#(Or they follow the usual rich kid formula of wanting to show her off)

[more-than-a-princess]

Sonia shrugged: in the grand scheme of all of her social outings, Hasagawa had been rude but far from the worst she'd experienced. She'd told him she did not wish to accompany him to such gatherings ever again upon their parting, and it seemed to have stuck. So why did Shinobu look so angry? There was sympathy for friends of course, but she hadn't been wronged by him. "I do not like to say that I should have expected as much, I prefer to give everyone a chance," She replied, sighing. "But my dates so often turn out like this that it is difficult to remain optimistic. I am better off disengaging from it, until I must."

That was the problem at its core: she could never fully disengage by choice. There were two guarantees in life, or so her father had impressed upon her: death, and marrying a respectable man and birthing the next heir so Prince Arthur would be effectively shut out of any chance of taking the throne. For all the good he did for Novoselic aside, the most important one, her father told her in strict confidence, was ensuring his daughter would one day sit on the throne, and her children after her, to keep a selfish, close-minded relative as far away from the crown as he could.

"What I deserve and what will happen are not the same thing," Sonia reminded her. It had taken Shinobu holding, if not gripping, both of her hands to draw Sonia out of her head. She'd come to Japan to leave centuries of royal obligations behind her, just for a little while, and what she'd begun to find was that even thousands of kilometers and an island weren't enough to fully disengage. Everywhere she went, including Hope's Peak Academy, she was a princess. "And I wonder if you may think too much of me. As much as I would like to believe others would still find me appealing without my title and family, my past experiences leave me uncertain. I am not that special: I am just a person born into extraordinary circumstances who just wants to make the world a better place when I leave it and- Yaguchi-san?"

If Shinobu worried about running her mouth, it was nothing to the way Sonia now babbled on. Hands clasped in hers, Sonia had forgotten entirely that they stood in the middle of a mostly-deserted university hallway, with only her guards for company (and they tried their best to ignore the display of emotion that unraveled before them). Instead, she found herself confined, watched, if not scrutinized, by Shinobu. Despite how warm and tense it had become, the other girl refused to look away, and it would have been rude for her to do so when Shinobu had given her her full attention. Unwarranted, Sonia thought: it dawned on her that they were here to support one of Shinobu's friends, not have Shinobu be supporting her.

She needed to be stronger, she thought: complaining of bad dates didn't suit her, not if she was supposed to be a princess, the Princess. Regardless of the fact Shinobu cared or not, everyone else did. At least her own gestures of care came from a genuine place and not a desire for good press, as some members of the royal family exhibited.

"You are so very red," Sonia continued, eyebrows furrowed into a worried look. "Do you have a hand towel or handkerchief of your own? It is quite warm in here, perhaps the air system is not working." She shook her head, both at Shinobu's words and her own: a quiet, even hum from the air conditioning a few meters away proved Sonia wrong, and yet her cheeks had, by the feel of it and if she had to guess, flushed a deep shade of pink themselves.

"I do not blame myself, only my poor judgment for accepting the date at all," She continued. How was it getting so warm in the hallway with the air running? And why did she feel so short of breath, her chest tight? "But I suppose the identity of the person behind the cake will remain a mystery. They have their reasons, revealing themselves would likely be a complication. One they do not want: I can hardly blame them, after how the media was working to expose Gun-, that is, Tanaka-san's family history to the public."

It was a miracle they'd remained friends after it all happened, but it was a strength of both their characters, she supposed, that allowed it. Sonia breathed deeply once Shinobu had let go of her hands: maybe it was simply too warm for it. Spring had arrived, and the temperatures would only rise. "I am glad you enjoyed the chocolates, though. But I cannot imagine not being very taken with chocolate!" She laughed, the pink shade fading from her cheeks. The tension had dissipated in favor of amusement. "That seems rather unpatriotic to me, where I am from. I am quite glad you enjoyed Novosonian chocolate, and I would be pleased to share more in the future with you. But for now, yes, let us find our seats."

As Sonia explained her situation, Shinobu found herself possessed of two conflicting emotions. It was awful, what had happened to Sonia - how she'd been treated as a status symbol or an accessory. That any man could look at her, with how interesting and charming she was, and see her only in that way was the height of male myopia. And yet, there was some part of themselves that was happy her date hadn't gone spectacularly, and that Hasegawa would not continue onwards in her life as a boyfriend, or, eventually, something even more than that.

The only feeling that wasn't conflicted or in any doubt was her awareness that she should have beaten him harder. For that sort of person, it would have been fair to take a few of his teeth, or to crack a rib. Perhaps if she'd pierced a lung with a broken rib, he'd have been too laid-up to even attend his little function. Of course, that would have brought with it all manner of complications, but... Anzu was a good liar, and she'd have covered for her, if asked. Yes, she should have allowed her violent urges to play as they liked, knowing that it might have been some while before the opportunity surfaced again. Hasegawa should hope not to cross her path again, she thought, for she'd surely enjoy dismantling him.

They became aware too late that that dark shroud had settled over their features. "That's awful, Miss Nevermind," she said, taking a breath and forcing her sharp eyes to relax behind her glasses, and allowing the tension she'd been holding in her jaw to release. "Even for all my own dating misfortunes, that sort of experience stands out as uniquely unfair." Without her mind realizing what her body was doing, Shinobu reached out and gently took Sonia's hands in her own. "I've... said as much, before, but I repeat myself - you are rather extraordinary, Miss Nevermind. Any man who refuses to see that deserves not a moment of your time."

Looking at Sonia like this, so close, always seemed to soften her expression. "If you've made that decision for yourself, I'm no one to question it, but..." She shook her head, casting off the errant thought that had nearly made its way to her lips. "Whenever it is, I suppose, now, or some point in the future, you surely deserve someone who will treat you as you desire to be treated. Not as a prize to be displayed, or some thing upon a pedestal to be guarded and hidden away, but rather..."

The blush on Shinobu's face stretched past her cheeks, reaching the tips of her ears. This kind of nakedly honest vulnerability ill-suited her, in her opinion. "Rather, as you are, I mean. After all, you have to know that you're quite special, as far as people go." It was embarrassing. So embarrassing, and yet, she didn't let Sonia's hands go. "You could be a penniless orphan with no title, with nothing at all to your name, Miss Nevermind, and I hardly think it would change how lucky someone would be to have your affection."

She was talking far too much, wasn't she? "I regret if I've been unduly running my mouth, Miss Nevermind," they murmured apologetically. "I just wouldn't want you to think that you were in any way at fault for what transpired. Ha- he, rather, clearly missed out." Awkward... She truly had too much connection to the situation, and to speak plainly about it would only raise more questions. Shinobu would need to approach it carefully. "I'm not sure if it would bring you any comfort, but, I have my suspicions as to whether or not that was even his gift in the first place - the gentleman."

He'd seen the dessert himself, hadn't he? And yet not even realized that the red strawberries were mixed with white ones - Japan's hatsukoi no kaori strawberries. The scent of first love. What an embarrassing name for such a sweet fruit. Frankly, had Hasegawa any understanding of them, surely he could have parlayed it into a more romantic point. That he'd stolen credit was bad enough, but then to so... what was the word Anzu used in situations like this... 'fumble' the situation was even worse. Then, so important was it to correct Sonia's understanding, so she might not think such a personal and thoughtful gift came from someone so unconcerned with her.

With a soft hum, Shinobu gave a light shrug of their shoulders. "I'm in the same class as Miss Sato, you see - the baker - and we're on decent enough terms." After Anzu and Sonia, Ayaka could, perhaps, be considered her next closest regular acquaintance, if not quite a full friend. "Anzu spoke with her, and inquired about it, and though Miss Sato declined to reveal the identity of the person who solicited it, she mentioned they brought a detailed plan of what they wanted. She didn't seem to think it was a reserve course student, either, and Miss Sato... for her sharp exterior, is rather sensitive to these sorts of romantic things. I don't imagine she'd accept so elaborate an order if she didn't detect some manner of genuine feelings behind it." She took a breath, her speech having lost a bit of its even, measured tone. Honestly, they had to mind themselves. "If it's any comfort at all to you, then, it might be the case that the person who had it sent to you is still out there."

Was that enough? She felt some small measure of regret, of course, for involving Ayaka in the situation. She and Sonia didn't speak, so, it was unlikely that things would get back to her, and it wasn't as though she'd said anything particularly untrue, or damning. Ayaka was, after all, both sensitive to, and perceptive regarding romantic gestures and feelings. They'd learned that much at that ridiculous party that Anzu and Momoka had thrown involving half of their class. Even just thinking about it... what a bizarre night that had been.

"Ah, and as for the Valentine's chocolates..." Shinobu had, as she recalled, said thank you, but, perhaps Anzu was right. She texted so strangely that perhaps the message didn't get through, surrounded as it was by other things. "Actually, yours are the only ones I kept. I receive too many, and I'm not especially taken with chocolate in the first place, so I seldom eat them, but..." Abruptly, she became aware of the fact that she was still holding Sonia's hands, but, to let go now seemed as though it would draw too much attention to it. "I greatly enjoyed yours, Miss Nevermind, so thank you."

There was a moment, standing with her in the corridor like this, away from the eyes of others, holding both of her hands, where Shinobu imagined that something could happen. What, exactly, that something would look like, they weren't sure. There was just... something. Some kind of potential energy. Then, the moment passed, as Shinobu heard in the distance the announcement over the PA. First in the auditorium itself, then in the hallway. "Ah..." She murmured, letting go of Sonia's hands. "I suppose that's our sign to go to our seats, isn't it?"

[starrynite7114]

snapshots: fostering II

A/N: Good morning beautiful people! I posted in a previous post regarding why I haven’t update, but basically, I got COVID and it was just not a fun time. 

I am back with an update! This one took some time since I could hardly concentrate while i was out. But I finally have an update. These are the following updates I plan on posting in no specific order.

EZ request

Lake Part Two

Sex Guru Angel

Everything is you: part 12

Another EZ update

Rio request

Two Daddy Angel request: Snuggling and Trip to the aquarium 

That’s my plan before going back to school at the end of the month. Given, I may sneak in a few things in between those things I have mentioned above. 

Prior to me getting sick, I turned off anon, but I have turned it on again. Hopefully New Year, no hate? Regardless, my inbox is open!

Enjoy the update! Love you all!

Shoutout: To my better half, @angelreyesgirl, thank you for helping me map out the rest of the fostering chapters. And thank you for just being fucking you. I LOVE YOU, even though you put me through emotional turmoil with our shows, especially last night. lol 

Groupchat for updates! Please join since the tags could be a bit iffy at times!

If you would like to be added to the tag list, please let me know! My tag list is a little messy, but please let me know if you want to be added!

Masterlist

Snapshots

Word count: 4786

Warnings: Fluff, Infertility, a smidge of angst

CREDIT TO THE ORIGINAL GIF MAKER

“You did tell Angel right?” Gilly helped you bring in the crib his cousin had graciously let you borrow into your home. 

You looked at Gilly as you held the six month old in your arms, who was comfortably sleeping. You and Angel had discussed the possibility of fostering, but there was no final decision that was made. The agency called you and it was an emergency after the baby was brought to an emergency room last night by his mother and was taken away since the mother had tested positive for amphetamines. Since it was an emergent situation, the social worker begged you to take the kid for a few days while they got him situated. You figured it would be a good start for you and Angel was out of town due to an extended run up north.

“It’s just for a few days.” 

Gilly groaned, placing the crib in your room. “That literally did not answer my question, yet it fucking answered my question.” He shook his head. “You have to tell Angel. There’s no guarantee the kid is going to be gone by the time he comes back and what if they head back early?”

“Eva said three days tops. And Angel literally told me they won’t be back till the weekend. The baby will be situated with a foster family by then.” 

And somehow, Gilly didn’t believe that. 

Gilly helped you set up the crib and buy a few things for the baby such as snacks, formula, diapers, and wipes. He watched as you settled on the couch with the baby boy.

“What was the name of the kid again?” Gilly questioned as he settled on the arm chair. 

“Believe it or not, it’s Angelo.” You chuckled. Looking down at the baby in your arms, your heart swelled. It further cemented that you wanted to try this whole fostering thing, to see foster children while they wait for their forever homes. Though, you know it would be difficult, it was a first step. You knew that you and Angel weren’t exactly ready to adopt yet, so you opted to be an emergency foster parent when the need arose. You just didn’t expect it to happen as quickly as it did. 

“Oh man, you’re not going to be able to part from this one.” Gilly saw the way your eyes marveled at the baby in your arms. The way you were holding the child, smiling at every little movement. The baby looked incredibly comfortable in your arms, smiling whenever you smiled at him. Angelo would laugh this hearty laugh when you would make faces at him.

Ares entered the living room, taking his usual spot beside you. He eyed the baby curiously and looked up at Gilly, before looking back down at the baby.

“Wow, now it’s going to be Angel and Ares fighting the baby for your attention.”

“No it won’t because the baby isn’t staying long.” 

“Come on Y/N, you honestly believe you’re going to be able to give Angelo back knowing his mother is a drug addict.” Gilly could just see the wheels turn in your head, your heart clenching at the idea of having to give back Angelo to such an unstable home. 

