybe you're right."

They both share a laugh, and soon enough their plates have been cleared. The radio drones on, filling the apartment with gentle music. The candles have nearly gone out, and the bottle of wine has long since been drained of its contents.

Charlotte rises from her seat, gently pulling in Cordelia for a hug. The two take a moment to simply be with one another, wordless as their fingers intertwine.

"Thank you again for dinner, 'Delia." Charlotte presses a kiss to Cordelia's hand. "It was phenomenal."

"Well, thank you for not hating my surprise. You're phenomenal." Cordelia grins. "I'm really lucky to have you in my life, Char."

"I'm the lucky one."

They reluctantly break from their embrace, and a glance at the clock tells Cordelia that it's growing later and later by the second. Charlotte stands in front of her, her gorgeous features shadowed by the dying candlelight. The scent of roses wafts throughout the room.

A deep breath. Then another. She allows her gaze to fall on the woman she's absolutely crazy for, who in return smiles sweetly. Another breath, and the nervousness practically melts away from her body. Somehow, she knows that she's ready to make the biggest decision of her life.

In other words, it's time.

"...Char, wanna play a game?" she quips, hand moving instinctively to her pocket.

Charlotte's face scrunches up in confusion, a deep contrast to the smile she'd had only seconds ago. "What?"

"A game," Cordelia teases. "Y'know, something you play with—"

"I know what a game is, you dork. What kind of game?"

"Well, just close your eyes and I'll explain the rules."

Her partner gives her a strange look. "Why... would I need to do that?"

"You'll see," is all Cordelia says.

Charlotte scoffs at the cryptic wording, but indeed shuts her eyes. "Alright, eyes are closed. Now what the hell are you talking about?"

"Well, the game has to be played between two people who are madly in love with each other." Cordelia swipes the box from her pocket, fidgeting with the velvet.

"Go on..." Charlotte encourages, completely oblivious to what's happening before her.

The caterer props herself on one knee, breathing deeply once more. "And one of these players has to buy a ring, right? But not just any old ring. Because this ring represents the commitment, passion, and love between both players, and connects them for life."

Charlotte becomes visibly nervous, her voice edging somewhere between hopeful and scared. Her eyes remain closed. "Cordelia, are you...?"

"And the person with the ring loves the other player dearly, and desperately wants to spend the rest of her life with her. The other player is her better half, and she knows that. The other player makes her happier than words can tell, and god, the person with the ring hopes that she makes her feel the same."

Cordelia swears she can see Charlotte starting to tear up, and she'd be lying if she said that her own eyes weren't doing the same.

She continues. "So, basically, the game goes like this. The player with the ring gets on one knee, just like this..."

Charlotte finally opens her eyes, taking Cordelia's outstretched hand and producing a watery smile.

"Tells the other player just how much she means to her..."

Cordelia squeezes Charlotte's hand.

"And asks the question of a lifetime."

Charlotte keeps her soft gaze locked firmly on the woman pouring her heart out beneath her. "God, Cordelia..." she trails off.

"Will you marry me, Charlotte?"

Before Cordelia can even stand, she's swept into a long, passionate kiss. The box falls to the floor as she combs her fingers through Charlotte's hair. The world around her falls to meaningless pieces; her fiancé is the only thing that matters. She takes it all in— the wonderful sensation of Charlotte's lips on her own, the tantalizing scent of her perfume, the way the doctor's hand cups her cheek— and knows what Charlotte can't seem to convey in her own words.

Yes, she'll marry her.

#my writing #falsettos #broadway #whizzer brown #whizzvin #marvin falsettos #in trousers #theatre #mendel weisenbachfeld #fanfiction #gay #lgbt #chardelia #charlotte falsettos #cordelia falsettos #lesbian

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forehead-enthusiast · 4 years

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A Buncha Tag Games (and yet not all of them)

tagged by: @eggyukhei mwah

tagging: this is a LOT of games so i’ll only tag @atinyphobe @nsheetee and @veonjun for the SECOND (2nd) game. if they or anybody wants to do any of the other games, absolutely go for it and say i tagged you <3 i’d love to see what you guys say!! (also, tk if you felt like you wanted to answer my questions from the second game i’d be interested to see!)

One:

tell me the first song that made you stan your current fave group and why did your faves attract you so much?

ok SO the song that probably got me into rv 100% (also yes ik this blog is 99% nct but rv is my forever fave no question) was probably ice cream cake!! i had been a casual listener of many groups up until that point and had never really stanned anyone, but icc was so infectious i found myself watching it over and over. i had heard happiness and be natural before but hadn’t really listened too closely, so icc was the song that captured me. after that, dumb dumb only cemented my love for them more, and the red is still one of my favorite kpop albums to date. rv attracted me primarily because of their incredible vocals and their versatility in genres and concepts. i still get so excited wondering what they’ll tackle next!! they’re just soooo unique and have one of, if not the best discographies of any group. i cannot stress enough, I. Love. RV!! also they’re funny and gay so. anyway stream monster once it drops uwu

Two:

rule: answer the ten questions and write your own!

1. what is your favorite song that’s been released during quarantine? ooooo honestly??? probably something off of Sawayama. literally every song bangs so hard i highly recommend that album to anyone!! i can’t pick a favorite off it but who’s gonna save you now is awesome and xs is just,,, chef’s kiss

2. what is your greatest mishap when you tried cooking? (or something you’ve witnessed) one time, while making soup at my late grandmother’s house on her like gas stove, i put a lid on a pot and somehow that led the pot to be engulfed in flames. IN MY DEFENSE i was like 7, and i’m great at cooking/baking now

3. what’s your go-to outfit or article of clothing? oh i love a nice dress. they can be casual or formal, and you look like you put effort into your outfit except i didn’t because i didn’t have to match anything yo!!!! also shorts have trouble fitting me cause i’m a weird body type so dresses tend to be very comfy for me

4. what is your comfort food? am i allowed to say like all food??? eating in itself is comforting,,, that sounds depressing but also i just like eating yummy food. i guess i’d say like my dad’s fried rice?? its my fave and no one makes it like him soooo

5. what singular moment in your life would you like to relive? i couldn’t tell if this meant like, a good moment you want to re-experience or go back in time and redo a moment and fix it. it’s kind of a hard question so i might cop out and go with a bit of a silly answer: i want to relive the hi touch with astro...... i wanna look at rocky’s beautiful eyes and touch moonbin’s hand ok,,,,

6. what is your favorite line and/or character from a movie, show, or book? i got a bunch but a few off the top of my head are genie lo (the epic crush of genie lo), ty lee, suki (atla), klaus, and ben (umbrella academy)

7. if you could only choose one ice cream flavor and pizza topping/style for the rest of your life, what would it be? ice cream flavor: this very specific one from a local store that is banana ice cream with strawberries and oreo mixed in. it is heaaaavenly. as for pizza topping, i love a breakfast type pizza with an egg on top and like sausage and stuff!!!

8. what is the worst injury you’ve ever had or witnessed? funny enough, i’ve actually gotten badly injured quite a few times, and always on the face!! god hates me. the worst was probably when i hit a metal bench with my face and it took a chunk out of my cheek. i still have the scar! as for “witnessed” i accidentally broke a grown man’s rib once as a child, so i guess that would count.

9. would you rather explore the unknown of space or the bottom of the ocean? oceaaaan!! i answered this in some other game, but i like how mysterious and yet close the ocean is. like proximity wise it’s so near, yet there’s an insane amount we know nothing about. that’s so frightening but so intriguing

10. if you could be any cartoon character, who would you be? my first thought was literally “kirby. eat fast” GOD my followers are gonna think i’m just a glutton and they’re not even gonna be wrong im dying. but uhh idk mulan or smth?

my questions:

what is your go-to feel good movie?

are you the type of person who’s indecisive about buying, or the type to impulse buy once you see something you like?

do you prefer chocolate-y or fruity candy?

what idol do you think is most similar to you? (not your bias necessarily)

do you have any silly dealbreakers? if so, what are they?

what do you do to unwind?

what is a small thing you like to do for people you love? (be it sending memes, remembering their favorite shows, etc)

what’s/who’s your favorite myth/mythological being?

what is a non-typical pet you would want to have?

do you say pronounce data as day-ta or dah-ta?

THREE

rule: bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people.

AIR ༉⋆͙̈

i have small hands / i love the night sky / i watch animals and birds when i pass them by / i drink herbal tea / i wake to see the dawn / the smell of dust is comforting / i’m valued for being wise / i prefer books to music / i meditate / i find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE ༉⋆͙̈

i don’t have straight hair / i like to wear ripped jeans and overalls / i play an organized sport / i love dogs / i am not afraid of adventure / i love to talk to strangers / i always try new foods / i enjoy road trips / summer is my favorite season / my radio is always playing

WATER ༉⋆͙̈

i wear bracelets on my wrists / i love the bustle of the city / i have more than one set of piercings / i read poetry / i love the sound of a thunderstorm / i want to travel the world / i sleep past midday most days / i love simply lit dinners and fluorescent signs / i rewatch kids shows out of nostalgia / i see emotions in colors not words

EARTH ༉⋆͙̈

i wear glasses or contacts / i enjoy doing the laundry / i am a vegetarian or vegan / i have an excellent sense of time / my humor is very cheerful / i am a valued advisor to my friends / i believe in true love / i love this chill of mountain air / i’m always listening to music / i am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER ༉⋆͙̈

i go without makeup in my daily life / i make my own artwork / i keep on track of my tasks and time / i always know true north / i see beauty in everything / i can always smell flowers / i smile at everyone i pass by / i always fear history repeating itself / i have recovered from a mental disorder / i can love unconditionally

FOUR

the ultimate tag: answer whichever ones you want to because there are a lot and then tag a few blogs you’d like to get to know better!

PERSONAL

name: sarah

nickname: bells

birthday: april 17th

zodiac: aries

nationality: chinese american

languages: english, some spanish, some korean

gender: female

sexuality: baby bi bi bi~

height: 5′10

BLOG STUFF

inspiration for muse: i suppose nct since i write for them the most?? but i feel like sometimes i come up with the idea before i think of a member so sometimes the muse is just my own fantasies oops

meaning behind my url: i made it at a time where loads of idols were getting bangs and honestly i believe most of them look infinitely better without them, thus i was and still am enthusiastic about foreheads.

blog established: like winter of 2018...?? i think

followers: over 2.5k but most deactivated/left during my hiatus lol

FAVORITES

favourite animals: sharks, chickens, snakes, cats, penguins

favourite books: the epic crush of genie lo and then iron will of genie lo, PERIOD

favourite colour: pink and purple!!

favourite fictional characters: lol, again, genie lo, ty lee, suki, klaus, ben, and just a few more: richard and evelyn o’connell (the mummy), dave (dave), michael (the good place)

favourite flower: sunflower

favourite scent: baking chocolate, heating butter, blackberry, wisteria

favourite season: probably spring! i like warmth but not HEAT

RANDOM

average hours of sleep: ugh idek i sleep horribly

cats or dogs: both, but unfortunately i’ve never had either

coffee, tea or hot chocolate: tea but then hot chocolate

current time: 5:29pm

dream trip: go to paris and eat loads of pastries and enjoy the fashions and beauty of the city, and also learn to bake better maybe?

dream job: actress

hobbies: making jewelry, drawing, singing, reading comics

hogwarts house: according to the quizzes, all of them. people who have just met me think slytherin or gryffindor, people who i’m friends with think ravenclaw or hufflepuff, people who know me really well know you can’t box a person into oversimplified archetypes :’) in my assessment of myself, it varies by the day, but i think perhaps gryffindor today?

last movie watched: hot fuzz (a classic)

last song listened to: summer breeze by sf9

no. of blankets you sleep with: like 2

random fact(s): i won lego building competitions as a child, one of my dream roles is anastasia from the musical named after her, i played violin for a very short time, i bake the cakes for all my family and friends’ birthdays, i have strangely strong grip strength

SIX

10 songs i can’t stop listening to:

love me 4 me- rina sawayama

cherry- rina sawayama

in & out- red velvet

crush culture- conan gray

manic- conan gray

the king- conan gray

summer- pentagon

told you now- jeremy jordan (originally sung by sam smith)

fuck this world (interlude)- rina sawayama

someone who loves me- sara bareilles

#these were sooooooooooo fun!!#thank you for tagging me eggy #i feel like i maybe exposed myself for being a gluttonous fool tho #lmaoooo #fr tho try these games out!! so fun #sarah.tmi #tag games

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scientificphilosopher · 5 years

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Book List 2018

I’m a couple weeks behind on this, but here’s the list of books I read in 2018. I’ve broken it down by category, though this is pretty loose since, you know, genres bleed into one another and such. You can also find reviews of some of these books here, and I always take requests for reviews as well. Follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading and rating.

Let me know what you think if you’ve read any of these books or have recommendations, and, as always, please feel free to send me malicious personal attacks if I say something you disagree with.