“Look, stop, I can give Angelo back, regardless of his mother’s choices, I heard that she tried her best to care for Angelo.” You were thankful that Angelo didn’t appear to be harmed by whatever his mother chose to do in her life. 

“She’s been getting by with luck. But you should tell Angel so he doesn’t freak out when he comes home and you have a baby.” 

“Guessing keeping this a secret is out of the question?” You gave him a sheepish smile.

“Oh no, absolutely not. This is too big for you to keep to yourself.”

But you did keep it to yourself. 

And much like Gilly predicted, baby Angelo was still with you Saturday morning and Angel walked in your shared home on Saturday afternoon, doing a double take when he saw Angelo laying his head on the half circle nursing pillow with Ares laying down against the pillow, providing some sort of support as you made faces at him, blowing raspberries on his tummy. 

“What the fuck is this?” Angel knew of your intent to do fostering. You completed the classes two weeks ago, but he didn’t think it would be this quick. And he definitely didn’t expect to walk in and have a baby in his living room. And he definitely didn’t expect the dread at the pit of his stomach, feeling defeated when it came to his hope of you two conceiving your own child. He didn’t have a problem with adoption, if that’s what the cards had for you two, he didn’t mind. But being faced with the decision that you seemingly made on your own, it slightly irritated him. He felt like you were giving up without even trying.  

“Babe!” You stood up, smiling at your boyfriend. Ares lifted his head before jumping down the couch. He walked over to Angel and nuzzled his cheek against Angel’s leg. 

“Oh no, even the fucking dog is trying to sweet talk me. You’re both in fucking trouble. Baby, what the fuck?” Angel’s eyes couldn’t part from the baby on the couch. 

“I know, I know, this looks bad, but it was an emergency.”

“An emergency? Like last night? Cause I know you would have told me if you emergently had to foster a baby.” Angel walked closer as if the baby wasn’t real, that if he moved closer, it would all be an illusion. Because he knew for a fact that you would tell him something as enormous as this.

You sighed. “Try three days.”

“Three days?!” Angel gave you an incredulous look, his higher octave of tone scaring Angelo. The baby began to cry, causing you to frown. You picked up Angelo, trying your best to comfort the baby. “Y/N, this is, this is unacceptable. How can you not have told me you were fostering a baby?”

“He was supposed to be gone before you came back.” It was a terrible reason, you could attest to that, but it was all you had. 

“I don’t give a fuck, this is our home. You’re bringing in a baby into our home. I have the right to know these things. This isn’t a fucking puppy or a toy. You can’t just bring the baby in and bring it back out as if it’s nothing.” Angel didn’t think you thought of this as a game, but he knew how simple you thought things through at time. For you, just like your computer software, you make the software, test it out and hand it over to the company that requested the said software. You came to help the company from time to time, otherwise, it was no longer your headache. And that was how Angel saw your thought process was when it came to fostering. He loves you, but this was the reason he was apprehensive about the idea of fostering. Not only would you have a difficult time parting with the child when the time came, but the way you handled it wasn’t ideal. This wasn’t a toy baby for one of those subjects in high school and it wasn’t a dog that could charm their way to people’s hearts. 

This was another human life. 

And the way you handled the whole thing, it showed Angel that fostering was definitely not right, at least not right now. 

“I know he isn’t a toy or a puppy. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

“Then don’t insult mine. We’re a fucking team. Regardless if the baby was going to be here for an hour or a year, you should tell me. This is why we shouldn’t foster a child, you can’t even communicate to me that we’re fostering one.” Angel shook his head. “You’re not even going to try for a baby?”

His words pierced through your heart and you could tell Angel immediately regretted his words. 

“I’m sorry, did you say, not try for a baby?” You scoffed. “That’s rich. You’re all talk about being okay with not having your own biological child, but now, fostering a child is staring us right in the face and the only thing you can do is give me flack for bringing a child in our home.”

“I am okay with not having my own biological child, but I would at least like for us to try and explore every possible fucking option. It’s like you got one opinion and shut down. Why can’t we get a second opinion?” Angel did not want to be arguing with you. This was not how he saw his day going. He wanted to get home so he could take a nap, take you out on a nice dinner and make love to you till Sunday afternoon. Now, you two were arguing and Angel knew it wasn’t going to be swept under the rug any time soon. “I meant what I said, I want to be with you regardless if you can have a baby or not, but again, one opinion you shut down. You’re an IT specialist, you look for every way to fix a fucking problem with a software, but with your own life, you got one solution and that’s it, you gave up.”

The tears that welled up in your eyes made you look away from Angel as you rocked Angelo in your arms. You didn’t just look at one solution, you got a second opinion in Arizona and the doctor more or less told you the same thing. Rafael gave you the number of his cousin who saw a specialist in LA, but after having two opinions basically stating the same facts, it was hard to hear over and over again that couldn’t have a child. 

“You know, you can be a real asshole at times.” You walked away from Angel, Ares following suit as you closed the door, choosing not to slam it since Angelo finally calmed down. 

“Fuck!” 

=================

You were laying on the bed, Ares at your feet and Angelo sleeping soundly right beside you. You had a long body pillow on his one side and you on the other. The tears have subsided, but you were still quite upset at Angel. You understood why he was upset, you should have told him about the baby, there was no rhyme or reason as to why you didn’t. You sniffled, wiping your nose as you had your hand on Angelo’s little tummy, watching him as he slept. A new batch of tears formed in your eyes as reality set in that you could never truly have this, a child created by you and Angel. A child with Angel’s smile and beautiful brown eyes. A child with a mixture of your personalities. 

It upset you that you couldn’t give that to Angel. The fact he assumed that you didn’t look at other options hurt you, but, it’s not like you told him either. 

You felt Ares rest his head on your calf, his warmth bringing some comfort to you. Hearing the door open, you closed your eyes, not ready for another showdown with Angel. You heard him sigh as he closed the door. You weren’t certain if he walked back out or was inside the room, but you kept your eyes closed.

The bed dipped under his weight. You felt him rest his hand above yours that was on Angelo’s tummy. 

“I wish you knew just how much I love you. Seeing you with a baby is painful because I know you’re hurting more than anyone else about your current predicament. It’s the reason why I don’t want us to foster, at least not yet. Knowing you can’t have a child, I know it’s killing you and I’m just trying to protect you.” You felt Angel softly squeezed your hand. “You’re the love of my life, if I can protect you from the world I would.”

You weren’t sure what you did to deserve Angel’s love, but hearing him say those words, it made your heart swell.

You felt him move, most likely getting in a more comfortable position. 

“What are we going to do with you little man?” You heard Angel sigh. 

Angel heard the faint cries at first and he was going back to sleep when he realized it was the baby. He cracked an eye open and saw Angelo on his belly, his face scrunched up, small cries coming from his lips. Ares lifted his head and was about to stand up when Angel gestured for him to stay down. 

“Hey papa’s, you doing okay?” Angel had his fair share of babysitting jobs when he was younger so he knew how to care for a baby, but this was different. This baby was technically under your care and it wasn’t someone he could give back at the end of the day. It was one of the things he feared too. You two didn’t know what kind of baby or kid you would end up with. What if they ended up becoming serial killers?

Angel knew it was ridiculous, but he thought of your safety, that was his main priority. 

Angel picked up Angelo, holding the baby in his arms. He stood up, hoping he could rock Angelo back to sleep, but the cries came before he could do anything. Moving towards the kitchen, he hoped you prepared bottles for the baby since he didn’t exactly know how much formula to use or the ratio with water and such. Thankfully there was a bottle. He warmed up the bottle and checked the temperature. Once it was good, he placed the nipple at Angelo’s mouth which he gladly sucked on. Angel chuckled, making his way over to the couch to sit down. Ares joined him, resting his head on Angelo’s legs.

“At least you adjusted well to him.” Angel sighed, watching as Angelo greedily drank the milk. “Man, you’re hungry.” Ares adjusted himself and watched Angelo drinking his milk. “Don’t get used to him, we can’t keep him.” Ares looked over at Angel and for once, Angel saw this demon dog of yours give him the puppy dog eyes. “That only works on your mom, not on me, nope.” He looked down at Angelo and he assisted him by holding the bottle for him. “Wonder why she had to take you in so suddenly.”

When Angelo finished his bottle, Angel burped him, moving to sit back down. Angelo reached for the necklace around Angel’s neck that rested on his chest. Angel watched as the infant became enamored with the necklace, playing with it, slightly tugging on it. He laughed, the sound slightly startling Angelo before a smile broke out on his own face. Angel couldn’t believe he was thinking it, but all he wanted was to keep that smile on this precious baby boy.

“Oh no,” Angel groaned. 

Ares sat up, pawing at Angelo and Angel petted him under his neck, and just shook his head. 

“I think he’s cute too, but we can’t keep him.” Ares scoffed and turned away from Angel, laying down. “You can throw a tantrum all you want, but we’re not keeping the baby.” Angel shook his head. “I have no idea what she got in her head, but we can’t keep you little man.”

Angelo snuggled his face against Angel’s shirt, the gesture making Angel’s heart melt further. As much as he wanted to keep Angelo, he didn’t know how good of an idea that was. You two were still working on your relationship and he still wanted to try to get a second opinion for what was going on. He had faith that miracles could occur, but as he said, he didn’t mind if you two ended up adopting. But he wanted to at least try, to at least put the effort of having a child. He saved up money and he was certain your medical insurance would help with it. 

=================

Before you knew it, sleep overtook you and when you awoke it was due to Angel waking you up.

“Baby,” Angel shook you awake, your eyes blinking adjusting to the light. “We need to get more diapers. What size are his diapers?”

You yawned and pointed at your closet. “He has more in there.”

Angel nodded his head and went inside the closet, taking a diaper before laying Angelo right next to you. Sitting up, you looked down at him and looked over at Angel. 

“I didn’t hear him cry.” You commented.

“Yeah, I know, he started getting fussy so I picked him up.” Angel cooed at Angelo as he picked him up. “What’s his name?”

“Angelo.”

“No shit,” Angel smiled. 

“Right?” You returned his smile. Watching Angel hold Angelo, it made you tear up all over again. You wanted this so badly for Angel, for Angel to have his own child and seeing this, it made you happy yet, it saddened you. Maybe you should call the doctor in LA just to see if the third time’s the charm. 

He looked up at you and sighed. “I hate fighting with you.”

“Me too.” You frowned. “I’m sorry for not communicating it to you that Angelo was here. I don’t even know what I was thinking.”

“Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. You can’t just drop a baby on us. We have to discuss this, we’ve always been a team, that hasn’t changed.” Angel reminded you.

“I know,” you crawled over to him and Angel held you with his free arm, pulling you against him. “I think the excitement of having him, it just threw me off and I guess I was being a little selfish. And maybe some part of me wanted to surprise you.”

“Consider me surprised querida.” Angel kissed you. Pulling away, he looked down at Angelo, who was just looking at you two then back at you. “Fuck, I’m going to get used to this and it’s going to suck when he leaves. What’s his story?”

You proceeded to tell Angel the story of how you gained emergency custody of Angelo. You saw how Angel’s eyes softened and the anger that also appeared.

“That’s messed up. How can,” Angel paused and shook his head. “We can’t give him back to her.” Angel’s overprotectiveness has come out and you knew that letting go of Angelo was going to be difficult on you both. 

“Angel, babe, I agree, but she still has custody.” You had temporary custody of Angelo, once things settled with his mother, they would most likely give him back to her. You truly hoped the report was right and that his mother just recently relapsed and was working on getting better, but addiction was hard to kick. 

“She’s an unfit mother.” Angel spat out. He shouldn’t be preaching, he killed people and was part of a heroin trade, but he would never endanger a child.

“Babe, we don’t know that.”

“Don’t know that?” Angel scoffed. “She continued to do drugs with her child in the same home as her, that’s unforgivable.” 

You loved how passionate Angel felt about Angelo. He’s only known him for a few hours and he loved the little guy already. It made you smile and you hugged Angel once again, which surprised him. He sighed and kissed the top of your head, his attention back on Angelo.

“I was so worried that you couldn’t give him back, but I think it’s going to be me.” Angel chuckled. “How come you still have him?”

“Thanksgiving is next week, guess people aren’t in a rush to handle the case.” You shrugged. “We have to talk about the possibility of keeping Angelo. It’s a long shot, I doubt his mother would give up custody, but maybe we should discuss it in case it is presented to us.” 

“I’m in.”

Angel’s reply surprised you. It’s not that you didn’t think Angel was going to be on board, but you two just argued earlier about having biological children and now, he was on board with keeping Angelo.

“What?” You pulled away from him, choosing to sit on the bed. Ares laid beside you, laying his head on your thigh. “We literally just argued about having biological children, and now you want to keep him?”

“I never said I didn’t want to adopt a child with you. I’m on board with whatever you want mami, you know this. But I just want you to at least consider getting a second opinion.” Angel began to rock Angelo back and forth, the baby falling asleep in his arms rather easily. Placing Angelo in his crib, Angel leaned on the wall beside his crib. “I want everything with you. I meant what I said when I told you I was okay with not having children of our own, but I want you to at least explore every fucking option.”

“You don’t think I did that?”

“I don’t know baby, did you?” 

“I got a second opinion in Arizona and the doctor basically told me the same thing. I wanted to come back to you Angel, but if I came back, I wanted us to have an option to have a child together.” You confessed. “When you came for me, I knew it was a matter of time before you broke down through my walls and I was back in your arms. But before I came back, I wanted for us to know our options. So I got the second opinion and it still wasn’t great news.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know, I was already disappointed that we can’t have kids and the way you reacted the first time frightened me. I figured you didn’t want to hear another disappointing fact about me.” You were mostly disappointed in yourself. You knew it wasn’t something you could control, but knowing you couldn’t have a family in the traditional sense, it hurt. 

Angel moved to kneel in front of you, taking your hands that were on your lap. “From now on, we talk about everything, regardless of disappointment or whatever. I love you. Let me be your support system. I know you’re used to counting on yourself, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s been us against the world since we were thirteen fucking years old and that hasn’t changed. Regardless of what’s occurred the last six months, that hasn’t changed. You’re my girl and I’m yours.” 

You nodded your head, wiping your tears away. “There’s a third option Rafael told me about. It’s in LA.”

“Okay, make an appointment, we’ll go.” Angel rested his arms on your lap, his hands holding your hips. 

“Angel, maybe we should wait till after the holidays, I don’t know if I really want such sad news during the holidays.”

“Nope, let’s do it, regardless of the results, I’m here for you. We’ll face it together. Make the appointment for next week and we’ll handle this.” Angel cupped your face, bringing your lips to his. 

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed. Maybe we should just give it time.”

“Nope, this is your defense mechanism, putting shit off. Fuck no baby, let’s meet with the doctor and we’ll go from there.” 

“What if it’s the same results? That’s what’s killing me Angel.”

“Then we’ll think of other ways.” He pursed his lips. “I know it’s hard, but don’t you want to explore every option so we can at least look back on this twenty years from now and know we did everything we could to have children?”

Angel got you there. You wanted to live life with no regrets and he was right. When you looked back on this moment years from now, you want to know you tried every option.

“I understand the fear of disappointment, but there is no disappointment if we know we tried every viable option that we had.”

“When did you get so wise?” 

Angel chuckled. “Coco is rubbing off on me.” He kissed you again, wrapping his arms around you. 

“I’ll make the appointment.” 

“Good, just let me know when and we can make a day out of it. I can visit my tio and tia while we’re there.” 

You smiled, nodding your head at his suggestion. You picked up your phone and noticed a missed call from Eva. Before you could even call her back, the doorbell rang. Angel made his way to the front door to answer the door. You followed after him and found Eva with her usual purse and folders in arms. 

“Hey Eva!” You greeted. “I was just about to return your call, we had a nap.”

Eva chuckled. “You’re fine, I figured you were napping or occupied with a seven month old child.” 

“This is my boyfriend, Angel.” You introduced the two finally since you usually just mentioned them to one another. 

“Very nice to finally meet you Angel.” Eva shook Angel’s outstretched hand.

“Likewise.” 

Eva was in her mid-forties, her hair style reminded you of a 50’s housewife. It fit her face well and she was honestly one of the kindest people you knew.

“It’s five in the afternoon on a Saturday, you’re still working?” Angel commented as you all sat down in the living room. 

“Yes well work never stops.” Eva shrugged with a content smile on her face. You knew Eva was a workaholic. Many social workers have gotten a bad reputation these past few years, but Eva always seemed so genuine to you. “But, I want to make this visit quick and hopefully it’ll work out for all of us.”

“Sure, what’s going on?” You were seated beside Angel, your hand in his.

“Angelo’s mother has given up custody of Angelo and I was wondering if you would be interested in fostering him till we can handle all the necessary paperwork.” Eva was hopeful. She saw how you quickly bonded with Angelo and the last few times she’s seen that occur, the child ended up being adopted by their foster parents. And if she was being honest, she was hoping this would be the case here. “Or if you’re interested, maybe you would like to adopt Angelo.” You were an ideal candidate. Regardless of your marital status, you had a steady, stable job and you also had a home and a good support system. 

You looked at Angel who squeezed your hand, placing a kiss on the back of it. “You already know how I feel.”

“We would love to adopt Angelo.” You said quickly, Eva laughing at your enthusiasm and clapped her hands together. 

“I knew you would, this is perfect. I’ll handle the paperwork, but I wouldn’t expect anything till after Thanksgiving. Honestly, I do not foresee any trouble with the proceedings, especially since his mother gave up custody of Angelo to the state.” Eva stood up. “I will keep in touch, but have a very happy thanksgiving and I will speak to you both after next week.”

“Yeah, of course.” You were in disbelief how quickly everything was happening, but it made you feel as if it was meant to be, that everything was just simply falling into place. You and Angel said your goodbyes to Eva and as soon as the front door was closed and locked by Angel, you ran over to him.

Angel caught you, your legs and arms wrapping around him. Your lips were on his, one of Angel’s arms rested around you and his hand cupped your face. Pulling away, you rested your forehead against Angel’s.

“Fuck, baby, this is so quick.” You wanted to scream in joy, but Angelo was taking a nap. You felt Ares nudging your back, wanting to join the festivities. Going back on the ground, you hugged Ares, happy that you got to keep Angelo after all.

“It’s just things falling into place baby.” Angel sat on the floor next to you, Ares coming to Angel and giving him kisses. 

“We have a baby.” You breathed out. You rested your head on Angel’s shoulders. “Holy shit, we’re parents.”

Angel laughed. “You’re really stuck with me now. Cause if you even try to leave, I’ll take our kid and the dog.”

You laughed along with Angel. The appointment for next week made you nervous, even though you weren’t sure if you would even be able to book an appointment. Regardless, whatever the outcome of next week was, you were happy that you had Angelo. 

You and Angel were building your family.

That was the most important thing to you. 

=================

tagged list: @justahopelessssromantic : @carlaangel86 : @woahitslucyylu : @encounterthepast : @enamoured-x : @anangelwhodidntfall : @briana-mishell24 : @bribri-82 : @chibsytelford : @agirllovespancakes  : @twistnet : @everyhowlmarksthedead : @trulysuccubus : @jadert15 : @sammskellington : @cind-in-real-life :  @onmyspookysblock : @sadeyesgf : @thickemadame : @summertimesadnesswithadashofsass : @gemini0410 : @elcococruz : @samcrobae : @sesamepancakes : @iambabyharry : @blackmissfrizzle : @mrs-losa : @1-800-imagines : @phoenixhalliwell : @lady-pswrld : @dazzledamazon  : @getyourcrayoncas : @fvckthisbxtchup : @lukealvxz : @scuzmunkie : @lilac-tea-time : @danie1432 : @cocotheclown : @soaronmywings : @my-rosegold-soul : @buttercup812 : @un-poetryy : @angelreyesgirl : @sheeshgivemeabreak : @vicmackeybullshxt : @bigcreatorwombatdreamer : @khyharah : @strawberrywritings : @cherry-icetea : @fuzzy-jellyfish : @losolvidad0s : @brownsugarcoffy : @courtrae89 : @prdsdjarin : @blessedboo : @marvelmaree : @enamouravecleslivresetlechocolat : @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead : @thesandbeneathmytoes : @dark-twisted-and-mechanical-mind : @maddie-georges : @pearlkitten33  : @incorrect-mcdanno : @that-chick212 : @imanerdychubbyqueen : @60shannon : @deeandbobbymcgee : @marquelapage : @justlikebreathing : @mindless-x-dreaming : @thesewordsareallihavetogive : @wiccanmetallicrose : @appropriate-writers-name : @likedovesinthewnd : @admirehermind : @krysiewithak : @helli4nthus : @robbosvgdens : @scuzmunkie : @proudlittlewitchbitch

[kilgarraghforever]

So The Son Of Bigfoot is this film from 2017 and it's completely nutty.

The opening scene is this science man getting chased through a forest by a load of helicopters, men with dogs and a pointy-faced dude with very blonde hair. The lot of them have stupid hairstyles. Science Man climbs a cliff, is cornered by the helicopters and then jumps off a waterfall. End scene, cut to title, then the main stuff starts. (I think I'm going to explain the entire film, so anyone who wants to watch it (and I heartily recommend you do so) leave now.)

The main plot is about this kid who gets bullied by three morons with stupid haircuts. Here they are:

(Sunglasses has this silly little goatee thing at the back of his head)

The three morons stick a load of gum in his hair, so his mum has to chop it all off. Next day, it's all grown back, and kid freaks and tries to chop it off himself - which goes badly. He finds his dead dad's old hat in a draw to hide it, goes to school and basically has a weird thing where his hearing suddenly increases and so does his shoe size. The kid's feat literally bust out of his shoes. Kid ends up in the PE hall to escape the noise and surprise! the three bullies turn up, he accidently punches one in the face and so they beat him up, steal his backpack and throw it in a basketball hoop. The lot of them get called to the headmaster's office to be punished (suspension), in which the kid - Adam - meets some blonde girl who flirts with him, gets his bag back and is told to remove the hat, revealing that his hair has grown back completely. Before he has time to contemplate this, the bullies turn up again, chase him home and throw a rock through his window. Rock hits a vent, breaks it and hits something metal, so Adam sticks his arm down and finds a tin full of letters from his dead dad and an address carved on bark. He reads the letters and his mum gets home, he accuses her of keeping his dad's living-ness a secret. Yelling ensues, Adam runs away, y'know - the usual.

Meanwhile, this massive hair company (Hair Co) are trying to make some serum to make hair grow. It's run by the pale dude from before, who never gets named, so I'll refer to him as Asshole. Asshole is showing these three dudes around and nattering, and then they get to this science lab. A short old science man shoots an intern in the ass with a dart thing that causes him to grow an afro. The afro then promptly bursts into flames.

We return to Adam, next to a highway trying to hitchhike in the pouring rain. Truck driver stops and Adam guilts him into taking him to the address on that bit of bark. Turns out it's literally just a post box in a woods next to the road. Adam gets out, truck drives off leaving Adam alone and so he ventures into the unknown. He wanders around for a bit looking for a house or something, yelling "Hello?" into the void. He climbs a small cliff, yells again and hears something behind him. Sees some bushes moving, so he throws a rock at them. The bushes go "ow" so he runs off and right into a bear trap. He falls, skidding the rest of the way down to the road. During said skid, his backpack falls off. This is important. Adam gets knocked out by the impact and is left sprawled in the middle of the road. Some trucker - I'm going to call him Carl - is driving down it, reading a magazine and singing something. He sees Adam at the last minute, slamming on the breaks. He's clearly going to hit Adam, but before he can, this blurry humanoid figure runs out into the road, scoops up Adam and runs off again. Carl is very confused, so plays it back on his dashboard camera. He goes "Well, I'll be" and reaches for his phone. It has no service. Carl ends up at a diner with a phone box, calls 911 and reports that he saw Bigfoot. 911 hangs up on him. Carl then proceeds to call the magazine he was reading and gets told that his sighting will get published.

Back at Hair Co, Asshole sees the report and smirks at the short science man, whom I'll be calling Billingsley, as that is his name. Billingsley wants to go after Bigfoot but Asshole says that they gave up the search ten years ago, leading to the question: 'What the fuck, Hair Co?' They eventually decide to go after Bigfoot again after seeing Adam in the photo.

Carl, back at the diner, is talking to the serving lady who I've named Sugar. They talk about the Bigfoot sighting, and then a load of black cars and a freaking helicopter turn up. Sugar shouts for someone to raise the prices.

Turns out all the men in black people are Hair Co looking for Bigfoot - and Asshole is with them. Carl explains about where he saw Bigfoot and an agent finds Adam's backpack (I said it was important) and his address in it. Asshole smirks again.

Two of the Agents of Hair turn up at Adam's address, break in and find the letters. Meanwhile, Shelly - the mum - is driving to the address on the bark in search of Adam.

This is where it gets a little nuts. Adam wakes up in some tree next with Bigfoot - inexplicably in a pair of jeans that look far too small for him because of all the fur - is standing over him. Adam understandably freaks out and tries to leave, only to nearly die from falling. Bigfoot grabs him before he does and explains that he is Adam's dad. His not dead, very much alive, rather furry and never named dad. (For that reason I'm going to keep calling him Bigfoot.) Adam calls bullshit and threatens him with a twig, then sees that the middle of the treehouse is decorated in photos of him and his mum. This somehow proves to Adam that Bigfoot is his dad, and I'm sure you guessed from the title. He then freaks out again, calling his dad a monster and Bigfoot makes the most funny offended face in animated history.

He then accuses Bigfoot of running away, to which Bigfoot responds with "Woah." He then explains that someone *cough* Hair Co *cough* *cough* were hunting him and he had to leave to keep Adam and Shelly safe. Adam then asks him what he meant by 'lab rat', making Bigfoot change the subject to Shelly and whether she knows Adam is here. Adam lies, his dad catches it, and they argue for a bit before Bigfoot says "Your mum must be worried sick."

Cut to Shelly driving up to a blockade set up by the Agents of Hair. They say they're looking for her, and she tries to escape but the Agents of Hair stop her.