Non-Fiction

Philosophy

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The Pragmatic Turn by Richard J. Bernstein

Race Matters by Cornel West

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag

Ethics Without Ontology by Hilary Putnam

Meaning in Life and Why It Matters by Susan Wolf

The Variety of Values: Essays on Morality, Meaning, and Love by Susan Wolf

The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World by Owen J. Flanagan

Meaning in Life by Thaddeus Metz

The Human Eros: Eco-Ontology and the Aesthetics of Existence by Thomas Alexander

Naturalism and Normativity by Mario De Caro (Editor), David Macarthur (Editor)

Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity by Michael P. Lynch

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things that Matter by Peter Singer

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment by Robert Wright

A Defense of Buddhist Virtue Ethics by Jack Hamblin

Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought by Dennis C. Rasmussen

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams

Reality, Art and Illusion by Alan Watts

Democracy and Social Ethics by Jane Addams

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett

Science

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte

Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovara

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—And Us by Richard O. Prum

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

The Physics of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku

The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World--and Could Destroy It by Alanna Mitchell

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

Visions for the 21st Century by Carl Sagan et al.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage by Chet Raymo

The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science by Chet Raymo

Politics/Race/Gender

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay (editor)

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Race Matters by Cornel West

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Tears We Cannot Stand: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

The Common Good by Robert Reich

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

Memoir

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

South of Forgiveness: A True Story of Rape and Responsibility by Thordis Elva

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker

The Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman

My Own Life by David Hume

Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton

Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime by Ron Stallworth

Calypso by David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Ink Spots by Brian McDonald

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

History/Biography

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan

God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang

Fiction

Literary Fiction

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Another Country by James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Home by Toni Morrison

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

The Dead by James Joyce

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

A Confederacy of Dunces by Jonh Kennedy Toole

The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo

Genre Fiction

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Slice of Life by Kurt Vonnegut

2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Pure Drivel by Steve Martin

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

The Green Mile by Stephen King

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

The Bad Beginning: A Series of Unfortunate Events #1 by Lemony Snicket

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Worst of 2018

Every single book I read this past year had redemptive value. Even if it was total garbage, it still taught me some stuff (like how not to write a book). Even a bad book can be a good book if you let it be.

So, here’re a few books that didn’t quite hit the spot for me:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Ink Spots by Brian McDonald

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Best of 2018

It was genuinely difficult to choose my top books of 2018. What a literary year it has been for me. 2018 marks the most books I’ve read in a year, and I was lucky enough to come across some real game-changers. I finally read the Harry Potter series and, boy howdy, did it ever live up to the hype. What took me so long?? But this was, more than anything, the year of James Baldwin. He has made an indelible mark on me as a reader, a writer, and a human. What a year this has been! I hope to read a fraction as much beautiful, lovely, challenging, profound prose in 2019.

In no particular order, here are the books of 2018 that most moved me, shook me, rattled me, rolled me:

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

The Pragmatic Turn by Richard J. Bernstein

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage by Chet Raymo

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Well, there you have it, folks. Here’s to many more good books in the years to come!

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. —Ursula K. Le Guin

#reading list #2018 #nich #reading #books #writing #long post #long

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ayellowbirds · 5 years

Text

42 Webcomics Keshet Reads

I was recently reminded that I currently read a lot of webcomics, or have done so in the past. Here’s an incomplete list, linking to the first page where i can (which will usually mean the worst art). Organized thus: Title, Author. Genre. Format (long-format stories, short-format & single-page stories, or mixed). Description.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, by Christopher Hastings. Comedy, Parody, Action. A man from a long line of Irish ninjas has devoted his own life to saving lives as a doctor, disappointing his family. His staff includes a sentient but non-speaking gorilla receptionist, and eventually a boy sidekick who grew a fabulous mustache out of sheer determination. Recurring threats include fast food mascots, ghosts, wizards, ghost wizards, and a disease that turns people into giant lumberjacks. Completed.

BACK, by Anthony Clark and KC Green. Comedy, Adventure, Absurdity, Weird West. Long-Format. A cowgirl comes back from the dead with no memory of who she was or how she died, and is told by a trio of “Cool Witches” that she has to bring about the end of the world—though what exactly that means remains a mystery. Consistently excellent visual storytelling from masters of sequential art; at least one WLW pairing among the characters.

Bite Me!, by Dylan Meconis. Comedy, Horror, Historic Fiction. Long-Format. A young woman becomes a vampire amidst the chaos of the French Revolution. Featuring immortal angst, a Jewish werewolf, and sacré bleu, the chickens. Completed (website can be slow to load).

Broodhollow, by Kris Straub. Horror, Weird Fiction. Long-Format. By the creator of the original creepypasta that inspired Channel Zero. A young man abounding with neuroses and compulsions comes to a strange little town in order to settle a late relative’s estate. Themes of unreliable memories and differences of perception.

Chainsawsuit, by Kris Straub. Comedy. Short-Format. Three-panel gag comic.

ChaosLife, by A. Stiffler & K. Copeland. Slice of Life, Autobiographical. Mixed-Format. The life of a queer couple and their pets: humor, lgbt issues, mental illness (K. experiences paranoid schizophrenia), cats, and occasional puppets.

Crunchy Bunches, by Scott Warren. Comedy. Mixed-Format. Cereal mascot parody focused on snaggle-toothed feline mascot Munchy and his friends.

Dead Winter, by Allison Shabet. Action, Horror, Comedy. Long-Format. Zombie apocalypse story with occasional partially-animated scenes, and a relatively low focus on the actual zombies. Infrequent updates, but has a Patreon with weekly content.

DRIVE, by Dave Kellet. Sci-Fi, Comedy. Long-Format. Humanity has taken to the stars, led by a second Spanish Empire that controls the secrets of FTL travel. When the crew of the Machito recover their science advisor and accidentally pick up a mysterious amnesiac alien at the same time, they become embroiled in intrigue that affects the whole of human space and beyond, caught between secret police, mind-controlling invaders, and a species dedicated to invention who have a grudge against humans.

El Goonish Shive, by Dan Shive. Adventure, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Superheroics, Slice of Life, Mad Science. Long Format. Difficult to pin down, once described as “the most squeaky-clean fetish comic online”—lots of characters undergoing fantastic transformations of their bodies. Starts out weak but gradually grew into one of the most progressive webcomics out there as the creator started to really think about the meaning of someone wanting to transform from a nerdy boy into a busty girl. I’ve said more about it, here. Significant LGBT content, including canon gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, genderfluid, and asexual characters.

Family Man, by Dylan Meconis. Historic Fiction, Horror, Romance, Libraries. Long-Format. A learned man of Jewish ancestry takes a position as a lecturer at a small Christian university in the middle of nowhere in the Germanies of the 18th century, and falls in love with the daughter of the head of the university—who has some secrets relating to her mother’s family On hiatus as of July 2017.

Freefall, by Mark Stanley. Comedy, Sci-Fi, Furry. Long-Format. A larcenous alien and his naive robot pal living on a human colony world acquire the services of an uplifted humanoid wolf as their ship’s engineer under less-than-legal circumstances. As time goes on, the crew becomes caught up in the struggles and politics of the artificial intelligences of the colony. Binge-reading page here, colored strips here.

Girl Genius, by Phil & Kaja Foglio. Gaslamp Fantasy (Not-Steampunk), Action, Comedy, Mad Science, Alternate History. Long-format. A young woman discovers that she is the latest in a line of mad scientists including the vanished heroes of Europa as well as some of its most terrible villains.

Goblins, by Ellipsis Hana Stephens. Fantasy, RPGs, Action, Body Horror. Long-format. A tribe of goblins go from being mere MOBs to taking levels as adventurers themselves, facing ambiguity about alignment, morality, and the place of "monsters” in a world that seems to favor humanoids. Can get very gory at times. Light LGBT content including a prominent gay male character; transgender creator.

Goodbye to Halos, by Valerie Halla. Fantasy, Adventure. Long Format. Forced through a gateway to another world for her own safety, Fenic finds herself in the “run-down queer district” of a city of animal people—and spends a few years coming into own identity as a trans lesbian, forging a new life. But the reasons she was forced into this world are catching up to her, and she’ll need to turn her protective streak towards defending herself. Heavy LGBT themes; often not safe for work. The only work i can think of where a trans girl’s underwear bulge is treated as a completely nonsexual and innocent thing.

Grrl Power, by Dave Barrack. Superheroes, Sci-Fi. Long Format. Probably Not Safe For Work. Comics nerd Sydney Scoville winds up becoming a superhero herself after circumstances force her to reveal her powers and join up with an agency providing training and oversight. While consistently funny and clever with the use of powers, it can be very centered on the male gaze; the art starts out being pretty . I actually first started reading it because I recognized one of the characters from years prior when the artist was posting softcore smut to furry websites.

Guilded Age, by T. Campbell & Phil Kahn, art by John & Jason Waltrip and Erica Henderson. Fantasy, RPGs, Action, MMOs. Long-Format. A group of adventurers face off against threats to their world—such as the CEO of the company that programmed their world in the first place. Strong themes of intrigue, the nature of violence, and the concept of good and evil in fantasy settings. Completed, now running extras & side stories, including annotated repeats of the original pages.

Gunnerkrigg Court, by Tom Siddell. Fantasy, Sci-Fi. Long-Format. A young girl attends a strange boarding school specializing in matters of the supernatural and obscure, making friends with classmates, a ghost, robots, psychopomps, living shadows, fairies, and eldritch horrors in the form of silly woodland creatures while exploring the mysteries of the school and her own ancestry. Shows remarkable art progression; the style of the first storyline is unrecognizable from the present. Especially rewarding if you’re into alchemy. LGBT content, including prominent WLW characters. Warnings: unreality is a recurring theme, and there is a bit of “suicidal” fairies desperate to be reincarnated as humans. Boxbot is rubbish.

Johnny Wander, by Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh. Autobiographical, Fantasy, Humor, Mixed-Format. A mix of slice-of-life autobiographical pages, and short stories, including the longer format “Barbarous” and “Lucky Penny”.

Kevin & Kell, by Bill Holbrook. Comedy, Slice-of-Life, Furry. Mixed-Format. Extremely long-running strip (daily updates since September of 1995). In a world of anthropomorphic animals where predatory species can legally & without repercussions hunt & consume other species, a businesswoman wolf (Kell) and her uncommonly large rabbit husband (Kevin) make their blended family work in spite of social stigma against predator/prey relationships. Far more light-hearted than it sounds, though it often touches on social issues and drama. Light LGBT content from some minor recurring characters.

Kill Six Billion Demons, by Abbadon. Fantasy, Metaphysical, Martial Arts. Long Format. A college student’s attempt at heterosexuality is interrupted by the arrival of a legendary king of all reality. Thrust into a battle over the greatest power of all worlds, Allison faces devils, angels, and the city at the center of the 777,777 universes. It’s a lot to take in. Occasionally not safe for work. Frequent LGBT content, including WLW.

Love Me Nice, by Amanda Lafrenais. Comedy, Hollywood. Long Format. Set in a world shared by cartoon characters and ‘real’ people (think Roger Rabbit), where TV star Mac T. Monkey Jr. struggles between his irresponsible instincts and his attempts to build a life as an adult and a relationship with fellow protagonist (and manager) Claire. Some LGBT content; infrequent updates. Occasionally Not Safe For Work.

Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, by Coelasquid. Comedy, Videogames, Parody. Mixed-Format. The staff of a temp agency for “ludicrously macho guys” tries to help the protagonists of video games, TV, and movies deal with their testosterone-addled brains in a constructive fashion. Occasional LGBT content—mostly MLM, naturally. Keep an eye out for the fluffy little velociraptors, and Mr. Fish the Gyarados. On indefinite hiatus since June of 2018.

Narbonic, by Shaenon K. Garrity. Comedy, Sci-Fi, Mad Science, Gerbils. Mixed-Format. Comp Sci. grad Dave needs a job. Helen B. Narbon, cute blonde mad scientist with a gerbil fixation, is hiring. Story arcs feature action-packed forensic linguistics, a worldwide conspiracy of guys with the same name, rodents uplifted to sentience, time travel. Some awkwardness around gender transformations, light LGBT content. Completed, with author annotations.

Nedroid Picture Diary, by Anthony Clark. Comedy, Absurdity. Short Format. Short comics that very quickly come to focus on the antics of the anomalous ursine orb Beartato and his friend/roommate Reginald, a bird who is just terrible.

Not Drunk Enough, by Tess Stone. Supernatural, Action, Horror. Long Format. A survival horror styled webcomic by a creator with a history of exceptionally dynamic page composition and lettering. Expect lots of magnificently weird body horror.

O Human Star, by Blue Delliquanti. Roboticist Al Sterling died. Al Sterling woke up an android body mimicking his own. As he reconnects with his former partner-in-several-senses, he explores a world that remembers him as one of its greatest innovators. Major themes of identity, the definition of humanity, and gender and sexuality. LGBT themes including MLM and transgender characters. Warning for some discussion of self-harm.

Outsider, by Jim Francis. Sci-Fi. Long Format. Beautifully-illustrated science fiction story that is painfully slow to update. If you watched a lot of 80s and 90s sci-fi anime, you’ll get the vibe that this has—including its arguable weak point of being centered on a man who finds himself among an alien race dominated by warrior women.

Patrik the Vampire, by Bree Paulsen. Supernatural, Slice-of-Life. Long Format. The unlife and history of an exceptionally awkward vampire and the mortals around him—book club, knitting, coffee shops, violent murder. Some LGBT content.

Poppy O’Possum, by I. Everett. Fantasy, Furries. Long Format. A single mother in a world of animal people where only opossums lack magic, Poppy just wants to settle down in quiet and safety with her daughter Lily. The world has other ideas—but fortunately, Poppy is mind-blowingly strong. On hiatus. Some LGBT content.

Questionable Content, by Jeph Jacques. Slice-of-Life, Comedy, Sci-Fi. Mixed-Format. Starts out focusing on indie rock fan Marten and his robotic “anthroPC” Pintsize. As the art evolves, so does the subject matter, focusing more and more on the rest of the cast and topics like the nature of personhood and identity for artificial intelligence. Eventually comes to feature significant LGBT content, including bisexual and transgender characters in the main cast.