Back at the treehouse, apparently Bigfoot and Adam have stopped arguing and Bigfoot is going on about being sorry he missed Adam's childhood and how Shelly sent everything to him. Adam then asks if he's going to have Bigfoot stuff happen to him - mostly refuring to the fur (I'm not sorry for the pun) - and Bigfoot says no. He then explains that he's already thirteen and hasn't shown any signs of being a bigfoot. Adam says "Yes I have. My feet went weird and so did my hearing." They eventually work out that Adam got all of the cool stuff about being a bigfoot and none of the fur. Cool stuff? I hear you and Adam ask. Turns out bigfoots (bigfeet?) have healing powers (which is how Adam is walking on a leg that got caught in a beartrap), run really fast, hear super well (like things around a mile away) and can talk to animals. They then zipline down to the ground, do some weird surfing thing and fall over. During the next 20 minutes, we meet two racoons, a squirrel and a woodpecker. Oh, yeah, and a giant bear. There's some nonsense with two idiotic hunters, baseball, some geysers and then they end up back at the treehouse. This sickeningly sweet bonding shit is interrupted by the raccoons who report that the Agents of Hair are scouring the forest looking for Bigfoot. Bigfoot blames Adam, which is fair but also really not, who then decides to give himself up to Asshole and the Agents of Hair. They take him to his mum and he tricks them into climbing into a geyser. This pisses of Asshole who, in a plot to lure out Bigfoot, traps Adam in a car and sends him into a forest fire the Agents of Hair started. When Bigfoot shows up to try and save Adam, he gets Adam out of the car but is shot by Asshole with a stun dart. The massive bear whose name is Wilbur saves Adam but a burning branch gets in the way of him going back for Bigfoot, who is captured by Asshole. Adam then blacks out from smoke inhalation. When he comes to, Wilbur and the other animals decide to leave, but Adam convinces them to help him save Bigfoot in a Mission Impossible style heist.

Back at Hair Co, Billingsley has almost perfected a hair formula and shoots the intern again, causing all his hair to grow prolifically. Asshole is pleased by this.

While that's happening, Adam and the rest break into Hair Co's nearest facility, and during the commotion, all of them but Adam get captured. Adam makes it to his dad, who then refuses to leave in a plot twist everyone saw coming, aside from Adam who is confused. Asshole has apparently promised to care for Shelly and Adam and not kill them in exchange for Bigfoot allowing them to run experiments on him. Adam, who is not crazy and doesn't trust Asshole, tries to convince Bigfoot to leave but then Asshole himself turns up and takes Adam out of the lab. Asshole talks about how Adam is going to like being rich while Adam spots a fire alarm, breaks it and causes the only door in to seal itself with him on the inside. This greatly pisses off Asshole, who yells for security to open the door and that the fire is a false alarm. Security guy, who Adam and co knocked out earlier, comes to, hears fire and sounds the evacuation alarm. Asshole gets taken to the bridge, leaving only Adam inside.

Adam then steals an access card from a guard he knocked out, releases all the animals, including the ones used by Hair Co to test stuff on (who all leave the compound and follow the evacuating Agents of Hair), and cause chaos. During said chaos Adam gets a flare gun. He goes back to Bigfoot and this time succeeds in convincing him to leave, threatening to tell Asshole that he's a Bigfoot too. This sentiment is quite sweet as he says that "If you don't leave, then I'm staying. It's the two of us here or the two of us out there, but I'm not loosing you again." They leave and Bigfoot decides to go into a large production area and break all of the gas pipes, deciding that Hair Co is going to be put out of business, permanently. They break many gas lines, leading to the door to be sealed so no gas escapes. They escape through a vent and come out at the top of Hair Co, and zipline down to the bridge using the cables holding it up.

Asshole is there waiting for them. He has found out that Adam is also a bigfoot and shoots Bigfoot several times with stun darts then kicks him off the bridge. Adam, with the most 'fuck you' look, shoots the flare gun's flare into Hair Co, igniting the gas and exploding the building and making the bridge collapse.

Adam then runs to the end of the bridge and climbs down to try and find his dad. Asshole also falls off the bridge because of his own stupidity and the Agents of Hair being incompetent.

In the gorge below, Adam finds his dad badly injured and dying. He cries at first, hugging his dad and his hands glow with blue swirls of light that disappear as soon as he takes his hand away from Bigfoot's arm. He then remembers the healing powers his dad told him about, and uses them on his dad. The blue magic makes Bigfoot's body rise into the air as the healing powers try to heal him, then gently place him back on the ground after Adam is done.

Bigfoot doesn't move.

"No!" Adam cries out, sobbing again. Then Bigfoot moves and wakes up, they hug, the animals show up and it's all very sweet, blah blah blah.

And then along comes Asshole, looking rather deranged and pointing a stun gun at them. He starts monologuing about how "it did not have to end this way" and then is shot in the ass by Shelly. Bigfoot, Shelly and Adam decide on "no more hiding". Meanwhile, the male raccoon discovers that Asshole has been wearing a toupee the entire time.

It turns out that Billingsley and the intern survived.

A few weeks/months later (it's actually only about a week later) Bigfoot and the animals are living happily with Shelly and Adam, who is returning to school after his suspension.

On the way, the bullies return and try to beat up Adam, only to be scared by Wilbur the massive bear. They end up with broken bikes (curtesy of the raccoons) and bruises. The blonde girl from the office shows up at the end of the confrontation and asks to walk to school with Adam. She also asks what happened to his shoes, as his feet bust out when the bullies show up. He jokes that he should switch to sandals, and the film ends on them walking away with his shoes hanging from a telephone pole.

It's a wild ride and I'd honestly recommend it to anyone with an hour and a half to spare. Despite what it looks like, I didn't get in everything and the whole film is a lot funnier that I said here.

This film got an 8/10.

[scoobydoominuscoobydoo]

Why do you hate Scooby Doo Mystery Inc so much?

Hate is a pretty big word that I really don’t like to throw around that often because to me it implies zero redeeming qualities and that it never should have existed. I don’t think the Scooby world would be better off if MI never existed because despite it’s flaws there was a pretty huge following for it in the beginning. It did something that wasn’t all that common for CN shows at the time and that was trying to take a more serious and heavy-handed approach to the Scooby gang’s lives. It also brought back the concept of an overarching story line that was pretty well done before it go so convoluted (the last Scooby show to do that was 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and that was back in the 80′s). It showed that the standard Scooby formula actually worked really well with this sort of set up. 

It also is the best looking show and I really do mean that. The art-style is appealing to the eye and the color pallet was shooting for this whole neon noir that worked really well. The directing and camera work is set up like a teen slasher movie and it meshes nicely with the vibe the show is going for. The designs for the monsters are also pretty memorable from the first season and look great. Like I can remember most of the episodes from the first season simply because of the set pieces and monster designs (the episode where they end up in a house underground is one of my favorites aesthetically).

This was also the first series with Matthew Lillard as Shaggy since the 2002 and 2004 live-action films and he does a great job for sure. The performances from the whole cast are good as a whole (not exactly off brand for them).

There’s the episode “Night Terrors” that got like 11 year old me shipping Shaphne in the first place.

So there are definitely some things I respect from MI and I wouldn’t say that I hate the show. I think strongly dislike suits my feelings more.

Despite the fact that it did a lot for Scooby it also messed a lot of it up (this is coming from someone who watched it several times all the way through). The story got too complicated and there were a lot of unresolved plots and character actions that didn’t make sense.

I think the worst crime it commits - and the one that my animosity is directed at - is that it’s characterization was the worst out of all the shows. It tries to sell the gang as the town outcasts who only have each other but most of the time I can’t buy that they’re close friends because of all the times they just stop talking to each other. It really feels like they hang out with each other on accident and would really be with literally anyone else. Most of the first season just feels like Daph is there because Fred is there and she wants Fred to jump her so.

The gang’s relationship is a key element of every Scooby show and if you leave the impression that they aren’t that close than you’ve got five characters acting independently that sometimes solve mysteries together.

Not to mention how badly the gang themselves are written.

I’ll start with Shaggy because he’s my guy and his treatment in MI makes me sad. Overall, I think he’s the most “in character” out of everyone but that still isn’t saying much. A lot of his development is through either Scooby or Velma and the Velma development was handled as poorly as possible. I know this show came out during a period where putting the guy on the receiving end of an abusive relationship was funny but that doesn’t make it okay. It’s played for laughs but even when I was little I didn’t think Shag being in a controlling relationship was amusing. When he breaks up with Velma (for a completely valid reason that doesn’t even mention her abuse of him) he’s painted as the bad guy and it’s brought up for the rest of the show. That effectively ruined his connection with the rest of the gang and now he’s more or less just there. He doesn’t get any emotional heart-to-hearts or scenes showing his relationship with the gang (the most he gets is with Daphne ironically). 

Most of the conflicts he alone faces are connected to Scooby or food and I feel like they could have explored so much more with him. Especially since that was the whole selling point of the show to begin with. The consistent fact that Shag is the glue that holds the gang together isn’t an element in this show either. I figured they might explore his obviously neglectful parents who still don’t seem too attached to the having a kid thing. But that didn’t happen and any outstanding Shaggy moments in the show aren’t as deep as the show promises.

Daphne easily gets it the worst. Her whole character is like completely dependent on Fred’s current attitude of her. Which is a shame because the show has these undertones of implying that Daphne is this eccentric, dorky, rich girl and I have no problem with that but nothing is done with it. Literally all of her characterization comes from Fred and any major development with her also comes from Fred. Season one her is pining for his affections relentlessly to the point that is seems kinda ridiculous. Even when they try and have Daphne “give up” on him she doesn’t even really do that. She’s just more inward about her feelings. I can’t even think of anything else to say about her because everything about her is just “SHE IS INTO FRED” in big red letters all over the story. I will mention that she is kinda sexualized in this show but it isn’t all that extreme. It’s not exactly illegal for a sixteen year old girl to wear bikinis (that she wears to get Fred’s attention of course). She did pull the teenager wearing lingire way before Riverdale did so props I guess (not really I still don’t understand the point).

It’s disappointing because Daphne is such a charming and lovable character in every show she’s in. Yet in MI she’s blown down to Fred’s arm candy and even when they promise to give her a character beyond that they really don’t. She falls back into the same relationship dynamic with him despite the supposed character growth.

MI Velma is given the backwards character arc of being the victim in an emotionally detached relationship. And it always confuses me because it’s obvious she had no interest in who Shaggy is because she wanted nothing to do with his life and kept trying to change him. Ironically she was trying to turn him into her arm candy and somehow convinced herself that he was the bad guy for not wanting to be that. The show wants you to feel bad for her because a boy chose a dog over her - but that isn’t even what happens! He states that he really isn’t ready for the kind of relationship Velma wants with him and that is painted as him choosing his dog. She holds that over him and Scooby’s heads for the rest of the show and I still don’t feel bad for her because she literally tried to force him to get rid of his dialogue quirk through physical harm. And he felt bad about it until the end of the episode????

When she isn’t abusing one of her best friends she’s usually talking down to all three of them because she’s perfectly aware that she’s smarter than them. Yet she’s the one who gets the most interesting story. Working for Mr. E and having an obvious lesbian relationship with Marcie are like actual things that progressed her character. Neither Shag or Daph get this treatment  and they don’t even get any character development to begin with. But every time I finish the show I stay at the same conclusion that I don’t like her all that much. Her redeeming quality could be her brutal sarcasm but that’s a character quirk that doesn’t fix who she is.

Oh Fred, dear little Fred. The one with the actual character arc that remains consistent. His character just got regulated to the dude-bro of your dreams with a trap/ascot obsession??? It’s pretty jarring to watch because Fred from the older shows is like this sweet guy who tries to play the mature one in the group. And then MI took that and threw it away so they could turn him into Captain Oblivious who only notices his feelings for Daphne when she expresses even the smallest bit of disinterest in him (how many relationships have I seen like that irl? Too many). There’s also the unspoken rule that all Fraphne development happens through jealousy (it’s been that way since Zombie Island and is still a regular thing). 

The thing is, there’s so much I could say about Fred yet not really all that much. He gets the most story and arguably the most screen-time. He prioritizes so many things over Daphne’s feelings for him and when they’re dating Daph states that she feels like one of his traps because he’s so controlling. He breaks her heart like it’s no big deal but then we’re supposed to believe he still loves Daph enough to actually stalk her?? The more I think about it the more shocked I get.

Actually, the more I talk about this show the more shocked I get. Mystery Incorporated has always been held to a higher regard as the best Scooby show. But that’s coming from the crowd that didn’t watch everything Scooby-Doo had to offer. 

Aside from the great art and animation, the integration of a greater evil happening behind the scenes, and probably the best score as well, MI’s flaws outweigh all of the good things it brings to the table. I try to give it another chance and I am always disappointed because nothing is accomplished or done with the characters and that’s what I was promised. An overarching plot suggests character development and progression but we don’t get that. Instead we get the butchering of a cast of characters we love and a bogus ending that makes zero sense in the context of anything.

TLDR; MI sucks but I would still watch it everyday for the rest of my life if it meant I never had to watch Scoob! again.