Rae the Doe, by Olive Brinker. Comedy, Slice-of-Life. (Mostly) Short Format. If Garfield was a transgender doe and wore clothes and also there weren’t any jokes about Mondays or lasagna and the comic was constantly assumed to be autobiographical in spite of its creator frequently asserting otherwise and the comic was still genuinely funny. But otherwise just like Garfield, really.

Selkie, by Dave Warren. Sci-Fi, Slice-of-Life, Comedy, Drama. Long-Format. Former adoptee Todd becomes a father himself to a strange young girl who turns out to be a refugee from a secret underwater civilization. While the public gradually becomes aware that humans are not alone, family forms and is redefined as secrets from both Todd and Selkie’s past are revealed and dealt with, and kids confront issues of inclusion and exclusion. Also, for some reason two of the kids from Evangelion are Todd’s neighbors.

Skin Deep, by Kory Bing. Fantasy, Coming-of-Age, Monster Girls (and Boys). Michelle discovers the secret world of mythical monster people after a small medallion unlocks her own heritage as a sphinx—supposedly long-extinct, according to the other monsters. Michelle must explore who she is and her family history while also trying to avoid completely upending nonhuman society and maintaining secrets within a culture already used to the use of magical illusions and transformations. Light LGBT content.

Skin Horse, by Shaenon Garrity. Comedy, Sci-Fi, Mad Science, Zombies, Canadians. Mixed-Format. Set in the same universe as Narbonic (see above), “Skin Horse” follows an organization of the same name dedicated to providing social services to beings only recognized by the secret shadow government—staffed by a patchwork zombie bioweapon, a talking sled dog, a cross-dressing pansexual psychologist, and a receptionist in the form of an immobile Victorian robotic weapon of mass destruction, all overseen by a sentient swarm of bees. Frequent LGBT content.

Something*Positive, by RK Milholland. Comedy, Slice-of-Live, Parody. Mixed-Format. Very long-running comic that gradually grows from a dark and misanthropic sense of humor into a dark and misanthropic sense of humor with a warm and gooey center. Earlier comics can be pretty weak and handle many subjects very poorly (the first strip, linked above, features an abortion “joke”); gradually improves.in terms of LGBT representation to the point that it’s one of the better webcomics in that regard. I might recommend skipping ahead in the archives to the current decade (the “1937″ and “1938″ are strips flashing back to the previous generations).

Spacetrawler, by Christopher Baldwin. Sci-Fi, Comedy. Long-Format. The naive but brilliant alien race known as the Eebs are enslaved by interplanetary society at large, depending on their servile nature to maintain the high standard of technology and transportation across the void of space. A group of utterly incompetent aliens come to Earth to seek help in freeing the Eebs... and generally fuck everything up for the best with their terrible choices of sample humans. Currently in the midst of a sequel series focusing on new intrigue and antics, including a talking, murderous kangaroo.

Spinnerette, by Krakow Studios. Superheroes, Comedy, Sci-Fi. Mixed-Format. A grad student develops spider-themed superpowers—including extra arms—and attempts to navigate both concealing her transformation, and becoming a superhero in a world where super-powered vigilantes and criminals are a fact of life. Not Work-Safe due to suggestive artwork including improbably form-fitting costumes over improbably large bosoms. Recurring LGBT content.

Val & Isaac, by @tredlocity. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comedy. Mixed-Format. A space mercenary, her wizard buddy, and the cyborg fish girl who keeps all their technology functional, occasionally featuring their shapeshifting assassin friend Space Dread. Major LGBT content, including WLW and MLM, and a prominent transgender character.

Vattu, by Evan Dahm. Fantasy, Worldbuilding. Long-Format. Born to the Fluters of the grasslands, Vattu finds her traditional subsistence lifestyle torn away as a multi-species empire asserts a claim over her people’s lands. A fantasy epic with several major arcs; see also the creator’s earlier completed works Rice Boy and Order of Tales.

XKCD, by Randall Munroe. Science, Parody, Comedy. Short Format. Stick figures and scientific silliness. Make a point of checking the alt-text of each comic by moving your cursor over the strip. Early pages are much more along the lines of experimental sketches; link above directs to a random comic in the archives. Some comics are more along the lines of interactive games!

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic (YAFGC), by Rich Morris. Fantasy, Comedy, Parody. Mixed-Format. Not Work-Safe. The inhabitants of a world heavily based in Dungeons & Dragons go about their lives as monsters, humanoids, and soul-searching mixes of the two. Begins with a romance between a beholder and a goblin, gradually builds up to battles between nations and the gods themselves, while also finding time to explore family, loss and love, and whether kobolds count as sapient. Moderate LGBT content including recurring gay & bisexual characters (it’s a very large cast); new readers guide here.

#long post #webcomics

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karmanticmoved · 5 years

Note

1-85 uwu

j esus okay

1. describe yourself.

uh,, emotional ig, dumbass, quiet, exhausted all of the time, v queer, healthy mix of feminine and masculine, insecure, and not tha t great tbh. kinda a pussy ass b itch

2. if you could go anywhere for a week all expenses paid where would it be?

idrk. maybe somewhere like a hella nice beach in another country, maybe somewhere in europe. i like travelling but i hate the travel to get there and have no money so i havent put thought into it. maybe hawaii or somewhere like that.

3. do you have siblings?

the one thats still alive is my half brother

4. what is your favorite constellation, why?

orion maybe bc i don't know a lot but i can see that one from my bedroom window even in the city n idk. its comforting. or scorpius cause i'm a scorpio

5. favorite color.

yellow, pink, or blue.

6. what kind of music do you listen to?

almost anything. whatever catches my interest.

7. favorite flower. (you can name as many as you want cause flowers are awesome)

forgot what i said last time but those

yellow carnations i think?

8. if you could do magic, what is the first spell you would learn?

maybe smth to put myself to sleep immediately bc f uCk

9. favorite childhood memory.

my summer camp memories are pretty great. also memories of my dad and i going fishing are good.

10. have you ever been cheated on?

i mean in theory i couldve been bc online relationships but no. n im polyam and have identified as such for a majority of my relationships so no.

11. if you could describe your perfect room, what would it be?

big but not too big, yknow? like big enough that it can be filled and have room to walk around and lay on the ground or whatever but not Empty. and a pretty big bed to stretch out on, n a closet in the room. multiple windows w blackout curtains so theres light but it can be blocked out. n fluffy rugs or carpeting but preferably rugs in case smth spills so we can get it out of at least Remove the rug. and probably a cat tree thing in corner for dipper. n a computer desk and actual lights that light up the whole room. but probably,, fairy lights too bc full lights too bright. and i kinda want a pink room but blue or yellow work also. a nd pride flags on the walls + posters and various other stuff bc plain walls are boring. and tons n tons of b ooks too.

12. favorite animal.

river otter

13. what was the last photo you took of?

cat

14. do you believe in soul mates?

i'm not sure. i do kinda think there are people who you will like. really really click with and who become so important in your life that they're like. apart of u yknow? but i don't think that anyone as an individual needs to keep those people in their life forever. they arent destined to stay with them, and they shouldnt force that relationship (platonic, familial, romantic, or whatever) even if they were close for years and years. screw destiny. youll have people you care about, and sometimes you have to break that bond to save yourself, and thats okay. there will be other people who can and will be just as important. that got kinda off topic skbsks. i don't think theres really like Destiny soulmates. but there could be like. soulmates in the sense of for however long we're together, we're soul bonded. even if its not forever. does that even make se nse skbsns

15. do you hang toilet paper over or under?

over is the one thats socially acceptable right

16. your go to place to eat & your favorite thing to get there.

idk theres a place near a movie theater closeish to my house and its a nice little cafe and i dont eat there bc i dont eat much in general but i get their bubble tea and i love. raspberry bubble tea w rose popping bubbles. its comfort drink.

17. do you believe everything happens for a reason?

no. sometimes shit happens for no reason, and its bullshit, but you can't reverse it, so you gotta figure out how to move on from it.

18. guilty pressures?

im assuming thats meant to be pleasures

umm,, idrk. i don't know what exactly i like that would count as a guilty pleasure so,,

19. favorite mythical creature, why?

merpeople are s o cool i fuckin. love funky aquatic pals hell yeah. maybe im just Water babey but. they're rad. dragons are also hella cool bc like dragons???? theyre scaly and prett y and can breathe fire or have wings and kill u?? also like selkies bc again. water. but i used to hear a lot of stories abt them and theyre so nea t

20. something most people don’t know about you.

i have the potential to be a huge asshole and also kinda Wish to fuckin murder someone sometimes but. i act nice most of the time anyway.

not murder murder but i can get angr y enough that i just wanna Stab smth

21. where did you grow up, what was it like?

grew up kinda near the edge of the city, still in it but not like the main city area. in western washington. it was kinda rly boring, i used to spend a lot more time outside or just by myself playing with leaves or toys or whatever. when i had friends i played make believe w them even when outside of school. so yeah. boring id say.

22. do you believe aliens exist?

sure.

23. what was your last google search?

other than names for some actors n stuff, i was looking up various star wars things

24. what did your last relationship teach you?

the one that like. ended? i guess thatd be. be careful with your own feelings and try to figure them out before jumping into anything, and also don't try to force smth that in reality isnt really working.

25. would you relocate for love?

honestly yeah

26. do you hold grudges or forgive easy?

both. it just depends on how badly i or someone i care about was hurt by it. more likely to hold a grudge if a friend was hurt by someone d eep enough to leave a lasting impact or if they don't get a genuine apology i will be 🔫🔫. or if the person keeps hurting them. even if that person is also my friend.

27. favorite book.

favorite graphic novel is bloom by kevin panetta

favorite books in general are autoboyography, more happy than not, and what if its us. all gay. i know. its okay. im a kinnie.

28. do you consider yourself an extrovert or introvert?

introvert by far

29. have you ever kept a journal, do you now?

i tried once. i probably will have to once i go see a therapist, or at least one for my Bad Thoughts

30. top 5 favorite movies.

in no particular order

little shop of horrors, love simon, coco, it (2017 and 1990), and shazam! ig? maybe others but i definitely Forgot all the shit ive watched

31. do you believe that everything happens for a reason?

32. what is your greatest fear?

definitely gotta be all of the people i love hating me and abandoning me or secretly hating me and then leaving me without saying anything. and the worst part is im always afraid its gonna happen babeyy

33. favorite alcoholic beverage.

im baby

34. most embarrassing thing you’ve done.

im embarrassed by my own existence. i don't remember the Most embarrassing thing

35. do you believe in ghosts?

not until i have proof that i can actually trust and believe in

36. what is the best and worst part of your personality?

idk ig im nice. but im also. very easily set off on certain emotions especially the bad ones which sucks like especially jealousy bc i dont wanna!! feel jealous!! tho i think that ties into my greatest fear bc my brain immediately tells me im useless to everyone and they hate me. but. sometimes i get jealous and then feel bad for that and then hate myself for all of it. bc my friends deserve to hang out w other people and care about other people im just fucking stupid babey !!

37. should you split the dinner bill?

i rly don't get why you wouldnt tbh like if u both wanna be there u should both pay. but if one person gonna pay it should be the person that asked.

38. are you a good liar?

most of the time. when it comes to my mental health i can either lie great or im literally breaking down in front of the person so

39. what keeps you up at night?

depressing thoughts. anxiety about everything. wishing i could cuddle and fall asleep w jay. sometimes i just cant sleep bc im too restless.

40. would you rather go without your phone or music?

music. i need my phone to text my friends and i Need my friends

41. do you believe in god?

what god would let the world get to the point its at. what god would allow people to do such fucked up shit.

no. i don't.

42. how do you relax when frustrated?

cry, take a nap, take a shower, listen to music, cuddle dipper

43. what’s something that offends you?

when people go "oh yeah i support gay rights but im still gonna eat at chick fil a bc its good" like i get so fucking. pissed off by that. youre not gonna fucking s ta rv e without their goddamn chicken. i know a bi person who goes there and says its okay bc they dont Directly Give Their money to Specifically anti gay organisations but im just. ugh. fucking pissed bc there are other places to get food just avoid the one place for fucks sake. their food is good it doesnt matter. its like saying yeah pewdiepie is a bad person and nazi and a racist asshole but his videos r funni haha so im gonna watch him anyway

44. favorite food

i hate myself whenever i eat food

45. if you were on a 10 hour flight and could sit and talk to any person the entire time, who would it be?

@destinedformuchmore or @pinaplelee

46. when do you feel the most confident?

never? but ig i feel confident when working on tech construction during theater tech. as long as i know what im doing.

47. what do you do in your free time?

sleep. draw. cry. play video games. talk to my friends.

48. is there anyone who has completely lost your respect

matpat did for being a dick abt neopronouns and making a transphobic joke and only apologizing when a cis person told him to. not when hundreds of trans people did. and also other jokes that are inherently offensive to various groups. a n d for making extremely not Child friendly jokes in his videos which are very much targeted towards kids. say what you will about the target audience, there are a lot of children who watch them. please stop making creepy nsfw jokes if you won't even swear, sir.

49. have you ever broken someone’s heart?

i guess so yeah. but she also broke mine first.

50. did/do you play sports in school?

i did. i don't anymore bc highschool sports are bullshit but. basketball, ultimate, and soccer.

51. when are you happiest?

talkin 2 jay prolly

52. coffee or tea?

tea

53. what is one possession you own you wouldn’t want to live without?

my binder. or my stuffed cat puppet thing ive had since i was 7

54. what is the first thing you notice about a person?

their general emotions, mostly. like if theyre in a good mood or if theyre bored or distracted or whatever. or if they seem interested in actually talking to me

55. what is your favorite season, why?

fall. my birthday, the atmosphere is nice, it's pretty, its hoodie weather.