[fablesrose]

Of Kings and Shadows XX

Description: Y/n, a girl who seems to have found her calling. Being a SHIELD agent is like a dream come true. With a friendship starting to form with the Avengers, she’s the Queen of the world! What could go wrong?

Pairings: Avengers x reader, Loki x reader (eventually)

Notes: On Wattpad –> Here

Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Nick, what are we doing here?" Tony was leaning back in his chair of the conference room, not looking amused. "Couldn't you have just stuck it in a file?"

Nick Fury stood at the head of the table, looking at every one of the thirteen people in the room individually. "We've come upon some new information about a new branch of Hydra and its top weapon."

Pietro spun in his chair with a groan, "I thought we had gotten rid of them."

"Well, kinda like a Hydra, if you cut off one head, two more grow back in its place." Fury answered him in a patient tone that everyone knew wasn't going to stay for very long if he kept being interrupted.

"Bold words about an organization with an octopus as its logo," Loki didn't even look up from his book that he didn't walk into the room with.

Clint swiveled to look at him in the corner of the room, "Loki, you gotta let it go."

"I will not!"

Fury began to talk loudly over them to regain their attention, "The organization changed its name to fit it's leader's dress up game, it now goes by The Kingdom, but as far as we are concerned, it is still Hydra."

"You mentioned a weapon?" Vision sat invested in the meeting, unlike most of the others.

"That's what they are calling her, yes."

"How long has she been active?" Bucky spoke quietly, but firmly from his seat.

Nick paused a moment, watching Bucky before he answered, "As far as we can tell at least three years."

"And you're just telling us now?!" Steve straightened in his seat, not happy with the lack of transparency.

"Cool it, Rogers, they didn't have any information other than that she existed." Nat looked up from cleaning her nails.

Steve raised his eyebrows at her, "Oh, and they told you?"

"No."

Pietro started to roll his chair around the room, "Why is this meeting so long?" He dragged out the last word as he rolled around the table.

Loki used his foot to stop him when he approached, "If you don't stop whining I'm gonna make sure repayment is unnecessary."

"I owe you nothing!"

"I'm pretty sure saving your life is the definition of you owing me something."

"Blah!"

"Alright!" Sam yelled, throwing his hands in the air, sick of the bickering. "What kinda powers this chick got?"

Tony held a few fingers to his forehead, "Do I need to call anyone? The spider-kid, King Panther? Ant-dude? The wizards?"

Nick took back control, "Not for now, Tony. We don't know where she is or where she is going to strike next. We know she is enhanced, but no one can figure out exactly if she has powers, and if she does, what they are. For now, we just need you to be aware. She is extremely skilled in infiltration and we have no idea what she looks like, just that she was able to take an extremely valuable target on their behalf at a high profile event we had under surveillance and walk out unnoticed, and unidentified."

"So what you're saying," Rhodes spoke up for the first time, "is that we don't know what she looks like, don't know what she can do, but she's out there. So lookout."

Fury sighed, "Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying."

"So," Bruce looked at Fury, puzzled, "what do you want us to do?"

He shook his head, "I don't know."

There were a few beats of silence, no one knowing what to do.

Thor was leaning against the wall, listening quietly, believe it or not, "And her name?"

Throughout the meeting, Fury had been standing, but at this question, he sat down to answer it, "They're calling her The Queen."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another rich diplomat. Another party. And of course what's a party anymore without either a murder or a kidnapping? The real question is: why not both?

That's how it's been lately. The missions Noxy goes on are usually parties, balls, banquets. She goes in, gets the target alone with baffling ease, and either extracts the information herself right then and there, or delivers him to fellow agents and wipes her hands clean.

I've grown used to what she's doing. No matter how long or hard I tried to break free from the cage I was trapped in, nothing changed. Not even a blink.

So I stopped trying. I watched. I watched as she murdered. I watched as she tortured. I watched as she developed the unimaginable powers that were given. I watched as she became everything I wanted to be. I watched as she became everything I didn't.

I learned how to block out a lot of things that she did. It was manageable to block out one sense, usually sight. It got hard when I had to block two, and it became impossible if it grew to three. Touch was the hardest to stop. It was especially frustrating when that was all I wanted to block out.

The target was some rich dude with high standing in some organization that had some information that Henry needed. The briefings were the one time I was consistently not paying any attention. Once again her sights were placed upon a well dressed, old, white, balding man. The white dress that clung to my figure must have made my body irresistible to well dressed, old, white, balding men because while Noxy skirted just outside his circle, his eyes followed.

Just like all the others, he was caught hook, line, and sinker.

It was simple really, it was almost like there was a formula. Champagne glass half full held delicately by the fingertips. A casual lean against the bar, the leg with the slit slightly out-turned to show an inch or two of more skin.

They all think they're playboys. Just once I can't wait for Noxy to have to think of something different when having to get a well-respected scientist who loves his wife away from the crowd.

With a sultry stare and flirty introductions, a witty remark and the swing of the hips and they're gone from the crowd. His hand was planted at the small of her back, but the farther we strayed from the crowd the farther his hand strayed.

The mansion the banquet thingy was being hosted at was nice. It was nice as all of the other mansions were. He guided Noxy down a long hallway, farther and farther from all the people who could protect him. He eventually came to a large bedroom and opened the door, allowing Noxy to go in first.

I knew what was about to happen, so I started the theme song that I had come up for her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CduA0TULnow 

I think I did it again I made you believe we're more than just friends Oh baby It might seem like a crush But it doesn't mean that I'm serious 'Cause to lose all my senses That is just so typically me Oh baby, baby

He closed the door with a barely noticeable click and began to approach Noxy. Unfortunately for him, she wasn't in the mood.

Oops, I did it again I played with your heart, got lost in the game Oh baby, baby

She picked at her nails for a moment before his eyes grew wide looking at her hands. The reason for his stare was the black pigment that spread from her fingertips up her arms.

Oops, you think I'm in love That I'm sent from above

He started to turn around, but Noxy was too fast for him. The darkness was too fast for him.

I'm not that innocent

A cloud, a shadow, that's what was emitted from her hands that engulfed the target's head and face. It was there for a moment, then it was gone just as quickly. His body collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

You see my problem is this I'm dreaming away Wishing that heroes, they truly exist I cry, watching the days Can't you see I'm a fool in so many ways But to lose all my senses That is just so typically me Oh baby, oh

With the target on her shoulder, she walked away from the bedroom window towards the extraction point, with heels on still, mind you.

Oops, I did it again I played with your heart, got lost in the game Oh baby, baby Oops, you think I'm in love That I'm sent from above I'm not that innocent

The mansion was built in a remote part of the world, surrounded by a forest with at least a hundred miles of privacy. Noxy scaled the uneven terrain easily enough, though she did occasionally hike up her skirt and push off of the trees to give her momentum.

Oops, I did it again to your heart Got lost in this game, oh baby Oops, you think that I'm sent from above I'm not that innocent

I'm not sure how long I've watched her go on these missions. I'm not sure when the last time was when I blinked of my own free will. It feels like a lifetime, but it also feels so close, like only yesterday I could brush my fingers through my hair and if I just pushed a little harder, I could do it again. I've been in here for months, I know, but if those months added up to a year or more, I had no idea.

Oops, I did it again I played with your heart, got lost in the game Oh baby, baby

Somehow, out of all the hundreds of miles of trees and darkness, Noxy came upon a pair of men. They looked to be surveiling. I had no idea who they worked for, but I could tell they were professionals. They saw Noxy too late, which is hilarious since she's wearing a stark white dress and heels with a man on her shoulder. Though she was naturally quiet, there's only so much you can do to muffle that sound. Noxy didn't even have to shift the target from her shoulder when she fired up her shadow hands, but she was not so merciful to these agents. From her fingers flew a beam of darkness. Technically I could barely see it from the combination of speed and the lack of light. The trees above carefully shielded the ground from the shine of the moon and her sister stars.

Oops, you think I'm in love That I'm sent from above

I've seen maybe thousands of beams just like it though. It mimicked the shape of an icicle, though made of shadows or some sort of unidentifiable pitch-black material. The first man fell to the ground with a gaping hole at the base of his throat. The second attempted to draw a weapon but was struggling to get the gun out of its straps. Noxy took the time to walk closer to him until they were no farther than a few feet away. I could see the fear in his eyes, and I'm sure he could see the indifference or maybe even pleasure in hers. She sent a spear of shadow into his stomach. She wanted him to die slowly. Or at least with how much blood was coming from the wound, slower.

He fell to the ground and tried to crawl away backward all the while trying to keep the blood inside his body.

Noxy didn't care anymore for him and left him to suffer in the dirt. She continued on in her mission.

I'm not that innocent

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Avengers were gathered in the common room for some downtime when F.R.I.D.A.Y caught everyone's attention.

"Director Nick Fury is calling."

"Put 'im on," Tony waved his hand as he sat down on the couch.

Fury was projected onto the screen in the common room and he was relieved to see that everyone was already there.

"What's up?"

Fury took a breath as if to prepare himself for what he was about to say, "We have a singular feature to identify The Queen with."

Everyone suddenly became quite serious and sat up in their seats. The more anxious ones scooted closer and were barely on the cushions waiting for him to elaborate.

Pietro was curious, but not too worried, "Only one?"

"Our informant died before we could get any more of a description."

Pietro swallowed but didn't speak again.

Fury had a grave look on his face as he revealed what they had to look for,

"She has black eyes."

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House review 4x29: Brave the Last Dance

In a months late review of a show I watch only on occcasion that i’m doing for some reason: Clyde gets the help of the rest of the Clincoln true to find out if his crush likes him or not: Hyjinks and my smouldring hatred of rusty insues. 

With Ducktales only arriving once a week, me missing reviewing and having a lot of time on my hands i’ve decided to branch out a bit.. maybe not a ton, but ocasionally review other animated shows and seasons. If you have any suggetions or any paticular episode you’d like me to look into, let me know. 