56. what makes you laugh?

stupid little comments or jokes my friends make tend to make me laugh a lot harder than i should but jabdn

57. are you a clean or messy person?

a mix. i Cannot have some things messy or i will ksjqkd. Die but i don't make my bed too often bc its ha rd when its against 3 walls.

58. what is important for a successful relationship?

communication communication communicati

talk about ur goddamn problems n keep talking to each other.

59. what was your upcoming like?

if thats supposed to be upbringing

idk, very relaxed. pretty easygoing and kinda boring.

60. favorite holiday?

any holiday in december rly. i don't celebrate a Lot but the atmosphere and others celebrating is nice to see. i kinda wish my parents did more to embrace the jewish part in our family blike. whatever. christmas is fun.

61. what is the first thing you’d do if you won the lottery?

give half of it to my parents. and then probably use it for plane ticket

62. what’s the best pizza topping combination?

hawaiian pizza. pinapple n canadian bacon ty

63. favorite outdoor activity.

frisbee

64. how are you? honestly.

not great. i want highschool to end.

65. would you rather go camping in the woods or stay at a beach resort?

idk. camping is fun but if i get to stay at the resort for free i would rly love 2 stay at a resort tbh ive never done that

66. what is the most beautiful thing in nature?

waterfalls. or rivers or just. water in nature. and very green forests. aNd snow.

67. favorite type of candy?

none

68. if your life was a book, what would be the title?

i can and will do arson, an autobiography

69. what movie quotes do you use of a regular bases?

i quote john mulaney and whatever my obsessions are pretty regularly

70. what was cool when you were young but not cool now?

silly bandz. pokemon cards. these weird unicorn figures i collected

71. what’s the craziest conversation you have ever eves dropped on?

im mostly the one having the weird conversations

72. what’s the most interesting documentary you’ve ever watched?

i watched one about dogs and cats and their evolution which was lit

73. what’s the worst hairstyle you’ve had?

when i let the lady just go fuckin ham on my hair bc i was watching spirit that horse movie and didnt wanna stop so it was. rly bad bangs and hella short in back but not the sides

74. what do you like to cook?

whatever im hungry for. i don't have the energy to cook a lot

75. what’s the coolest animal you’ve seen in the wild?

really pretty tropical fish

76. what’s the funniest tv show you’ve ever seen?

idk. i rly like schitts creek its pretty amusing

77. do you usually follow your heart or your head?

heart at first but my head if things get bad

78. what is your favorite quote?

"i have a splitting headache and i think i'm dying. how are you?"

or a character just saying "try harder" when another failed to do smth.

this is supposed to be deep or whatever but im in a Mood

79. what’s the weirdest crush you have ever had?

once had a crush on a character in a minecraft parody lmao

80. what’s your love language?

sending shit that makes me think of them. n just. making tons of stuff for them both online and irl like bracelets.

81. do you ever feel alone?

oh yeah. all the time. im not but it feels like i am which sucks

82. ever been bullied?

yeah

83. are you usually early or late?

late bc of my parents rip

84. what kind of art do you enjoy most?

drawing, or writing. also theater.

85. what do you wish you knew more about?

i just wish i could remember everything ive learned more about. i know a lot i just forget all.

id like to know more about forensics tho

#asks #long post #friends

2 notes · View notes

hoodlessmads · 5 years

Text

Bloom Into You Chapter 41

…is maybe the literal cutest thing I’ve ever read.

I love how that teacher’s like, “What the hell were you doing in the student council room this late?” and they’re like, “Sorry, we just needed this key so we could go have our soapy love confession scene in there but you can have it back now.”

And they’re not quite full-on holding hands on the way home, but they’re just kinda

Just

Just kinda

Screaming.

The panel layout on the page where they’re both laying in bed awake thinking about each other is so lovely. How Yuu looks like she’s looking at Touko but she’s actually not because they’re in their own rooms but she actually is because they’re on the same page literally. And Touko’s adorable “that all just happened” expression as she’s holding her hand.

I find it interesting that as the manga has gone on and as the anime has gone into production and aired, the manga itself has begun to embrace those water themes more and more. Like, I don’t remember water being such a huge deal at the beginning of the manga, but it’s a highly prevalent visual motif in the anime. We see Yuu underwater when she feels distanced from her friends in the classroom, there’s underwater lighting at some points in the opening iirc, and this all comes to a head beautifully in the actual aquarium scene where they are underwater, with Touko looking up at the fish and stuff above them and Yuu leading Touko by the hand into the light, which she had previously felt so distant from. Anyway, it’s just nice how several of the past few chapter covers have featured Yuu underwater reaching toward the surface/the light, and this title talking about sea charts reminded me of that. I guess it’s meant to be like, she’s above water now. On the ocean, which is this whole new thing to navigate.

I love how Yuu comes skipping into school all pumped about her friends’ lives and literally anything at all because she’s in such a good mood and how shy she gets when asked if anything good happened, and the fact that she immediately took that charm out of the drawer and put it on her bag. Like, Yuu in this whole chapter is a whole ass “FINALLY” mood.

I love how the panel layout and our sense of time almost makes it look like Touko has been standing at the door to the classroom for a minute trying to gather the courage to face Sayaka the same way, as though things haven’t changed between them, or at least to face her at all. She goes in looking all determined, like she’s decided she’s going to say something to Sayaka because Sayaka deserves it and it’s only right, but then stops at “Good morning,” and doesn’t end up saying anything else, kind of chickens out, just looks over pensively wondering if she should say something, and if that’s not a Touko ass thing to do I don’t know what is lol. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s still brooding about what to say after school, trying to be all responsible, determined to be the liaison between friend and girlfriend. And meanwhile Yuu and Sayaka are as functional as ever and come to an understanding and reaffirm that they are best friends for life in like two seconds before Touko can even finish thinking about it. God, I adore Yuu and Sayaka’s friendship so much.

But the main point that the classroom scene got across for me was that things aren’t the same between Touko and Sayaka now. It’s awkward. It’s different. There’s a distance between them now that wasn’t there before. And while they will still be friends after this (for a while, if we believe the second light novel to be canon), this is definitely the beginning of them slowly drifting apart. I think it’s a good thing. Sayaka especially could use the opportunity to move on. Staying as close of friends as they were just wouldn’t be a healthy scenario for either of them, especially now that so many things have come to light that they previously kept secret from each other. As much as she does know her weaknesses and still love her, it still feels like there’s a part of Touko that Sayaka never really knew. They have both changed and grown so much since the beginning of the series, and the people they are now just aren’t as compatible as they once were, as friends or otherwise. I hope Sayaka comes to realize this sooner rather than later so that it can start hurting less.

Honestly this chapter filled my heart with fluffy cuteness like a water tank about to bust from too much pressure and I almost died from it, but that ONE panel with Sayaka’s face after she sees Yuu’s charm broke me. Nakatani is a master. That facial expression was just so raw. I hate to see her hurting like that. Sayaka is truly too good for this world. God, please future girlfriend, please love her well.

But Yuu and Sayaka’s friendship waters my crops. That cheek slap and stretch routine is a blatant gesture of unbridled affection disguised as fake irritation and you cannot convince me otherwise. This whole scene. Ugh, she’s so…nice?

Touko’s flustered reaction at seeing Yuu and Sayaka being such legitimately chill friends and having worked out all their issues while she was brooding and being anxious will never cease to amuse me. I love her, I try to defend Touko so much, but it’s scenes like this that prove once again that she’s actually just the yuri equivalent of a fuckboy, god bless her heart. I do adore her.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen disaster gay Nanami Touko so I was quite glad to see her make several appearances this chapter. They’re both trying so hard to be chill during the student council meeting but they both helplessly look up at each other at the same time. Or perhaps Yuu looks up helplessly and Touko is just dead ass staring at her, smitten. And Touko is so determined to type very important things afterwards. How is Nakatani so good at drawing cute ass snapshots of cute ass people? And I love how they’re…are ya’ll holding hands with your feet now? It’s adorable. Keep doing it.

Maki is that audience insert.

Same.

Doujima’s still completely oblivious that there are lesbians in this show.

So Yuu. I am always a huge sucker for when characters who are traditionally pretty unemotional get to a point where they’re so emotional that they can’t help but display that emotion in a way that’s uncharacteristic of how they’ve been up to this point, but for that reason is so incredibly satisfying to watch. It is so satisfying to see this adorable person that we’ve come to know and love finally get to this point. Yuu is honestly the best part of all of this fluff, by far. Talk about acting experience. This whole time, she’s worn the world’s greatest poker face, and now that she can finally let herself be the absolute gay mess she actually is, she’s just barely keeping it all in and it’s so adorable and gratifying. You wouldn’t have known this girl could get so red and flustered but damn if she isn’t and it is so fucking cute.

She’s so eager to finally say Touko’s name (with senpai), and in spite of how flustered and head over heels she is, she’s still the same functional and straightforward Yuu we’ve always known. She comes right out and tries to DTR within like an hour of having the initial thought. The response: “Girlfriends? I haven’t thought about it. I guess we are.” Touko, this is why you’re a meme.

And on the flip side of Yuu being so embarrassed, Touko’s all, “Stand aside, I’m Character Development Touko now. I’m not the flustered disaster lesbian you once knew. I’m Smooth Touko now. I’m the new and improved Kiss Your Tears Touko. I troll Yuu about saying my name and not the other way around. I’m smooth as hell now.” But then as soon as “Touko-senpai” comes out she’s just like “fuck.”

Their conversation about happiness at the end is really moving to me, because they’ve moved past the “ureshii” happiness they were talking about last chapter and they’re now talking “shiawase,” which specifically refers to lasting happiness. If that isn’t the deepest most romantic shit. I also feel like bringing up the way Yuu casually mentioned the idea of girlfriends living together at some point in the future and it was just kind of glossed over as if this girl is not already playing the long game with Touko and I’m crying inside. Because I genuinely believe they’ll get there and I always thought so, but this nod from canon is glorious. (You’ve been dating for one day, Yuu, chill.) But in all seriousness, Yuu, you absolute head over heels in love sap. This talk of girlfriends living together and this repeated mention of lasting happiness (has me feeling all types of ways) tells me where Yuu’s head is at. How serious her feelings actually are. Like, that’s marriage material, bitch. She’s that happy. I’m just…so happy for her.

I find it interesting that we haven’t really been in Touko’s head since she texted Yuu on the train in chapter whatever, and not since the confession scene last chapter. We’ve mostly been with Yuu ever since. Even that one classroom scene I would argue is more from Sayaka’s point of view. I hope next chapter we get a little more from Touko’s side. I have a feeling we’ll get something like a Touko-centric chapter at some point, as I feel her personal character arc and the whole thing with her sister still need some polishing off before we can bring the story to a close. But that’s just me.

In some ways, it’s a shame that there’s so few pages left before the end of the story. Yuu and Touko’s new relationship is completely uncharted territory for them now (not to unintentionally make a pun on the chapter title). That period of excitement and uncertainty at the beginning of a new relationship is always one of the most gratifying things to explore in a story for me, so I wish we had more time. There are so many interesting things to explore with this entire cast of characters that just won’t get explored, simply because of time constraints. Still, the flip side is that ending it here in volume 8 will give Bloom Into You the succinct, satisfying conclusion it deserves to a well-structured, well-paced arc, with absolutely no excess anywhere in sight. Bloom Into You is such a brilliant exercise in telling a complete, engaging story while trimming all the fat. Some romance stories can end up feeling bloated in terms of pacing and structure, but I have a feeling this is going to be just perfect. (Unless Nakatani Nio, actual manga genius and icon, somehow manages to fuck it up. Not likely.)

Once again, I’m excited to see where Nakatani takes us and the characters next. I can’t wait to see certain characters’ reactions to the new relationship, like Akari, Koyomi, and Rei. And god, I would love to see more of Yuu and Touko navigating this new relationship, what it means, what the rules are, how they define it to themselves and others. Basically, I just want to know what happens next. Is that too much to ask? Can’t I just know what happens next? God damn it.