For now I decided to take a look at a show I mostly watch whenever the mood strikes; The Loud House. I do enjoy the series, but it’s a casual love... it also dosen’t help that I can’t go into the tags without finding reams of incest but I digress. I do still like the show and despite it’s ocasoinal terrible episodes and even worse creator, it’s still a solid series and deserves it’s spot as nick’s crown jewel.. I do wish nick would stop abusing everything ELSE in it’s lineup, but that’s a whole other story. The point is I like the show, but i’m not a super fan like I am for say Ducktales or Steven Universe where if there’s something new, i’ll go out and grabs it immediately. But I do like it.  And I do regret not knowing this episode existed for two months because 1) This is a holiday episode and I like to watch those around their holiday and 2) Because dance episodes are my shit. More often than not if i’ts a dance episode of a show, i’ts usually pretty good. Community, Big City Greens, Gravity Falls, She Ra, OK KO, Parks and Recreation.. I really COULD go on indefntiely, but I won’t.  Dance episodes usually bring out the best in a creative team, have adorable romance moments, or huge dramatic attacks and everything in between that just makes them awesome to me. So naturally I watched this as soon as possible and my thoughts.. well as with anything they take some context.    You see this episode follows a character who has kind of a .. problematic history to say the least and thus has kinda gone up and down in my opinon. Early on, as most of you probably recall, the series was more focused on LIncoln, the middle child and only boy in the the titular loud house among 10 sisters. And given it focused mostly on lincoln and his shenanigans and schemes to deal with living iwth 10 other siblings. Now the show has evolved since then and for the better in my honest opinon: now all 11 siblings share the spotlight and whose in an episode depends on whose needed, and thus each of the siblings has their own supporting casts of varying depths and episodes, sometimes with NONE of the other family members playing a signifgiant role. But since the show was originally Lincoln centritc, it also picked up an extra main character outside of the 11 loud kids and their parents: Clyde. Clyde is Lincoln’s best buddy, a glasses wearing awkward kid whose dad’s sometimes smother him but are still loving kind guys, and who often goes over to Lincoln’s to share in the feeling of having siblings outside of his surrogate brother Lincoln obviously. However early on Clyde, like most of the cast in the earlier days, had about three character traits: being an only child, being a dork and having a near pyschotic crush on LIncoln’s oldest sister Lori which gave him crippling nose bleeds.  This would’ve been fine, if a touch annoying, had it just been him fainting and nosebleeding.. but instead, it also causes Clyde to be kind of a dick. He perused her constantly despite her rejecting him for a number of obvious reasons, you know him being a decade younger, her being not intrested, him being more like a second kid brother to her, and of course the fact she has a boyfriend, Bobby. Bobby is the nicest guy around, was a great supporting character, and is probably the reason i’ll get around to watching the casagrandes on occasion. Clyde however treats him like garbage, tried to break them up, and in general was a dick to a guy whose only crime is being in a loving relationship with someone Clyde wants to be with but obviously can’t have. It was annoying with the only time it was tolerable was that episode where Bobby was mistaken for cheating and clyde spent an entire episode preparing to beat bobby up if it was accurate, then upon trying (It wasn’t it was just shenanigans), failed spectacuarlly. Bobby is nothing but nice to him by the way.  So yeah it was hard to root for Clyde for a while but eventually it stopped.. not because they had an episode of Clyde TRYING to get over it, they did it just didn’t resolve it, but it was just dropped.. likely because the writers realized it just wasn’t that funny and with bobby put on a bus to the spinoff, they had no real jokes for it and no one really liked the passing out gag. The fact that series creator Chris Savino got fired for sexually harassment is not lost on me and only makes the gag worse.  But thankfully the character did bounce back and by season 3, even before savino was thankfully fired, they put the joke to bed with Bobby’s exit, and it is thankfully buried deeper than the bunker where htey keep walt disney’s cryogneically perserved body... what you thought he just kept the head? Why woudl they? Disney was rich and belived in the future. He probably wanted his body merged with some sort of mechanical man. But with that gone Clyde thankfully became what he was in his better episodes: an adorable dork, with two loving fathers. Though now he’s not the only kid on the block with two gay dads.. he and Violet should get matching friendship t-shirts reading “Gay dad club”... and i’ll probably draw that at some point but I digress i’m several paragraphs in and I haven’t even gotten to the episode, and I STILL have one last bit of explostion for context that most of you may not need.  That last bit is that LIncoln’s episodes evolved a bit around season 3: instead of JUST being him and Clyde, though that can still happen, Lincoln soon got a circle of buddies, each of whom plays a role in the episode, for reasons i’ll get to in a bit, and part of my reason for reviewing it is to touch on my thoughts about them and my weird love of these episodes. So a breif overview since some of you may not know who they are.  Lincoln himself: The former lead and now one of 10, and a great character I enjoy following a lot even if I miss his Zack Morris-esque fourth wall breaks, minus the smug... no one can out smug or out sexually harass Zack Morris.  Liam: A country boy and the only one of the intial five besides Clincoln I actually like. He’s a kind hearted well meaning country boy and is always kind and friendly, and reminds me a lot of stinky peterson but with a tone down accent.  Zach:... I forget he exists, i’m not even sure this is his actual name. He’s just.. there for some reason and i’m not exactly sure why he’s been kept around now that Stella, who i’ll get to next, has been introduced. But he has goggles and wild hair and that’s.. it. Any of his lines could be said by the others without muchc hange.  Stella: My faviorite out of the group, a frieindly girl who was insitally introduced as Lincoln’s third love intrest.. before pivoting to have her not really WANT to be with any of the guys in an episode that’s really good and instead joining the group. She has more personality and energy than most of them, and thus I do tend to seek out an ep if she’s in it. I do also kinda lowkey ship her with lincoln, but only al ittle. her episodde was about hwo every girl who pays attention to you isn’t into you after all and it’s a lesson kids need. I wish I had it when I was that age honestly. Anyways... finally we have the bane of my existance.  Rusty: I hate this kid. I can’t stand his goofy face, and I love goofy goof so goofy faces are not a problem, obnovious wannabe ladies man smugness, or his basicaly being the useless asshole of the group. LIke Zach, I don’t get why he hasn’t been written out. Hell Zach I at least get as the generic guy they can slott in. Rusty is just terrible. it’s telling that his LITTLE BROTHER, who showed up in one episode as a love intrest for Lucy, is far more popular.. mostly because Rocky’s actually likeable and isn’t a dipstick. I just hate this kid and want this character written off already. He’s the weak link in the group and is SOMEHOW more obnoxious than Clyde during any episode bobby and him were in the same room. And tha’ts an acomplishment! Gah. I could rant about this little shit all day, but i’d prefer to move on.  The episode has a pretty basic setup: Clyde is on the dance comitte, and is a good chef which .. tracks. I do think h’es cooked before and his love of Dessert Storm, a in-series cooking show that the Loud’s love too, has been documented in one or two episodes and cooking does fit his personality: he’s a detail orinted kid, he has parents who have lots of money to spend and have been established to like coooking fancy themsevles, it makes sense he’d pick it up. But it’s the Valentine’s Dance and Clyde has a crush on Emma, one of the girls on the comittee. His friends pick up on this and stellas has an adorable “awww” type grin while the boys all have smug shit eating grins but are all willing to help. It’s part of why I like these eps: the 5 really seem to have a nice rapport and be genuine friends.. friends who all fought over a girl once, except Stella who was said girl, but friends nonetheless, who eventually put said friendship over that. Even if one of them’s a block of wood and the other the bane of my existance, you still get the sense their valued.  It’s from there the episode Segues into the standard loud house formula, which is one of the resaons I do only watch the show ocasionally: while the episodes can varry wildly, some just fall into a formula of “character or characters do various things in a row until they realize they were wrong or something”. Now the show HAS had good episodes out of this formula, L is for Love and Racing Hearts, and yes i’m a saluna shipper but the eps are good beyond that, but sometimes it can feel like padding. This is one of those times. Each of the squad tries something to help Clyde find out if Emma likes him or not, he’s too nervous to take it as a sign he should go for it, rinse and repeat 3 more times before the plot finally moves on. This is also why I went into detail on the Clinclon Crew: each one, except Zach because the boy is made of paper mache remember, gets a chance to try helping him out.  Rusty: As if you needed proof I wasn’t overreacting, Rusty SPIES ON EMMA WITH BINOCULARS for the plan.. he did not need them, and the joke dosen’t land like it should because Rusty sucks. And his plan is to drench Clyde with cologne and if she comments on it, she likes him. I do however like the joke about how clyde thinks Rusty’s cousin that gave him the plan, proving Dumbass is a genetic trait, had a girlfriend at a camp who probably dosen’t exist.  Liam: Liam’s plan is a bit funnier... not because of the plan which like the previous one not really that great but hey their 11 or 12 i’ll give all of them but rusty some slack, because he sucks. But the Clincoln Crew which i’m calling them now so there, head to the movies and Liam says ,d ue to a similar thing happening with his chickens, if a girl sits next to you, they like you back. It’s not entirelys ound but the chicken thing got a small chuckle out of me and LIam does have some odd charisma.  Lincoln: And Zach but i’m not convinced they didn’t just swap in a manquin with a tape recorder jammed inside for him for this or any scene. Lincoln uses one of lori’s magazines with some sounder, if flimsy but beliviebly for kids, logic: ask her for a pen: if it’s a regular one they have no intrest, it’s it’s fancy she likes you. like the other two it happens.. but in a resonable bit of writing like the last two Clyde isn’t sure due to a combinaton of insecurity and these plans being as flimsy as the paper they made Zach out of .  Stella: Whose grandma can read tea leaves and actually predicted her moving to royal woods, because stella is great. Stella is also damn good at it as she does predict Clyde at the dance, in a chef’s hat for reasons that i’ll get to in a moment. dancing with a girl. Tha’s lal he needs and this bit finally ends. As I said it’s the tedium. While what happens NEXT is intresting enough, you really didn’t need all of those or have enough jokes and were clearly padding guys, come on.  So Clyde, and crew, stages an elaborate frencha nd boat related danceposal.. that fails. As you probably figured. Emma is flattered, but shoots Clyde down gently. Clyde reacts as you’d expect: by fleeing the scnee as fast as possible, quitting the dance comitte off screen, and planning never to return, which while overracting, DOES feel realistic.  Clyde goes home for some mopey solo time and becomes a tad insufferable, ignoring his friend’’s texts and getting upset as his dad for watching the movie that clearly inpsiried his dance invite plan, depsite it being their valentine’s day he’s interrupting. It woudl’ve played better if he still got upset but iddn’t you know, run in front of their tv and call them out on something they coudln’t of known as he didn’t give them details.  Thankfully the mild annoyance is b roken when, after ignoring his friends texts, which granted for Rusty and Liam is probably normal as liam probably talks about drywall and Rusty uses the word dawg and unlike Lincoln dosen’t seem genuinely worried after Clyde, you know, got rejected in front of a large crowd.  He’s broken out of his mopey solo time by a call: the person he passed cake duty off to screwed up, and after some urging from Cheryl, the principal’s secretary who Clyde knows personally from past episodes and is head of the dance comitte and an utter delight this episode, Clyde does what any normal kid would do: dawn a flimsy disguise and sneak in there. We also get a cameo from Girl Jordan who hasn’t shown up in forever so that’s nice.  Clyde fixes the cake, and Cheryl compares his mustache to a dead caterpillar which was gold, and tries to sneak out only for Chole, another girl, to notice him and stop him. You can probably tell where this is going: She , rather than mock him finds what he did romantic, she also likes dessert storm, he asks her to dance, puts his chef hat back on because time loop,a nd the two dance and even have an adorable bit where they throw their hats to each other. Also Rusty is dressed like cupid and my eyes boil out of my head as the episode ends.  Overall it’s not a bad ep. Had a suprising amount to say about it, but overall it’s a decent, cute ep for valentine’s day with a nice amount of friendship and some nice character stuff for Clyde and plenty of gay dad’s and Cheryl. Overall not a bad way to spend 11 minutes in this ongoing apocalypse. Coming Soon: I feel like quacking so I think Iw ill.. take a look at an episode of quack pack that’s donsy related.  Until next time courage. 

[blackjack-15]

Curtain Call — Thoughts on: The Final Scene (FIN)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are notspoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: FIN, mention of SSH, ASH, non-spoiler mention of STFD, CAR, RAN, TRN, DED, GTH, SPY, LIE.

The Intro:

The Final Scene is the fifth game in the Nancy Drew series and the game that caps off the Classic Nancy Drew games (according to my own very non-scientific divisions of the Nancy Drew games), as the games that follow are bigger, longer, and more complex — not to mention they start tying themselves together, opening up Nancy’s world, and at least make some use of her “amateur detective” title rather than always being set up for the mysteries, or having her stumble upon them while on vacation.

For full disclosure, I will start off here by saying FIN is one of my least favorite games in the Nancy Drew franchise for one big and a few small things, so I’m going to attempt to be as measured as possible, addressing its good points just as much as the bad points.

From here on out, Nancy Drew games grow more but they also grow more unevenly, making jumps in some areas and failing in others. FIN is slightly uneven, but it’s still more balanced than the games that are to come, and I quite enjoy that balance in this game.

FIN is also the game where Her Interactive realized that just having Bess, George, and Ned (apart from one or two throw-away characters) as phone contacts was going to become dull very quickly. Eustacia is an attempt at bridging that gap, but it’s the next game that actually solves the problem, opening up the Nancy Drew world with the addition of the two most enduring (and endearing) phone contacts of the series – Frank and Joe Hardy.

Complexity-wise, FIN is closer to STFD and MHM, taking a step back from TRT’s complexity and richness of location and character. It’s the last “small” game, as far as location goes (excepting a few later games like CAR, RAN, and DED), with the tiny theater feeling almost claustrophobic.

This feeling is compounded with the lack of puzzles in the game; it’s mostly a “sleuthing” type game like STFD, but without the variety of sleuthing locations and continually refreshed locations that other heavy sleuthing games like GTH or LIE have.

While the Royal Palladium Theater is as important to the story as the Mansion from MHM or the Tower in TRT, it just doesn’t have the atmospheric presence that the other two locations do. The theater is gorgeous, but it doesn’t feel like a character.

This is the last “small” game for Nancy in-world as well — between the moderate publicity she got at the end of TRT and the enormous amounts of publicity she gets for this game, Nancy has moved up in the world. She’s still an amateur, but she’s no longer a small-town or anonymous amateur detective.

FIN attempts to be a game that rides on high drama, and it largely succeeds — except for the fact that a few large logical gaps in the game cut the tension and the drama, leaving the player happy but always wanting it to be a little bit More.

The Title:

As a title, “The Final Scene” is a decent one — we’re dealing with the final “scene” of the theater, the final “scene” of the three-day deadline, the possible “final scene” of Maya’s life — and the final scene of the culprit’s time at the theater, as well. It’s a cinematic title, fitting for such a cinematic theater.

That does lead us to the question — what “final scene” is the title talking about?

As a kid playing this game with my sister, I probably would have said that the “final scene” is that climactic moment when the police are clearing the theater and Nancy has to hide, where she finds Maya, and where Joseph confronts Nancy, raving about the theater and his ultimate, insane plan.

As an adult, nearly two decades later, the phrase “final scene” has a bit more of a somber tone. Although this issue will be addressed fully in the “fix” section, it should be mentioned here. 

Joseph is in the “final scene” of his life, via his age, and has determined that this — this three-day madcap abduction, featuring a clueless cast of know-nothing know-it-alls and a hapless demolition crew armed with a 2,400 pound closing curtain — will be the ultimate Final Scene.

Viewed that way, the title is just as effective, but it’s a somber title — matched in tone by “Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon” and “The Silent Spy”. This isn’t a problem in and of itself, but it is a problem that the tone of the game doesn’t back it up. 

Ultimately, it feels like “The Final Scene” was picked because they were like “oh, theater pun! Tip the intern .05c for that, Timothy!” rather than “this fits in many different ways, providing nuance to new and returning players”.

The Mystery:

When the game starts, much like TRT, there is no mystery — but that doesn’t stay true for more than 20 seconds. Nancy’s visiting her (and Bess’ and George’s) friend from high school, Maya Nguyen, in St. Louis, where Maya is interviewing cinematic “hunk” Brady Armstrong.

When Maya goes into Brady’s dressing room, however, she screams — and when Nancy gets in the room, she’s gone. Maya’s disappearance is punctuated by a threatening call from her kidnapper (abductor? Maya’s too old to be kidnapped, per se) telling Nancy she has to stop the demolition of the theater or else Maya will be killed when they knock it down.

From there, Nancy abandons any of the usual whispers of tact that she employs and straight up yells at the other people in the theater (and the police outside), trying to find Maya through what seems to be sheer intimidation tactics rather than Actual Sleuthing, desperate to beat the 3 day deadline.

It’s not easy, what with no one but the old caretaker of the theater, Joseph, cooperating with Nancy — not even the police, despite a witness to the kidnapping testifying of, well, the kidnapping. Nancy uses her smarts and a bit of luck (along with a lot of snooping) to solve the question of who kidnapped Maya and what every one of the people within the theater were hiding.

As a mystery, FIN is gripping — a personal stake, a strict mission, and four people hiding things explicitly from Nancy, rather than each other. It’s a shame that the mystery is a little undercut by a scarily easy-to-figure-out culprit — and the mystery that their state of mind brings up.

The Suspects:

           Joseph Hughes takes care of the Royal Palladium Theater and has for decades. He’s the first suspect that Nancy meets — over the phone, right after Maya’s kidnapping — and is the first to know about the kidnapping.

Joseph is an obvious culprit, but obvious in a different way from any of the previous games. In the past, it’s about the 1/3 mark that the culprit becomes stunningly obvious, and it gets a little old watching Nancy treat others as if they’re equally (or more!) suspicious. Joseph, however, is not only obvious as the culprit immediately — he’s the closest when it happens, for one thing — but he’s also obviously insane.

There are several culprits where the first reaction might be “wow, they’re crazy”, but Joseph is obviously suffering from clinical dementia, exacerbated by the looming fate of the theater and losing the thing most familiar to him. It’s not that I expect this fact to be treated with delicacy in an early Nancy Drew game — or the early 2000s as a whole — but the fact that it’s not even touched is concerning to me.

This isn’t really touched on in the fandom as well. Joseph is Obviously Unwell and needs medical help and care for his condition, but even the ending of the game just plays it off as “wow, what a crazy culprit, good thing Nancy caught him” instead of “wow, this Ill man really needs help and it’s tragic that his dementia led him to endanger multiple lives”.

He’s an uncomfortable suspect and an even more uncomfortable culprit, and he really just bothers me. A lot of people class him as their favorite “sympathetic” suspect, but the question of how much “Joseph” there even is left is both one that’s incredibly important and incredibly overlooked.

It makes rating Joseph as a suspect hard, and even harder to rank him as a culprit. Other than the shortness of this game and its lack of puzzles, Joseph is probably the biggest reason I don’t replay FIN. He makes the game significantly less fun, and is alternately disturbing and pitiable.

He’s also the one that Her Interactive decided to “trick” the fanbase with, as he follows the “early cleared suspect who becomes Nancy’s helper” trope…with the exception of being cleared even a little bit.

I appreciate the attempt at subverting the formula — though since the formula started in the 3rd game, subverting it by the 5th might feel a bit early — as it shows a willingness to come up with new and fun ideas. I just wish it worked here.

Simone Muller is Brady Armstrong’s hard-liner agent, running every part of his life and fame — and doing, by all accounts, a fantastic job with it, as he’s the hottest rising star in Hollywood. She’s catty, awesome, practical, and cunning; she’s an unflappable woman willing to do what it takes — teenage detectives crawling out of her wardrobe or not.

Simone doesn’t really do anything the whole game other than be incredibly entertaining with her fake names for Nancy (Fancy Jackson is so disco, but she could totally work it) and order a funeral wreath for Maya — which, macabre or not, is a total power move.

Simone might not be the most moral person (though she’s hands down the most moral suspect in FIN) in the world, but she knows what she wants and gets it, and is one of the two active suspects (as Brady and Nick are passive), which already makes her more likable.

She also is the first to bring up “Samantha Quick” (as a stage name for Nancy), marking the first (but certainly not the last) time we’ll hear of the superspy. 

Simone is the most moral and innocent of the bunch, and is (not coincidentally) the only one with a love life — a very successful-seeming love life, if her PDA notes are anything to go by.

She is also in all probability a Domme. So that kind of rocks too.

As a suspect, Simone is a decent one, seeming shifty without hiding something, and ultimately self-interested. She couldn’t have been the culprit, as she had no need to make Brady more famous in connection with the theater, but she was more than willing to spin a bad situation to her gain.

Simone is entertaining, competent, and even has a few character traits (her willingness to take a chance on making a hot dog seller into a star; her relationship with Georgie-Bear, etc.) that make her delightfully 3D.

Brady Armstrong (Thompson) is a hot-dog-seller-cum-actor discovered a few years ago by Simone and (secretly) the descendent of the theater’s owner, JJ Thompson, setting him up as the legal heir of the theater and the person behind the demolition.

Brady is, without exaggeration, an idiot, whose “big idea” for the land that the Royal Palladium is on is “Planet Tinseltown”, an idea that he’s very proud of for its originality, even though it’s not an original idea at all. 

He’s alternately sheltered and taken advantage of by Simone, but you can’t really feel sorry for him, because he’s an enormous douchebag who wants Maya out of the way because she discovered the truth about him.

As a suspect, Brady is decent; secret past in relation to the theater, surprisingly unscrupulous for his general personality, and out to silence Maya. It’s nice that he is kind of the villain in that he refuses to stop the demolition even while lives are at stake, but that he’s not an over-the-top cackling maniac.

One of the best decisions Her Interactive made in this game was to have their suspects each be guilty of something Bad but not the ultimate Crime, rather than having them like Rose in MHM who is so innocent as to be boring. Brady’s a good example of that, and it saves him from the garbage heap.

Brady ultimately is a dumb bro who thinks that everyone wants his dick, but he’s just dumb enough to think himself intelligent, which is a dangerous trait that leads perfectly into his actual villainy.  He very much could have been the big bad, but it works out better for his character that he’s not.

Nicholas Falcone is the founder of the incredibly niche organization “Humans Against the Destruction of Illustrious Theaters”, named specifically to spell “HADIT”, who’s still moping about his grandmother’s past with the Royal Palladium and has, according to police records, actually kidnapped someone in order to stop a demolition before.

Though a fan-favorite, I never really understood the pull to Nick; he’s just the “crunchy hippie” type douche to Brady’s “slimy prep” douche — he’s still a douchebag, all things considered. Maybe it’s the facial hair, which I believe is the first for the attempted “scruffy yet handsome character”, and the second overall (after Jacques in the last game). 

Maybe it’s the tragic-yet-legally-questionable backstory, inspiring sympathy in all of us that were young enough to see the matter as black and white. 

Maybe it’s the horribly cringe-y slang even for 2001.

The ‘happening’ slang is a weird point with Nick; while it’s probably intended to make him seem ‘hip’ and ‘with it’, it has the opposite effect when Nancy, a recent high school graduate (and thus younger than Nick) has no idea what he’s saying. 

Sure, Nancy’s a square who doesn’t really use slang herself (though that’s relaxed a bit more as the series went on), but she went to high school. She’s gonna recognize modern slang, as observant as she is — which leads the player to the only conclusion possible: Nick is using horrifically outdated slang and trying to make Nancy seem even less ‘hip’ than she is already.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, buckaroo.

It turns out that Nick’s grown up at the theater, so Joseph refuses to tell him to leave despite the fact that Nick has literally kidnapped someone to stop a theater demolition before (which honestly should be a huge clue who the villain is). 

He’s harboring a grudge against JJ Thompson for never compensating his great-grandmother Louisa Falcone. While it’s a douche move, Nick has no legal right to the theater (see below), so it does come off a bit “…huh?” at the end for him.

As a suspect, Nick is one of those suspect-of-the-times characters that made a lot of sense back in the early 2000s and hasn’t made any sense…since. While he has his motivation in his grandmother being slighted, he’s mostly just there to spout slogans and sound ‘radical’. In 2019, he’d be a #keyboardwarrior, competing with Simone on Twitter and Instagram over who could “get the word out” most effectively. #corporategenerica #cancelcharmstrong

Whether Nick works as a character largely rests on if you can overlook the unsigned contract and if you find his spiel charming or annoying. He’s a time capsule of turn-of-the-century Seattle activism, and Her Interactive nails that…but it’s just not interesting to me.

The Favorites:

While this game is one of my least favorite among the entire series, it has plenty of high points that are incredibly enjoyable.

The design of the theater and the secret rooms is fabulous. The Palladium Theater is based off an incredibly sumptuous real life theater, and the animators went to great lengths to represent it accurately. The music, the colors, — these are great, and go a long way to making the game great to look at. The fun little knock-off posters in the lobby are a great example of this.

Nancy yelling that RUBBER IS SHOCK PROOF when absolutely nobody asked is a fun little moment that I look forward to, as well as Simone’s hilariously over-the-top funeral wreath. 

The fact that the flower people were just like “hmm a Quirky Message” and not like “…call the cops” just shows that absolutely no one other than Nancy (and even not even Nancy sometimes) is taking this kidnapping seriously.

Eustacia Andropov is a bright, shining star in this game and remains, almost 30 games later, one of the most memorable phone characters that the series has ever produced. Her morbid sense of humor, dry tone, and absolutely awesome voice actor all combine to create a character that is possibly my favorite in the entire game, and definitely sits in the Phone Contact hall of fame.

There’s not really very many puzzles in FIN, so The Amazing Monty might take the title of my favorite by default. 

The best overall moment of the game is Nancy being like “gross used gum” and immediately putting it into her inventory. Disgusting, Nance.

Though Nancy’s pretending to be Brenda Carlton is a high point as well.

The Un-Favorites:

My least favorite part of this game is that Nancy, in order to not make the game last five minutes, doesn’t ever consider Joseph a suspect, and instead confides everything in him, even setting him up to be in charge of giving evidence to the police. 

When that evidence disappears, she doesn’t suspect him for a moment — that alone kills the game, and it’s the worst feeling in the world when you have to consider that the game makes Nancy stupid in order to have a game at all.

The Falcone part of the game is another part that is my least favorite — and not just because no one pronounces “Falcone” correctly (darn you, Seattle-based Her Interactive!). 

Louisa Falcone’s name is on the contract, yes, but she never signed it. That means that the contract isn’t legally binding…and also means that Nick has no right to the theater, either. The fact that Her Interactive didn’t even bother to fact check this does sour the whole storyline for me, which is unfortunate.

The last “unfavorite” in this game is how empty the theater feels. The lack of more than a dozen puzzles and far too few things to click on, look at, or investigate (in some ways, the opposite problem that STFD had) makes the game feel even shorter than it always is, and takes away some of the enjoyment I have (and the potential to have) of the Theater as a Character.

I don’t really have a least favorite puzzle in this game — though if I had to choose, it’s the endless identical keys at the very high-stress ending sequence. My absolute least favorite moment in the game is when Joseph’s giant head appears over the trapdoor and Nancy’s forced to stare at it for upwards of 30 agonizing seconds.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Final Scene?

The biggest single, contained thing to fix would be The Joseph Problem. Not only does he make it over distances that a sprinter would struggle with in too small a time to even teleport, but there’s also the whole dementia thing, along with Nancy blindly trusting him and never treating him as a suspect.

Besides the issue of Joseph’s apparent Instant Teleportation, which is a common problem in Nancy Drew video games, the most game-breaking problem with Joseph is that Nancy trusts him implicitly, refusing to consider him a suspect even a little bit — even though he tells her to— instead choosing to make him her partner in…solving crime?

A simple fix would to be to make her not do that, but I’d actually prefer to change as little as possible about these games in the fix section, so instead I propose this fix: make it explicitly in-character for Nancy to do this.

It would make sense for Nancy to be weak to people of a certain age; her father, given the timeline, would have to be slightly older (a young lawyer during Alexei’s trial as a 20 year old), Hannah is elderly as well, her Aunt Eloise — the backing for this in-story is fairly strong. 

So if Joseph reminds her of these older people in her life (and make her say this at least three times during the game), it then makes sense as to why Joseph would be above suspicion.

Sure, the player would still have the ability to see her trust of Joseph as a mistake, and it might even be a little frustrating still, but then at least the reason isn’t “Nancy is an Idiot”, it’s “Nancy’s making a mistake” — and a mistake justified in-story.

The Final Scene fails as a game — literally, as a game— because of its lack of, well, detecting and puzzles and other game mechanic stuff. Sure, it’s a snoop-heavy (versus puzzle-heavy) game, but there’s not even much snooping to do. Play a few mini games, talk on the phone, and you’re at the culprit confrontation before you expect it. 

Alternately, miss noticing one tiny thing and you’re stuck on Day 1 without the ability to progress.

Obviously, including a few more puzzles is a great way to help this problem (Houdini was involved with the theater! Why aren’t there more secret locks and false walls and stuff?), but that should be added along with making the progression from day to day smoother.

Give Nancy a concrete goal that establishes itself at the beginning of the day, and prevent it from being able to happen until a few other tasks/conversations have happened as well. Making this obvious prevents the sense of time/urgency from being lost while Nancy wanders the theater playing mini-games.

Giving the police more of a presence would be a good idea as well. Nancy, despite lack of visual confirmation of a kidnapping, still qualifies under the law — then and now — as a witness of a kidnapping.