#bloom into you #yagate kimi ni naru #yagakimi #i like talking about yagakimi #like a lot #it got progressively later at night/early morning as i wrote this so i dont even know whats happening anymore

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stvrwar · 6 years

Text

wait out the plastic weather

marauders social media au | 2k words | they’re youtubers bc why not and bc @frxddi is up this trope’s ass | ao3

james potter to tucci gang: you guys see the newest vid

sirius black: you mean the newest video that all of us are fucking in

sirius black: that cideo?

sirius black: *video

remus lupin: the video you uploaded and sent all of us the link to like…twelve minutes ago?

peter pettigrew: I think he might mean that video

james potter: fuck all of you not that video

james potter: and it has a name. it is out cHILD

remus lupin: pardon me, I didn’t realize “getting kicked out of Walmart #4” fit on the birth certificate

james potter: I have small handwriting

remus lupin: my mistake

james potter: ur mistake indeed but

james potter: not our fucking video morons

peter pettigrew: ur unnecessarily mean to us

james potter: lily evans video. The woman of my dreams. The greatest youtuber to ever fucking live

sirius black: now that’s just hurtful

remus lupin: and also why the fuck would we have watched her video?

james potter: now who’s hurtful?

remus lupin to so pete davidson and ariana grande are engaged and idk who I am anymore: sirius why is this our chat name now

sirius black: bc idk who I am anymore

peter pettigrew: is it bc ur in love with ariana grande

james potter: he loves ariana and he’s in love with pete

remus lupin: I can’t believe you’ve never told us

peter pettigrew: im touched

remus lupin: when’s the wedding?

sirius black: okay fuck all of u she is an icon and he is hilarious

james potter: ur face is hilarious

sirius black: im leaving you for him

james potter: babe no I didn’t mean it

sirius black: u’ve hurt me too many times

james potter: I promise I’ll change for you

remus lupin removed sirius black from the chat

remus lupin removed james potter from the chat

peter pettigrew: this happens like twice a fucking week

remus lupin: so how’ve you been pete?

peter pettigrew: pretty shook about that engagement tbh

remus lupin removed peter pettigrew from the chat

remus lupin: I am an island.

sirius black to the office season 2 episode 7: yo Walmart 4 is on trending wtf

james potter: !!!!!!!!!

peter pettigrew: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

remus lupin: im not gonna do that

sirius black: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

james potter: what number is it on trending??? Is this twitter or youtube btw

sirius black: youtube and #6

remus lupin: shit that’s our best yet

peter pettigrew: anyone check the subscriber count recently????

sirius black: the marauders are at 3.1 million what the FUCK IS UP YO

remus lupin: im so surprised u aren’t key smashing

sirius black: is it because im gay

remus lupin: no it’s because u have massive thumbs and can’t text to save your life

remus lupin: yes because you’re gay

sirius black: that’s homophobic. Im not gay bc I keysmash

peter pettigrew: ??? neither of you are straight. ????

remus lupin: no you keysmash bc you’re gay

james potter: WE ARE TRENDING WE CAN ARGUE ABOUT THIS LATER

james potter changed chat name to BRAINSTORMING SESSION ASAP

sirus black: porn

james potter removed sirius black from the chat

peter pettigrew: tasteful porn so we don’t get demonetized

james potter: keep talking

james potter to twinky winky is a great porn parody title why are you booing me: aquarium vid is a goooooooooooo

remus lupin: but the question is, can we live up to Walmart 4 hype

remus lupin: bc that shit is going insane online. People love it

remus lupin: we’re hoodlums, vandals

sirius lupin: loveable vandals and hoodlums

peter pettigrew: I feel like that’s debatable tbh

remus lupin: we as a collective whole have been kicked out of four separate walmarts

remus lupin: do you know how far I have to drive to get my fried chicken at 2 am

james potter: why the fuck are you getting fried chicken at 2 am

remus lupin: I don’t need this judgement

sirius black: so how’s the aquarium vid faring

peter pettigrew: u know what sirius is being the rational one for once and im too focused on the fried chicken to be amazed

remus lupin left twinky winky is a great porn parody title why are you booing me

peter pettigrew changed the chat name to colonel lupin’s fried chicken

sirius black: is it really that rare that im the rational one?

sirius black: jk ik im a messy bitch

peter pettigrew to three’s company: uh. Guys has james seen this yet

peter pettigrew sent an image

remus lupin: oh fuck

sirius black: well I haven’t heard any high pitched screeching yet so, no

peter pettigrew: she’s got more subscribers than we do, it would be good for the channel

sirius black: she’s a video game streamer what sorta collab are we supposed to do with that

remus lupin: idk, maybe a vid on her channel, a vid on ours? She’s in the same city so like, shouldn’t be too hard, right?

sirius black: welp he’s screaming so he definitely has seen the comment now.

james potter to chad and ryan were gay fuck you disney: “hey we should totally do a collab sometime! Message me :)”

sirius black: u have sent that TWELVE FUCKING TIMES NOW

sirius black: TWELVE

remus lupin: let the boy live

peter pettigrew: okay but the smiling is a little concerning tbh

remus lupin: @james potter have you even sent the fucked message yet? What did it say?

james potter: “hey! I’m so excited that you wanted to do a collab with us! I love your channel and doing something would be super great for both of us. Anything you had in mind?”

james potter: did I come off as a crazy person?

sirius black: in the best way possible

remus lupin: somehow that doesn’t feel like a compliment?

peter pettigrew: maybe you should use MORE exclamation points

james potter: stfu I am an expert at talking to the most beautiful woman in the world

sirius black: excuse me

james potter: I said woman

sirius black: tell me im pretty

james potter to little pig boy comes from the dirt: fuck gotta clean this shit up

james potter changed chat name to the marauders group chat

sirus black: ??????????????? wtf

remus lupin: has james been bodyswapped

peter pettigrew: like the movie face/off with nic cage?

remus lupin: I feel like there are better examples of body swapping

james potter added lily evans to the marauders group chat

sirius black: oh fuck now that makes sense

remus lupin changed chat name to little pig boy comes from the dirt

lily evans: from that SNL skit?

lily evans: I fucking love pete davidson tbh even though he breaks in like every skit

lily evans: did you guys hear that he and ariana got engaged? Idk who I’m more jealous of

sirius black removed james potter from the chat

sirius black: she’s our new james

peter pettigrew to owen wilson saying yeah for 2 hrs: drink every time someone comments about sirius’s appearance on a vid

james potter: “im a simple girl. I see sirius, I click.”

remus lupin: the words that will haunt my nightmare

james potter: the comments on the drag trying vid are…bonkers

peter pettigrew: who even says bonkers

lily evans: wow okay some of these commenters are…creative

james potter: by creative, do you mean terrifying?

lily evans: yes yes I do

remus lupin: I don’t even get it. He’s not that great looking?

sirius black: okay fuck you, u trick ass hoe

remus lupin: like, you cannot be everyone’s type

sirus black: trick ass hoe

remus lupin: im just being rational. You’re also like out. So who is thinking that saying they wanna have your babies is valid

lily evans: surrogacy?

peter pettigrew: sperm donation?

james potter: adoption?

remus lupin: fuck all of you individually and as a unit

sirius black: trick ass hoe

lily evans to shake shake shake senora: okay just posted my collab vid let’s see how this goes

james potter: what did u end up calling it?

lily evans: “i teach 4 idiots how to play overwatch”

sirius black: harsh but fair

remus lupin: we didn’t do that badly

peter pettigrew: remus die with dignity we did fucking awful

james potter: idk what it meant when lily kept calling me a hanzo main and laughing but it felt hurtful

lily evans: good. It was.

remus lupin to three rings to rule them all: so has james seen that people are shipping him and lily yet

remus lupin: because we should NOt let him know about that

peter pettigrew: he’d fucking cry

sirius black: theyd be called lames

sirius black: ha

sirius black to james potter: dude you gotta stop staring at lily when she comes over for pizza nights

sirius black: she’s gonna notice

sirius black: or like stop pretending that she isn’t noticing

james potter: wait you think she’s noticed

sirius black: christ you dumbass

lily evans to marlene mckinnon: you seen my newest collab with the marauders

marlene mckinnon: we’re roommates, obvi

marlene mckinnon: did u steal my lipstick

lily evans: okay but like. The comments

lily evans: …………………………………..what of it

marlene mckinnon: gonna kill u evans <3

marlene mckinnon: okay wow they really want u to get all up on glasses

lily evans: that one’s potter

marlene mckinnon: they want u to climb him like a tree

marlene mckinnon: do the horizontal tango

marlene mckinnon: netflix and chill

lily evans: these are getting less clever

marlene mckinnon: suck his dick

peter pettigrew to wwlbd (what would leonard bernstein do): uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh guys we are on tv

peter pettigrew: TV LIKE WE ARE ON FUCKIN TV

peter pettigrew: TELEVISION

sirius black: what

james potter: what

remus lupin: what

peter pettigrew: OKAY like not us but like. Our video. Walmart #4

remus lupin: great now everyone’s gonna know we’re fucking vandals

james potter: im fucking crying

sirius black: IM FUCKING CRYING

peter pettigrew: oh shit now it’s the video with @Lily Evans

peter pettigrew: we are being called charming and loveable with an “adoring” fanbase

lily evans: oh my god??????????? How’d you (we) even end up on tv

peter pettigrew: idfk! Some like...social media segment or something

sirius black to smonk wed: settle a bet for me

remus lupin: christ here we go

sirius black: I don’t appreciate the tone

remus lupin: christ! Here we go!

sirius black: whatver, acceptable, james wants to bone lily

remus lupin: uh

peter pettigrew: that be known

remus lupin: u know this isn’t the three man chat right

lily evans: uh

james potter removed sirius black from the chat

peter pettigrew to remus owes me like $20 and some triscuits: who ate all my freezy pops

sirius black: who the fuck calls them freezy pops

remus lupin: who let you back into any of the chats

sirius black: fuk u m8

james potter: he was crying so i let him back in

sirius black: and lily isn’t in this chat so i can say all the shit i want

james potter: i wish u wouldn’t

remus lupin: seconded

peter pettigrew removed sirius black from the chat

james potter: problem solved! peter pettigrew: okay but who ate my freezy pops

lily evan to james potter: so are we going to talk about it

james potter: about what precisely

lily evans: the revolution of the moon and the fact it’s made of cheese?

james potter: ah yes, it’s swiss btw

lily evans: the moon?

james potter: clearly

COMMENTS ON “THE MARAUDERS TRY DRAG FT. LILY EVANS (EVANSLY)

Chaitea7: oh my god why the fuck is sirius so pretty im jealous wtf

Janeyloo: okay but anybody else picking up on the tension between james and the redhead??

VIEW REPLIES

4marauderssssss: @Janeyloo that’s lily evans, she’s another youtuber and she’s fucking great

dva-main3: they are definitely a thing, i agree

greektragdy: okay but does this make their ship name lames? LIMES?

thomasthetrainbdsm: is wormtail ever gonna make another appearance? I love that funky little rat

dwightkshroooot: okay but why isn’t lily actually a like...try vlogger like these guys? she outdid sirius which is like. Unheard of.

VIEW REPLIES

dianaprinces234: like i never thought id see the day

yalldve: she looks so good wtf im shook

dhfakjshdgljdsl: i want lily evans to step on me and i would say thank you

VIEW REPLIES

honeynutcheetos: p sure james thinks the same thing lmao

011000110110000101110100: lmao right???? Im so gay

TheMarauders: I definitely think the same thing -James Potter

#harry potter #jily #Marauders #jily fic #jily group chat #harry potter fic #james potter #lily evans #sirius black #remus lupin #peter pettigrew #jily social media #marauders social media #my fic

643 notes · View notes

rinnnyxr · 3 years

Text

You were a huge Mary-Kate and Ashley fan. You played with Barbies. You had an American Girl doll. You had a rock collection. You had a stamp collection. You loved to color with markers and write stories. You liked to play dress up. You played house in a big dishwasher box. You loved The Jungle Book. You watched all of Mary-Kate and Ashley's "You're Invited" videos. You liked to write songs. You wrote a lot of songs, poems, and stories. You went to Disney World and loved the Magic Kingdom. You went on the Disney Cruise. You got Mickey Mouse's autograph. You had a swimming pool. You had a big backyard. You had imaginary friends. You played with your brother. You had a huge imagination. You loved to read. You loved Anne of Green Gables. Your mom read you The Little House on the Prairie books. Your mom read to you at bedtime. You enjoyed playing games on the computer. You enjoyed playing with Paint on the computer. You had Windows 95. You had a Generation Girl doll. You loved Lisa Frank. You had Lisa Frank folders for school. You listened to the Spice Girls. You listened to N Sync and The Backstreet Boys. You listened to Aaron Carter and A-Teens. You watched Nickelodeon. Your favorite shows were All That and The Amanda Show. You loved the show All That. You watched Saturday morning cartoons. You ate Lunchables. You brought a packed lunch to school. You were shy. There was fighting in your house every day. You had a dog. You loved playing with scooters in gym class. You loved playing with the big parachute in gym class. You enjoyed playing floor hockey in gym class. You hated kickball. You only got your name on the board once, and it was for an unjust reason. You hated school. You liked coloring. You loved cheese. You loved dance classes. You had bangs. Your hair was blonde. ...but now it's darker and not considered blonde anymore You loved recess. You watched Arthur. You got really excited on Christmas Day. You got really excited on your birthday. You celebrated your dolls' birthdays. You celebrated your pet's birthdays. Your parents abused you. Your brother was mean to you. You had neighborhood friends. You rode a bicycle. You owned a tie-dye shirt. You tie-dyed a shirt. You built a sandcastle. You build a snowman. You made snow angels. You went sledding down a hill. You went sledding at recess in the winter. You cheated at Heads Up 7-Up. You brought in your dog for show-and-tell. You have both good memories and bad memories from your childhood. Ultimately, you like adulthood better. You watched Kenan and Kel. You watched Nick Jr. with Face. You watched Little Bear. You watched Allegra's Window. You watched Doug, Hey Arnold!, Rocket Power, and Rugrats. You watched Clarissa Explains it All. You watched Legends of the Hidden Temple and Global Guts. You watched The Brady Bunch on Nick at Nite. You watched Figure it Out and watched people get slimed. You played with silly string. You watched Caitlin's Way, Taina, As Told by Ginger, and Cousin Skeeter. You played with legos. You had a pog collection. You watched Winnie the Pooh. You owned pleated pants. Your mom braided your hair. You had asthma. You were hospitalized for a few days. You had your tonsils taken out. You had the chicken pox. You were allergic to mosquito bites. ...one bite could make half your entire leg swell up. You loved spending the night at your grandma's house. You always beat your grandma at Tic-Tac-Toe. You were in a spelling bee. You loved swinging on the swings at recess. You played the game Camouflage at recess. You've been on some incredibly boring field trips. You played Four Square at recess. You jumped rope at recess. You owned a bag of marbles. You entered exhibits in the county fair. You were afraid of roller coasters. You went to Sunday school. You grew up wishing you had Christian parents. You enjoyed the music in church. You played with cootie catchers/fortune tellers. You started a fad at school. Your brother was obsessed with yo-yos. You read American Girl Magazine. You were homeschooled. You loved popsicles. You loved macaroni and cheese. You won a writing contest. You won a reading contest. You played tag with other kids in your neighborhood. You played on your front lawn. You played with sidewalk chalk. You played with bouncy balls. You wish your mom had loved you. You wish your dad wasn't such a jerk. You wish your brother wasn't so mean. You wish your grandparents were nicer. You feel like you missed out on a lot of life because of how you were treated. You read Nancy Drew Notebooks. You read American Girl books. You didn't like to get dirty. You were cautious and didn't do anything too risky. Your favorite card game was Go Fish. You owned a boombox. You owned a disco light for your room. You owned a GameBoy Advance. You played with paper dolls. You owned Bratz dolls. You owned porcelein dolls. You wrote in a diary. You had your first crush when you were eight. You watched JJ the Jet Plane. You watched The Rugrats Movie in the theater. You coordinated your sippy cups to your outfits. You had a piggy bank. Your dad made you cry on numerous occasions, because he was mean. You had swimming lessons. You were a daydreamer.

You believe that homosexuality is a choice. You believe that homosexuals are born that way. You honestly aren't sure if all homosexuals are born that way or if it is a choice. ...and you believe that it's ok not to know. ...because we aren't supposed to know everything. ...and nobody knows everything. You don't always agree with what the masses are saying. You don't have strong political opinions. You have friends who have different political views than you. You have friends who have different religious backgrounds than you. You have friends who have different religious views than you. You have a friend who has a different worldview than you. You've had someone try to shove their religious views down your throat, and you hate it. You don't believe anyone should try to force their views on anyone. You believe that you should accept everyone, even if you disagree with them You hate gays. You hate Christians. You don't care if someone is gay or straight or Christian or atheist, as long as they are nice to you. You have questioned your belief in God. You have questioned your sexuality. You have questioned your gender. You have done something and felt guilty afterward. You have questioned whether God hears you when you pray or not. You have questioned whether Greek or Roman mythology is real or not. You have questioned whether reincarnation was real or not. You believe abortion is wrong. You believe that there's nothing wrong with questioning your sexuality. You have self-harmed. You have questioned whether your life was worth living or not. You've contemplated suicide. You've attempted suicide. You are happy with the way you look. You wish you were more popular. You care what people think of you. You think life is unfair. You believe bullying is wrong. You have bullied someone and felt bad about it later. You've made a mistake. You've made many mistakes. You have a regret. You have many regrets. You think the world is messed up. You care about people. You sometimes struggle with self-discipline. You over-eat sometimes. You comfort-eat sometimes. You believe friends are one of life's greatest gifts. You've heard Amanda Todd's story and watched her YouTube video. ...and you think it's terrible what happened to her. Your life is close to that of Amanda Todd's. You get headaches after eating nuts. You feel all alone sometimes. You enjoy typing. You think it's ok to make mistakes and learn from them. Everybody makes mistakes. You realize that sometimes people lie. ...especially on facebook. You have everything figured out. You know everything. You believe it's ok to think for oneself and form your own opinions. ...even if your opinions aren't the same as everyone else's You have deleted a friend on facebook after they posted something you didn't like. You believe it's wrong for anyone to force their views on anyone else. Jesus is your Lord. Jesus is your Savior. You don't believe in Jesus. You aren't sure if you believe in Jesus or not. You believe in Jesus, but you he's not your Lord or Savior. You believe everyone has a right to choose what they believe. You think your body is perfect. You wouldn't change anything about your face. You've looked at porn. You've made a typo in a facebook status. You've thrown up in a public bathroom. You've thrown up in public. You've slipped and fallen in public. You have an embarrassing bathroom story. You've felt nervous on the first day of school. You've felt nervous before giving a speech. You've felt excited about going back to school. You've locked yourself in a bathroom and cried. You've had a high school crush. You've choked on something. You've missed school because you were sick. You used to think you were superior to others. ..but now you know you are not. You've thrown up in a bucket. You want people to like you. You worry if people will like you. You want to have friends. You've worn two pairs of socks at once. You've worn two pairs of gloves at once. You don't judge others. You judge others. You've struggled with lust. You've slept naked. You fear someone walking in on you when you are in the bathroom. You think disrespect should not be tolerated. You are your own person.

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dinoalexander · 3 years

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Your Moment of Zen: The Gourmet Academy’s Semi-Quotable 2020 Quotedown Quotetacular

The following blog entry are intended only for mature audiences. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Although it goes without saying about three quotes in, this is neither an incendiary nor defamatory tribute to the year past, although if someone were to put together such a “tribute”, I’d completely understand. Thank you. And enjoy the show. Because you helped make it. Ladies and gentlemen and non-binary conforming life forms across seven star systems... the Gourmet Academy’s World Famous Get Down Like a Hound Party ‘til You Puke Semi-Quotable 2020 Quotedown Quotetacular begins in five... ... four... ... three... ... two... NOW. === “This video is dedicated to touching.” -Harry Styles “Welcome to America's last public gathering.” -Jenna Riedi, the host of Geek Bowl XIV “Daniel’s New Year’s Resolutions 1) say something so brilliant, so irrefutably mind-bogglingly wowful that it makes the Quote Wall 2) organize the basement.” -Daniel “Didn’t you used to be Bill Simmons?” -Greg channeling Justin Lollie “Something new? Shouldn’t be trying it but I’m d-e-d today.” -Carl “This could devolve into something amazing.” -Jeremy “Good feeling: a Patriots loss. Better feeling: a Patriots loss in the playoffs. Best feeling: a Patriots loss in the playoffs in Foxboro.” -Travis “You are the master of the swerve.” -Klaussie “There once was a man from Nantucket.” -Ethan “Neighbor and I both have our windows open, and I refuse to do one more thing tonight until I figure out which episode of “Cheers” she’s watching.” -Adam Nedeff “Is there anyway we can CGI Matt Lauer out and replace him with Christopher Plummer?” -Greg on Matt Lauer on SNL “What’s the favorite network of the 2017 Houston Astros? BUZZR!” -Klauss “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Lost her virginity to Tom Jones.” -Sara “That’s not unusual.” -Megan “Oh look, goats! (Whiff) Oh god, goats.” -Q “The Whiteface on the Joker poster is a pretty good representation on the Academy Award nominees this year.” -Gordon “If you spend your life with a paper bag over your head, do you also need to wear a mask?” -Kevin, on the Unknown Comic "He Gay - He Christmas in Macy's Window Gay" - Mercedeze - The Circle. “Spock is gonna slap your ass.” -Greg on Zach Quinto in “The Slap” “Smeargle!” -C “I’m at the Battle of Atlanta, usually I’M the one on fire.” -Greg as Time Traveling Rip Taylor “Sexual Game Show Chocolate.” -Cyndi’s nickname for Chico “He has exact change! What was I supposed to say.. No?!” -Q “WLTI has been brought to by the Tom Brady Laundry Service - when you need stuff to be washed and blown....you know where to go.” -JB “It’s like shitting in my hand and clapping.” -Q “Let’s do that GOAT.” -C “Does Q know you’re into bestiality?” -Chris • the subject: Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time “In 2020 I’d like to set more things on fire.” -Megan “Tonight, William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, the sun god Ra, Archimedes, Rip Taylor, and Rudolph Valentino on the Loooooooove TARDIS.” -Greg as Ernie Anderson (hat tips to Mike & Chico). “Christmas Day: Email notifying me I don't need to come to the courthouse on Monday. Monday: Phone message notifying me not to come to the courthouse on Tuesday. Tuesday: Phone message notifying me not to come to the courthouse on Wednesday. Wednesday: Phone message notifying me not to come to the courthouse, period, because my week of service includes two holidays. For anyone who's never been called in for jury duty during a pandemic, I highly recommend the experience.” -Adam “This version of 2020 has a virus in it. Can I get it reinstalled?” -Catherine “Take care of y’all chicken.” -Marshawn Lynch“ No link, because (EXPLETIVE DELETED) that (EXPLETIVE DELETED).” -Joe “There’s the Wendy’s.” -C “Where where where where where?” -Q “There there there there there.” -C “The Houston Astros scandal has spilled into the world of game shows...evidence has surfaced that “Jeopardy!” contestants had wired buzzers at their podiums.” -Adam Nedeff “ "Having an English Accent in America is like having a 12" dick” -David, a contestant on Too Hot To Handle. “We are all Disney... and Disney is all of us.” -Kevin “Here comes this Donny Osmond-looking motherfucker.” -C “The coronavirus is the least dirty thing I’ve had in my hand. There’s not enough hand sanitizer in the world. That’s why I drink vodka.” -Michael "That bird just straight up moonwalked and died!" -Neumann “You think Jimmy Kimmel would buy the Walgreens brand?” -Q “I don’t make Jimmy Kimmel money!” -C “President Trump sent me a letter. I respond with fire.” -Kyle “Sense AND Sensibility? In this economy?!” -Liz “He committed the ultimate sin. He insulted the WWE in his promotion!” -Cyndi “Today was draggin’. It was very draggy. It was an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. It was so draggin’ that Wink Martindale encourages me to avoid it. I was watching Dragon Ball Z in the cockpit of the Dragonzord while playing Double Dragon with Don “The Dragon” Wilson and listening to Sisqo’s Unleash The Dragon. Somebody better call Emilia Clarke, because, uh.... dragon .... joke.” -C “Name a people that animals breed.” -Bressler “Put your Facebook balls away, Karen. It’s unbecoming.” -Cindy “Pizza is yes.” -Drago, Animal Crossing New Horizons “Prahstitute.” -Klauss • the password was “hookah” “It was a one-eyed one-horned flying purple Power Ranger.” -Gordon “I'm gonna start painting people yellow and send their asses to Springfield because I'm seeing a LOT of Simps, SON!” -Katie “Bill Belichick took the box on the display floor and got a couple of plush dolphins...would’ve had a new car behind curtain #2.” -Carl “Twenty-one seasons of winners and not one of those faces looked like mine. So when I walked through those doors, I had that desire, that determination to be that very first face to give hope to those behind me who have the desire to come in here and play this game. Not seeing a face that looks like mine is very discouraging, it’s hurtful and it does make me feel like maybe it’s impossible. But I’m wrong about that because it’s definitively possible. We can do it. It just hasn’t been done yet… I want to acknowledge every African American who has walked through those doors with the same desire to be that face that I have. I see you, I salute you and I appreciate you. You came in here, you knew the odds were against you, you knew it was going to be an uphill battle and you still fought and you fought like hell. For that, I love you, I admire you and I acknowledge you all today.” -Da’vonne, Big Brother “Waldo should find himself. I don’t have that kind of time.” -@FunnyOrDie “What we wanted was Cam Newton. What we got was Wayne Newton.” -Gordon, right before everyone broke out into “Danke Schön” “You can go ahead and put "Nuh-uh! Don't eat Jesus, you monster!" on the list of things I didn't think I'd have to yell today.” -Wingo “Not only is he a chicken magnate, he’s also a chick... magnet. Amirite?” -Klauss“ Please excuse me if I don't participate in the Dolly Parton Challenge, but I'd rather my wife didn't know that I have a Tinder account.” -Prof. O “The table has had enough of your shit.” -Brian “If you work hard enough I’m sure someday you’ll reach the top of the intelligence bell curve.” -Jess’ insult “Any squirrel can find a nut once. Let’s see you do it again.” -Q “This is the kind of chaotic horniness I’m here for.” -Megan “Behold the power of the fat guy touchdown.” -Cyndi “It’s the kind of peppermint candy that can give me natural 20s.” -Jenni “The wonders.... of weed.” -Mary “Metallic testicles.” -Jimmy Kimmel “Well, it's 65° again today. I ran 3.5 miles yesterday so I chose to walk 4 today. If next year it is not 65° on this day in February, I'm quitting Ohio.” -Wingo “I see the Incelabteilung spent a productive weekend.” -Rick Wilson “You know why the RTF head writer is now hosting? Because he's now eligible to join the Actors Guild, which means he'll have potential work when 1. RTF goes down in flames, 2. The WGA agreement goes down in flames. 3.A combination of 1. 2. and RTF keeps trying to convince us that King Kong should be worth 1,250 points per ticket.” -Gordon “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” -Jessica “Of course any team could have had 14 players test positive for COVID three games into the season, but the fact that it’s an entire roster of Florida Man is just so obvious.” -Arianna “Anna Roisman is very much in love with her butt.” -C Phleb: Are you following me? Q: As if you’re cool enough to have a stalker. As IF you’re cool enough for that stalker to be me. “I’ve seen enough.” -JD “Okay Dave Wasserman.” -C -subject: NLCS “Curse your sudden but inevitable colonization!” -Blue from episode 2 of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast “I haven't watched the Super Bowl halftime show, but from the online conversation today it is clear that people do not know just how many layers of costumage it takes to look "naked" onstage. #Showbiz” -Shannon “Adolf Titler and Areola Braun.” -Kim “I don't follow sports at all, but "And then Florida screwed it up for everyone" is the least surprising thing I could have seen in the news.” -Adam “If you think 2020 has been wild so far, wait until the dragons are released in the finale!” -Bruce Q: “I need a lighter.” Clerk: “Which one?” Q: “I don’t care. As long as it produces fire.” “Today we say a not fond farewell to Adobe Flash....we will NOT miss you very much." -Carl “It’s ridicarus. It’s so ridiculous, it flies in the face of normality until it melts on the wings of its own ridiculousness.” -C “I’d like to be proven wrong 99 times out of 100,000.” -Cyndi “The wenches of Watson.” -G’s nickname for the Chasers “Paula Deen. I don’t give a toss about the woman’s politics. But there’s one thing that we both agree on. MORE BUTTER!” -Q “Do you think you could be my Korean food mule?” -Jenni, to Chico re: Korean restaurants “This is what I told you about Travis. You’ve got to stop eating buffalo wings before you go to bed this is going to keep happening!” -Brian “The NFL Draft Takes way too long. If I wanted to watch 32 picks in 3 hours, I’d watch Jameis Winston play.” -TyFo “I think I’d win this easily.” -Greg, on “Too Hot To Handle.” “Hit me daddy, I’ve been bad.” -Q “I haven’t been bad, but hit me anyway.” -C “I hope a million Dodger babies are made tonight and their mamas name them all MOOKIE.” -Arianna “That’s tackier than a Louis Vuitton purse from downtown LA.” -Kimberly “Defense wins championships, but offense sells soap.” -Nikki “It’s like there’s nothing good on Netflix anymore.” -Alex Alvarez (Marcel Ruiz) on the Pop premiere of One Day at a Time “Let’s see what this bitch can do.” -C

“Man we have now been quarantined for 60 full days. Stuck inside with nothing but our families and our devices, filled with fear and anxiety. And we still don’t want to watch Quibi.” - Mike Shields (@digitalshields) “I love Peanut Butter. I love Africa.” - Bill Walton "So in the last 3 days Tom Brady has violated social distancing guidelines and broken into somebody's house. The media laughs it off. It pays to be white." - Barry McCockiner “BREAKING: I have decided to follow @James_Holzhauer on Twitter, since he’s been following me on Jeopardy all week.” - Ken Jennings “I was debating who had a worse night in Vegas — Mike Bloomberg or Deontay Wilder. I thought it was Wilder but it wasn’t. He didn’t have to show up a week later and get his ass kicked all over again. #DemDebate2020” - Jelani Cobb “What in the name of God’s ass is on Linda Dano’s head?” - Quisla “My 13 year-old self with my hero in Nov '83, Boston, MA. According to local legend Mr. (Tom) Baker toured the sites at Lexington, and then Concord, site of the “shot heard round the world;" he strode up to the first American he saw and said “Sorry about all that you know!”” - @petervintonjr “At long last, our 4-year national nightmare is over & @SteveKornacki can finally get some sleep.” - Mark Hamill “I think I just saw The Greatest American Hero be a complete and utter perv.” - Chico “Not gonna lie. I kinda wished they'd filmed the Chicago production of Hamilton so I could see Wayne Brady kill Lin-Manuel instead of Leslie.” - @RealLordDalek “Thanks Jon, when we come back Denise is gonna go for $30,000 and I want to find out, really, if you take half of my ass and you put it on my bald head, if it’s going to create new hair. We’ll find out about that after this. ……. more after this.” - Mike Francesa’s evil Earth 47 Half Brother Louie Francesa played by Klaussie before the MG-HSH Super Match “Rebooting The Santa Clause where instead of Tim Allen killing Santa Claus and becoming Santa Claus, Santa Claus kills Tim Allen and becomes Tim Allen” - Bridger Winegar “Ted Cruz is in another Twitter war with Mark Cuban. As a coach I was always looking for mismatches. If I could ever find a mismatch as great as Cuban over Cruz the game would be easy.” - Stan Van Gundy “Just turned on the XFL.Kicker missed a field goal and they immediately interviewed him on the sideline asking what happened haha. That’s tough.” - JJ Watt “Jeffrey Toobin gave a whole new meaning to the word “laptop.” - Gerard Mulligan “No matter how gloom things things get, there's always the future, even the United States of America used to have a future. They tried to us Americans the sky’s the limit, so we destroyed the sky. Where’s your limit now? Oh! burning with toxic poison? Suck that limit!” - Xavier: Renegade Angel “Everything good espn ever did was copied from the George Michael Sports Machine.” - @[email protected] “How is the @WWE not calling this #Wrestlemania36 In Your House?!?!” - Marty DeRosa “When people complain about "cancel culture," they very often mean: I want to live in a world in which there are abundant social and economic rewards for saying and doing certain (but not all!) controversial things, and no social and economic penalties for those same things.” - David Frum “Herb Abrams left this world doing what he loved. Cocaine and hookers." - Brian Blair “Rats.. and I was looking forward to the empty arena NBA Team Challenge Series.” - Lollie “Wow breaking: Jay Glazer is reporting that cleatus the FOX NFL robot has been arressted for double murder outside a Houston strip club. Details to come” - PFTCommenter “Michael Moore is the Michael Avenatti of Anthony Scaramuccis.” - @blackbeltbirder “Will you accept this ass?” -Jason “The Bears are two tight ends away from a firefighter calendar.” -Cyndi “Come on, Quis. Plating is 5 points.” -C “They say you should spend three months income on your wife’s engagement ring. I spent June July and August from the summer that I turned 13… But in my defense it was a wet summer and I mowed a lotta grass, that should count for something.” -Brian (ladies....) “You can’t fuck with Ed Lover.” -Greg “You thought that it was bad now? Wait 25 years. Today's children are tomorrow's leaders; and they will have been have been homeschooled by day drinkers. Let that sink in.” -Q “Doo wah didn’t didn’t, dumb didn’t do.” -Ian “So we were talking about why cereal was invented.” -C “Y’all stop showing me The Needle. I have a visceral reaction to The Needle.” -Anne “Five dollars on a Daily Double? What are you doing, buying a sandwich?” -Q “Sometimes I wonder... what made you think that style of facial hair works for you?” -Mary Jane “Everyone’s a critic.” -C after someone closed the blood bank door after blowing his nose “You raise your kids, you will spoil your grandchildren. You spoil your kids, you will raise your grandchildren.” -Nikki “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” -Joe’s son “Ctrl-F, am I right?” -Klauss “Mmm, mmm-mmm-mmm...” -Kim “I’ve been around enough mothers to know what THAT means.” -C “This is now the 5th straight night I've heard one man complain about another man's holes and balls. No one needs sloppy disorganized holes or balls. #pause.” -Gordon “You know... We grew up watching Kamen Rider & Super Sentai wanting to be masked heroes. Pretty sure this isn’t what I had in mind.” -D “Some of y’all have not been chased around the house by your sibling with a knife and it shows.” -Jenna “At least it wasn't real maple syrup. Based on the bottle and consistency it appears to be maple-flavoured sugar liquid spread.” -Dane, on Gritty drinking breakfast syrup “And who decides Lacey Chabert should be the voice of love? She was hardly the voice of Meg Griffin!” -C “That is one UGLY ASS FISH!” -Cat "CBD infused deep dish pizza now available at White Sox games." -Carl “Gordon Pepper You're a psychotic Macaulay Culkin? I fear and respect you.” -Dom “Now I don’t even have to leave my home to not watch a movie.” -Kevin, on HBOMax “Fuck your widgets.” -Klauss “I told Galileo to stop working on his telescope. He’s not fooling anyone!” -Greg as Time Traveling Rip Taylor “Chris Wallace failed so badly that Mike Wallace also failed, and he’s been dead eight years.” -Kevin “Yay for fat shaming.” -Amberlee “Philip Rivers: Miami Dolphin?” -Carl “I don’t have enough black leggings for this shit.” -Shannon “You ever have shrunken beef?” -G “Phrasing.” -Aaron “You put the brain in Vibranium.” -Matt Richards “Several flaws in his argument, most notably that while he is correct that the meat in boneless chicken wings doesn’t come from the wings, neither does it come from the “tender”. And chicken nuggets aren’t made from a chicken’s... um... nuggets. That said, it is Nebraska, and this is what happens in that God forsaken state when they cancel football.” -Kevin “I never got spanked. We were very good kids growing up. Dad threatened us a different way. He reminded us as he was a famous person if we screwed up we would see it on page 6 of the ny post.” -G “God’s perfect idiot.” -Ryan Reynolds “You can’t clean house with a filthy mop.” -Kevin "Four." -Course Manager Joe translating Sir Goph to the crowd at Holey Moley. “May (Tim Tebow’s) marriage last longer than Million Dollar Mile.” -C “They were so offended, they weren’t.” -G “Meanwhile I can't choose a fuck fish...” -Kimberly “I have questions.” -Bressler “Do not insult the good name of Bowzer, damn it!” -Greg “Hiya Barbie! No Ken. He’s sold separately and I’m cutting unnecessary spending.” -Eden as Barbie “I’ll be at the bench if you need me. Please don’t need me.” -C as David Tennant as Scrooge McDuck “Fayetteville gonna Fayetteville.” -Jordan “Why you gotta go make good employees angry? You think another decent phleb is just gonna pop out of nowhere like a State Farm agent? ... 🎵 Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there! 🎵 POOF!” -C “I like my men like I like my commuter car: silent.” -Robin “The fact that I had to put "Real Email -- Not Wingo SPAM" in an email subject line tells you a lot about how I comport myself with my colleagues.” -Wingo “Savage Question Song! Y’all fucking FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP! YOU GOT IT WRONG! YOU ARE DUMB! No, I’m kidding, you’re not dumb. You fucked up, it happens. That’s life.” -Matt Richards “You know, bucatini. It’s like spaghetti... with goals.” -C “Love like you’re Jesus Christ. Wash your hands like you’re Pontius Pilate.” -Brian “Show me on the tackling dummy where the illegal touching happened.” -Nikki “Get cable. Discover Disney Junior. Muppet Babies. Weird. So weird. #NotMyMuppetBabies.” -Paul “Take the swabs. Leave the cannoli.” -C “Facetyfacetyfacetyfaaaaaaaace!” -Nikki “If you win, you may smoke it. WHEN you lose, you must eat it. I don’t make the rules.” -Erskine “The internet discovers that Wendy Williams is a terrible person once a week.” -Adam “¡Carajo! Errbahurr!” -me, upon looking at a full parking lot “In these increasingly uncertain times, I want to be absolutely clear on something. I never *don't* want pizza. It is never a bad or inappropriate time for pizza. I will never, in any way, be displeased by receiving pizza. And, at no time in my life, will I ever say "no, that's fine, personally I don't want any pizza." I hope I have made myself clear.” -Brian “That’s a terrifying prospect. Goddamnit, I’m in.” -Kimberly “My dream from December 2020 involved a previous neighbor and his two-mouthed dog. Not two-headed, but two mouthed. Imagine a Doberman crossed with a Big Mac.” -Evil Travis “Sounds like SOMEONE is jealous of the awesome sex her witch friends are having, just saying. #StellaImmanuelOnlyDoesMissionary” -Shannon “Why does Ken Jennings get applause for his use of a buzzer during championship rounds but the Astros are vilified? That’s Double Jeopardy in more ways than one!” -Jess “That's Roman's new move...the Bowel Movement" -JB After Roman tips Corbin over in the potty during Royal Rumble “Smoke my weed.” -Kyle “Tomorrow on Personal Injury Court: "You destroyed my vagina!" Me: "Continue."” -Klauss “Vernon Valley/Action Park on line one.” -Gordon’s one-line review of “Cannonball” “There’s no substitute for good old fashioned know-how.” -Prof. O “So a coworker says she’s pro-gun, pro-God, pro-LEO, pro-Trump, pro-life and that all lives matter. I say to her, quoting Colin Firth, ‘I’m a Catholic whore who is currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. So hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon, madam.’ See? I can flex for rubes on social media, too.” -C “Boy. Smoke really let himself go.” -Caleb “SUPER MATCH on tonight’s MGHSH: ______ LOVER $1000: Red Hot $500: Lousy $250: Latin.... I’ve been called all these things. At the same time.” -C “BREAKING: Massachusetts Lottery names Tom Brady its spokesman for its new lotto game -- Pick 6.” -Doug “If music be the food of love, then umami is the food of food!” -Heather “We already have artificial intelligence in the announcers booth… His name is Joe Buck.” -Brian “I don’t have the time or the crayons to show you how you did that wrong.” -Q “Okay so about Herve Villechaize’s dick.” -Klauss “Sharon after two Proseccos is the funniest motherfucker alive.” -Matt Richards “There’s tired, and then there’s Disney tired. He’s worn out!” -Terrie “Who the fuck is Mickey Rooney?” -Greg’s older brother when he was 8 “Remember, exercise causes endorphins. Endorphins make you happy....” -Michael “And happy people don’t kill their husbands.” -everyone “Peace, love, dope! Now get the hell out of my house!” -Evil Travis “My sister is being disgusted!” -Shannon’s sister “I already have my picks to replace Condfederacy monuments/statues and other members of the slave trade/colonialism. 1. Spock 2, Any Pokemon 3. Columbo (Specifically for Christopher Columbus) 4. The lead singer of GWAR 5. Dolly Parton” -Dane “Having said that, KEEP STAYING INSIDE. Let’s put this in easy terms: did you ever have a teacher say “If you’re good the entire week, we’ll watch a movie in class on Friday”? And when you made it to Thursday, everybody kind of had an eye on the dipshit in the class who was probably going to screw it up for everybody? Okay, right now, as far as COVID goes, it’s Thursday. Keep an eye on Adam. Or...I mean, whatever the kid’s name was in your class.” -Adam “I'm at the level of drunk where everything is HILARIOUS and I'm very pleased with myself... now I’m having a second drink and wearing this VERY NECESSARY hat.” -Arianna “May your 2020 be like ABC’s, shaky at first, but getting stronger.” -BB “A bunch of Goofuses and nary a Gallant.” -Ian “Hard and Stormy - the next pornhub film from Michael Avenatti.” -JB after Chico tried mistakenly to say “Dark and stormy” “With a name like Joe Exotic, expect more fingers than teeth.” -Chico re: Tiger King “I’d rather offend someone by showing up, by trying to understand and trying to care, than offend someone by not showing up, by refusing to understand and for appearing indifferent.” -Christina “If you feel the need to throw shade from behind an anonymous Twitter account... Don’t. Say it to my face or don’t say it at all. Don’t waste my time. It’s 2020. We’re not on here wasting people’s time. Stop it.” -Anne “His shake brings nobody to the yard.” -Jess re: HQreeper “Did Bill Cullen do Blockheads?” -Q “OH FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!” -C "I do normally have energy, but I did just win the Space Jam, so..." -Neumann “So watching the NFL Playoff game and my first thought is that I wonder how the Houston Astros were able to show the Texans how to steal all of the KC Chiefs' signals from their playbook.” -Gordon “Does anybody here have a dollar?” -C “No but I have a chicken!” -Q “You know what borders on insanity? Canada and Mexico.” -Chelsea’s friend Cathie “A 1 followed by 100 zeroes is known as a Googol. A 1 followed by 1,000 zeroes is known as the number of e-mails you will receive from 1-800-FLOWERS in the week leading up to Valentine's Day if you've ever bought even one bouquet in your life.” -Adam “I think I hate everything and everybody, so I’m going to get drunk on beer that’s been brewed in an old sheep carcass and then I’m going to stick my tiny penis in a dead dog I found in a ditch to make hate-babies or something because I am actually more stupid than mud.” -Alucard, impersonating Trevor Belmont, Castlevania “10/10 for entertainment and entry level gaming abilities. Gratuitous gore and endless ammunition. You will literally cry from laughing. Especially if you're as good at being bad at it as I am.” -Becca “I’m trying to eat better. After work today I’m going to have myself a nice salad. That’s right a nice Caprese salad with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, and croutons… Well OK one crouton… One very large round crouton. Pizza. I’m going to order a pizza.” -Brian “Coming to theaters in January 2021: 2Jeopardy 2 GOAT.” -Evil Travis “You overthought it!” -Michael “You know me, Michael. Overthinking is kinda my thing.” -C “I had a baby.... in my king cake.” -Kathryn “hear me out: a cross between a heating pad AND a weighted blanket. *become* the hot pocket.” -Chelsea “Guessing both Foxes (New Fox & Disney) are catching onto the reality that Seth (MacFarlane) only has one idea, which he keeps trotting out in different disguises.” -Kevin “How’s your Wednesday?” -Wingo “Oh you know, places to go, people to see, lives to save, asses to cover. You know, a Wednesday!” -C “That’s why I don’t hold grudges, because I can’t remember shit.” -Joey “Brainvision has been brought to you by the Fire Me Please Sporting Division Showdown! Who will win? The Cleveland Browns? The Houston Astros? The NJ Devils? The NY KNicks? It will be fun to find out! That's the Fire Me Please Sporting Division SHowdown!” -Gordon "I have sent a dick pic. I didnt mean to do it. Mom, I'm sorry.” -contestant on The Circle “You can make excuses or you can make game moves. Pick one!” -C “He who hesitates is sacked.” -Nikki on Tua “Merry Crimbo!... I mean, Merry Chrysler!... I mean...” -Statboy “Welcome to this edition of “Faith in Humanity”, brought to yo by Bleagh. 🤮” -Gordon “Ass trumps feet, count it.” -VRM “On the Season Finale of St. Patswhere, Chief Surgeon Brady suddenly realizes that time has caught up to him and can't accurately perform like he as done in years past. Director of Medicine Belichick talks to his staff and is irate that instead of researching Vrabel-Tannehillitis, they brought him documents on Bunglaria. He punishes them by making them work on back cases and organizing them by bacteria count. In the operating room, time is not on the side of the staff as the patient is also suffering from Henry Syndrome where he rushed for 182 yards and a touchdown. To further accentuate the problems, Belichick finds out that Vrabel-Tennehillitis eats up the time left in the patient, despite his efforts to make time stand still. With time running out, Brady tries to push through his decline and makes a dangerous surgical operation. Sadly, the operation would turn to be fatal for the patient as Brady slips and cuts through vital organs and the scalpal is intercepted by the heart. The patient dies on the table and leaving both Brady and Belichick wondering if they still have what it takes in this new era of medicine. Will our dynamic duo return? find out next season...on St. Patswhere.” -Cyndi “That looks nothing like Tom Villard.” -Mike, anytime someone mentions Chris “Captain America” Evans as “America’s ass” “Okay, no no no no stop halt quit it cease desist. I will sign off on an Anglicized live-action remake of Ranma 1/2 before I approve of this.” -me reacting to a Fresh Prince reboot “Welcome to the Absolutely Fucking Crazy Championship game! With your analysts Tom Brady and Lamar Jackson. Tom: “Hey Lamar, how come we’re not playing in this game?” Lamar: “Cause we suck, man!” • Carl “Politicians are temporary. Wu-Tang is forever.” -@PressedNC “Coffee is not meaningless. Coffee is everything.” -LiyaZee “in the grand scheme of things, aren't we ALL between a sex store and a crematorium?” -Chelsea “You can cancel the show. You can not. Cancel. The culture.” -Chico “Go be bitter elsewhere.” -Hannah “Happy holidays ... and you’re welcome.” -Wayne Brady.... after telling us he’s not wearing underwear. === May our collective 2021 not suck as much as this year did. Seriously, I tried to burn my calendar and it wouldn’t burn. Anyway, here’s to 2021... Come together, just think of tomorrow.

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aiweirdness · 7 years

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Harry Potter and the word-level recurrent neural network

Welcome Home by Alisanne | Severus will quite continue in a muggle book.

In a previous experiment, I trained a character-level recurrent neural network (char-rnn) to generate titles and summaries of Harry Potter fan fiction, based on over 100,000 examples scraped (with permission) from Ao3. (Big thanks to @b8horpet for the dataset.)

In a character-level neural network, the algorithm can work with any character (mostly letters, numbers, and punctuation) that appear in the original dataset. During the first stages of the training, the neural network has to learn to spell even common words like “the” before it can progress to writing sentences. I wondered if I could get better fan fiction summaries if I shortcutted this process.

A word-level recurrent neural network (word-rnn) lets the algorithm use entire words as its building blocks rather than individual letters. However, we usually have to restrict the number of possible words to a number that the neural network can handle without choking - in my case, I found that I had to use only words that appear at least 200 times.

This 200-word threshold gets rid of self-insertions (i.e. people adding themselves as foreign exchange students), but also gets rid of some of the inventiveness we saw in char-rnn (so sadly, no indescribennings). However, since the neural network no longer has to learn to spell individual words, it’s much better at producing readable summaries.

Char-rnn:

Harry Potter and the Dark Doored Lives of Both (Odd chickens) by Cherus | Hermione gets to follow her terror. He just lost his heroe before him, he's not crossed intentions. THONG SEXUAL! (Post-War) ((_All holes of DPAGonder Summoning, I want overly fenrir and a shape three and since Himself) for now, sorts, no things, they may have.

Word-rnn:

A Game of Happy - Heart by orphan _ account | Harry Potter is a sixth year student at Hogwarts. And he has a plan. When a strange new teacher shows up with his cousin he finds out that he is not an orphan, but he is not always a werewolf .

The word-level neural network is also helped by a longer memory, since it can now analyze 50 words at a time rather than merely 75 characters. We get longer sentences that still manage to be grammatical, and it remembers to close most of its quotation marks. It even manages to write summaries of identifiably different styles.

A Day on the Night by articcat621 | Hermione and Draco get stuck in a potion, which might have turned out to be the best change in the world.

Sweet by alafaye | Remus and Sirius are in a relationship, and while Remus is in want of a date, he has no idea what to say.

The Secrets We Have by orphan _ account | “I'm not sure what you think," Harry said, and he heard it as a smile. "You're not going to be able to keep it all around." Your Name Is A Wish by 1001 | I'm a witch. And you're not a girl, and I'm a Hufflepuff.

The Secrets We Get by orphan _ account | What if Harry Potter was born? What if Harry Potter had been raised by the Dursleys and had a few friends and a few friends? What if he hadn't been a Death Eater? What if he had been raised by his godfather? What if he was raised by the Dursleys? What if he had been raised as a Half-blood Prince? What if he didn't know that he'd been pregnant? What if he was raised in the dark and he became a Death Eater? What if he wanted his parents to be in Gryffindor? What if he was a hero? What if he had found out? What if Harry Potter was not a father? What if he had a twin sister, a very different boyfriend.

That’s not to say that the grammar is flawless, however:

Who am you? by orphan _ account | Harry and Draco are both in the same room as "The Boy Who Lived".

Draco to go by chaos [ archived by thequidditchpitch_archivist ] | Drarry. Seamus doesn't mind at a gay hospital. For the prompt "the dark Lord was bed."

Happy Birthday, Harry by orphan _ account | In which Harry is a cat, and Draco is a little bit of a little over.

Another consequence of the 200-word frequency threshold is that individual authors only made the cut if they were prolific enough to write at least 200 stories. So, anyone appearing in the word-rnn results has written hundreds of these - with the exception of screennames containing underscores. In those, every word is treated separately and so the neural network is able to improvise new names, some of which would be seriously annoying to type in:

why_you_i_because_a_gay_gay hell_and_the_Luna_life The_Marauder_of_angry_and_this_are_the_who_though books_and_go 1000000000000000 coffee_n_and_a_Future __________________________Dumbledore_and_magic_Black_magic The_Marauder_Snape_Of_Sherlock oh_little_boy Tumblr_and_many_sky_by_the_great_sort The_Dramione_of_time The_Lost_and_happy_than_live_with_a_writing_is_not_going_to_you_love

One of the things that must have happened at least 200 times is this crossover:

We're Just a Wizard by orphan _ account | The Doctor and Lily Potter find themselves in a strange new world.

And “Happy Birthday” and “more than they bargained for” are two of the neural network’s very favorite phrases, which makes sense if you’ve read enough Harry Potter fan fiction.

Happy Birthday, Harry by orphan _ account | Harry and Draco get a little more than they bargained for.

Happy Birthday, Neville by ChokolatteJedi | Harry gets a little more than he bargained for.

Christmas, of course, happens All The Time.

You Don't Know (I'll Hell You) by digthewriter | The night before Christmas, it is a mistake on the other side. Slytherin. by pekeleke for Alisanne | Harry is happy to tell you how he has Secret Santa, and Draco can't sleep.

Headmaster Snape's First Years by Elfflame | Hermione has a Secret Santa to a lover for Ron. It's open to you - it's exactly what you expect (It's not quite) /HG/HP Just matter by This Day Is ( filled ) for digthewriter | A few years after the death of Harry and Ron, Draco goes to the only Wizarding Christmas bar.

In fact, characters end up in bars quite often.

Not a Wizard by me _ and | What if Severus is in the bar? Harry doesn't know how to tell him that.

My First Chance by coffee _ n _ and _ a _ Future [ archived by ISF _ Archivist ] | Sirius is feeling drunk and alone with a certain Remus later, and soon runs away from the Marauders' sixth year.

Even if the neural network plays it safe with grammar and spelling, it will often come up with scenarios that seem a bit... unlikely.

We'll Be Boys by orphan _ account | Sirius Black is a small girl who has no idea what he's going to do to save the Wizarding World.

The Secrets We Are by orphan _ account | Harry Potter, twin brother of Sirius Black, is a girl with a few friends, a girl who has no idea what is going on.

Harry and Tom : The Boy Who Lived by orphan _ account | Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts behind his parents, then his sixth year at Hogwarts being sorted into Slytherin and more. Now, with his best friend, Severus Snape, Harry finally finds out his greatest plans : his friendship with his friends there are no answers to what went on during history . A young wizard Draco finds on his son and lover, along with Bill Weasley and Draco Malfoy. Will they win? Also, it will be going not expected.

Harry is the Master of Death and Snape is tired of it.

Summer Summer by Alisanne | Severus and Severus have a little fun in the snow.

But I think my favorite thing this time around is the output the neural network produces when it’s instructed to play it Really Really Safe, and choose the most likely next word in each sentence. With the temperature setting turned down to just 0.3, we get:

A Hero's Tale by orphan _ account | Harry Potter is a wizard, and he is a wizard. He is a wizard. He is a wizard, a wizard, a wizard, and a son. He is also a Slytherin, and he is a wizard. He is a wizard, and he is a wizard. He is also a wizard, and he has not been the one to be a father.

A Hero's Tale by 1001Angel | Harry's life is turned upside down when he finds out that he is a wizard, and is a wizard.

A Hero's Tale by orphan _ account | The last thing Harry Potter expected to be was a boy who was the most powerful Dark Lord ever. He was not the only one to do the impossible.

A Hero's Tale by orphan _ account | Harry is a Slytherin, and Draco is a vampire. Harry is a Slytherin, and Draco is a Slytherin .

A Hero's Tale by 1 9 7 6 | The Dark Lord has won. The Dark Lord has won. Voldemort is dead. Harry Potter is dead. The Dark Lord is defeated. Harry is finally free to live his life. He is not the only one with the power to destroy his own destiny.

#neural networks #Harry Potter #fanfic #ao3 #harry potter fanfiction #word-rnn #yer a wizard harry #a wizard #and a wizard #and a Slytherin

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