The police coming in on the second day didn’t ruin the plot or shut down the theater; a few detectives coming in on Day 1 wouldn’t do it either. It’s pointless for the police not to have a presence — it’s not like Nancy’s not gonna investigate anyway. 

A junior police detective at the very least to add in as a “bonus character” that Nancy can interrogate/work with would be a good compromise. I know an extra character is a big “add”, but it’s better than hours with faceless police jabbering.

The Final Change (geddit?) is more thematic than concrete, and thus wouldn’t take more than a line of dialogue here and there. 

“Rot” is present, thematically speaking, throughout the first part of the game: the theater is falling apart, there’s the “rotten” person who kidnapped Maya; Joseph’s brain is succumbing to age-driven “rot”; Nancy even calls out Brady as a “rotten fraud” (which he is). Simone represents the “rot of Hollywood”, and Nicholas, besides being a “rotten” person (kidnapping), is also stuck in the past of the theater — a past rotting away.

Bringing this to the forefront, reinforcing it through dialogue and Nancy’s own musings (or to Bess/George/Ned, working their characterization), would go a long way to thematically tying these character to this game. Making the characters and game inseparable is the mark of a successful Nancy Drew game — think GTH — and FIN is in sore need of it.

[synthient]

Could you elaborate on what you mean about Death T re stanning and fairness? It sounds interesting and I'd love to hear about it if you don't mind sharing.

ajhfakj hoo boy. Okay.

So some time around the summer before last (judging by the point where the first baffled and frustrated readmores start showing up on this blog), I read Death-T. It made me feel…some kind of way. An…unpleasant kind of way.

Here’s the thing about me: I can’t just let myself have an emotional reaction to a piece of fiction. I have to, first, pick apart my own emotions to figure out why I had that reaction, and second, pick apart the story to figure out how it works and how it made me feel that way.

On the Feelings Front, I’ve isolated two main causes:

1. I have a brain that Needs Things To Be Fair. That doesn’t mean I can’t handle unfairness in a piece of fiction. Unfairness creates conflict, and conflict is what makes for good storytelling. But it does mean that I need the story to be aware of its own unfairness. I need the unfairness to be the point. Otherwise I start vibrating at high speeds and shaking my fist at clouds.

2. I’m a Kaiba stan. I accidentally got emotionally attached to the Funny Card Game Boy from the Funny Card Game Show. 

There’s the feelings part. That leaves the “picking apart the story” side of the equation. And I’ve been trying to do that in nice punchy little one-or-two-paragraph text posts for the past year or so, but I don’t think I’ve ever really done the argument justice that way. So I guess that leaves only one option: writing a giant wordvomit essay on Yugioh (1996-2004).

Why This Is A Death-T Hateblog: The Masterpost

An important note: I like being able to back up my thoughts with Evidence From The Text, but I’m specifically working off the (Viz translated) manga. You can read Cards with Teeth here, Capumon here, and Death-T starting here if you want to check any of my facts or draw your own conclusions. Keep in mind that the Toei anime made pretty huge changes to the s0 Kaiba storyline, and the DM anime skipped most of it entirely–if you’re more familiar with those continuities, there’re some major differences in the manga.

(Also this thing probably reads better on desktop. I think the formatting got screwed up on mobile)

How We Got Here

Before we can actually dig into Death-T, we need to start at the very beginning (♫a very good place to start♫). So that means taking a look at “The Cards with Teeth (Part 1)” and “The Cards with Teeth (Part 2).”

For its first 8 chapters, the Yugioh manga chugs blissfully (if repetitively) along with an episodic, conflict-of-the-week formula. No overarching plot. Next to no sense of continuity. No trading cards in sight.

Then this asshole shows up. 

His name is Seto Kaiba (or “Kaiba,” at least–not sure if this is just a Viz thing, but my copy of CwT never mentions his given name). Not that he bears a whole lot of resemblance to the Seto Kaiba we later come to know and love (and/or love to hate).

Almost none of his most defining traits are there yet. There’s no mention of Mokuba, no mention of Kaibacorp, no indicationthat he’s especially rich (besides the fact that he’s carrying around a wholebriefcase of trading cards), no reason to believe he has a specific obsession with Blue Eyes (he just thinks it’s a strong card and it’d help him win tournaments), and no sign of any special hacking/strategy/hand-to-hand-combat/etc. skills (the kid is hilariously incompetent). 

This dude was never supposed to be a recurring character, and it shows.

But anyway, let’s run through the basic series of events:

- Kaiba wanders into the game shop looking forbooster packs. Yugi recognizes him as an acquaintance from school (not as a famous kid CEO, and not as a recent transfer student)

- Kaiba happens to notice the Blue Eyes card lying out onGrandpa’s counter (in this version of events, he hasn’t been stealing rare cards for months before this, he didn’t creep on Yugi’s conversation and followhim home, he had no idea going in that the Blue Eyes was there, and he didn’t already have the other three)

- He offers to trade all the cards in his briefcasefor the Blue Eyes (although he doesn’t tell Grandpa to name his price—again,the millionaire CEO element isn’t a thing yet)

- Grandpa refuses, so the next day Kaiba comes up with alaughably badly thought-out plan to steal the card

- Shockingly, Yugi notices that the “color copy from the catalog” isn’t the real deal. He gently tries to confront Kaiba about it in private

- Kaiba (without showing an ounce of the cool head you’d think you’d need to take over and run a company) panics, starts stammering and unconvincingly denying it, and then smacks Yugi with his briefcase

Annnd then Part 2 plays out like a standard s0 chapter.

“Yami Yugi” takes over. They play a shadow game. Kaiba cheats by slipping the stolen Blue Eyes out of his sleeve (Atem’s like “That’s my Grandpa’s card!” and Kaiba straight up goes “Whaaat, nooo, that’s my card that I, uh, found on the street just now.” A teen genius criminal mastermind, everybody). The shadow magic gives him a spritz from its metaphorical Karmic Cat-Training Spray Bottle and makes his Blue Eyes dissolve (I’d like to think that was Kisara going “I’m not mad, just disappointed,” and Memory World tries to retroactively make that connection, but it’s pretty abundantly clear that nothing about this series was planned that far ahead). He loses. Yadda yadda yadda.

And then Atem goes in for the penalty game.

To recap: 

Some random 10th grader from Yugi’s school stole a trading card, hit someone, and was generally kind of a jerk. As punishment, he was trapped in a hyper-realistic illusion of being ripped apart and slaughtered by half a dozen monsters at once.

Y…ay…?

Let’s Stop and Reflect for a Sec

In theory, I shouldn’t be that much more upset about Cards with Teeth than I am about any other part of s0, right? It’s not like the manga framed it as horrific and wrong when Atem set off an explosion in some teenage bully’s face a couple chapters ago. Giving us the vicarious pleasure of punishing our bullies in over-the-top, Carrie-style ways without actually exploring any of the consequences is, like, the early manga’s whole thing.

But even taking into account the fact that I already had an attachment to this Nasty Bowl Cut Boy thanks to the anime, I do actually think that there are at least two factors that set CwT apart.

The first is that Atem’s karmic punishments are usually…well, karmic. If he inflicts physical harm on someone, it’s because they already inflicted or tried to inflict roughly the same amount of harm on Yugi & co. If the crime was relatively minor, then he only gives out a minor punishment–like, say, when the homeroom teacher was Just Kinda Mean, all he did was allow the class to see her without her makeup on (…setting aside the Let’s Get Into Gender Politics-ness of that chapter).

There’s even a few cases where you could argue that the punishment is too light to fit the crime. Ushio beat Jonouchi and Honda half to death and tried to murder Yugi with a knife, and all he got was this lousy t-shirt an illusion that made the trash on the ground look like money.

In another chapter, the villain of the week tried to rape Anzu, and the only punishment he faced was having his side business exposed as a scam (Let’s Get Into Gender Politics).

Yet in CwT, we see one of the most harmless villains in all of s0 (no prolonged beatings or attempted murder? unheard of!) receive what’s arguably the most horrifying penalty game in the whole manga. At least when that guy got set on fire, it was over fast.

And that brings us to factor number two: Kaiba is the first penalty game victim in s0 who comes back. 

Capumon: Gotta Catch ‘em All!

Well, technically he doesn’t come back in person, at first. Someone else shows up to fight in his name.

Oh hey Mokie. How’s it going?

Rather understandably (imo), Mokuba wants the guy who tortured his brother last week to face some actual consequences for it.

Now here’s an interesting opportunity that the manga has set up for itself. Is it going to dig deep into the balance between defending yourself vs lashing out and causing undue harm? Is it going to remind us that most of the penalty game victims so far, whatever their crimes,have been children? Is it going to demonstrate that when you take out your anger on someone, you don’t just hurt your immediate target, but their loved ones as well?

Nah, who am I kidding.  

Hurting or inconveniencing the Good Guys in any way is Bad. Anything the Good Guys do is Good and Justified. Using magic to stick an already-hurting eleven-year-old in his own personalized hell? Good and Justified.

Before he’s shoved screaming into the Giant Vending Machine Capsule Where Bad And Naughty Elementary Schoolers Go To Atone For Their Crimes, Mokuba mentions that the other penalty game he heard about “made my brother go crazy!”

He also drops a hint of things to come with all the subtlety of an anvil. So I guess by this point, the numbers had come in and the card game chapter had proved unexpectedly popular enough that a sequel was in the works.

Death-Twink? Death-Tastic?Death-Two: Electric Boogaloo?

I’ve been pretty hard on Cards with Teeth and Capsule Monsters Chess so far. But you want to know the truth?

On their own, they aren’t necessarily that bad.

What really matters in a story isn’t the literal events: it’s how those events are framed. At the moment, we’re only midway through an incomplete storyline. Maybe we’re supposed to be horrified. Maybe we’re supposed to be questioning whether or not the hero is really in the right. It all hangs on what these chapters are building to.

As it turns out–as Mokuba just helpfully clued us in on–they were building to Death-T.

And that’s where the shit hits the fan.

Over a dozen chapters after we first met Kaiba, a whole bunch of completely-unforeshadowed facts about him are suddenly dumped on us all at once. He’s rich! The kind of rich that allows for limo rides, a giant mansion, and flouncing around in a fur-lined cape like feudal European nobility! And he’s the president of a company, even though “Whaa?!! But he’s still in high school!” Speaking of which, apparently Kaiba “hasn’t been at school recently.”

The Death-T arc opens with Yugi and Jonouchi attending the world’s most awkward sleepover–the host never shows up, and they don’t even get to paint each others’ nails or watch movies. Also Mokuba tries to murder them in the night, but you know what? If someone tortured my brother, “made him go crazy,” and left him huddled in the house feverishly working on a bizarre project and refusing to go to school for the next few weeks, I’d probably poison them too.

The morning after the sleepover, we learn another new Kaiba Fact…

Ever since the Experience of Death happened, he’s been having horrible recurring PTSD nightmares about it. As you do. When you get tortured.

(This is why, even though I know intellectually that it’s Not That Deep and people arejust having fun, I still get a little skeeved out when I see jokes about howDeath-T happened “just” because Kaiba was that mad about losing a card game or “just”because he had a crush on Yugi and he didn’t know how to deal with it. I’malways internally like “Nnno, I’m pretty sure it was the torture?”)

So far we’ve been shown in pretty brutal detail that our “hero” psychologically broke a fifteen-year-old for no good reason. The manga’s going to have its work cut out for it if it really wants to do a convincing redemption arc for its protagonist. And there’s no way it could possibly try to spin that random act of torture as an acceptable thing, right?

…right?

Crime and Punishment

That’s one of my first big problems with Death-T: to me, it reads as a way of trying to retroactively justify the Experience of Death.

That seems to be the purpose of suddenly giving Kaiba all this wealth and power that was never hinted at in Cards with Teeth. See, he wasn’t just some random high school kid who had the bad luck of crossing someone with magic powers; he was (however improbable that is, as the story lampshades) a high school-aged CEO. He’s so ludicrously powerful that he can torture an old man in front of a live audience and get away with it. Punching up looks a lot better than punching down, doesn’t it?

And you can’t really fault the hero for torturing someone evil, can you? Kaiba used Grandpa’s sanity as a blackmail chip! He ran experiments on human test subjects! He wants to kill Yugi and everyone he loves! Surely a little torture is no worse than he deserved.

There’s only one one problem with that: the Experience of Death happened before Death-T. There’s no way Atem could have known any of this was coming. The audience couldn’t have known it was coming. Takahashi didn’t know. Chronologically speaking, the Experience of Death wasn’t revenge for Death-T. It’s the other way around.

Best Served Cold

So Death-T is a form of eye-for-an-eye vengeance: “Yugi” beat Kaiba at Duel Monsters and tortured him, so now Kaiba’s gonna beat Yugi and torture him, using his own perfect virtual recreation of “Yugi’s” penalty game (oh yeah, that whole “the average person goes insane in about 10 minutes” thing? Kaiba was able to program that detail from personal experience).

But wait! This isn’t really eye-for-an-eye! Kaiba’s going after Yugi’s loved ones, not just Yugi, and that’s worse than what Yugi did to him! And even if it was proportionate, revenge is bad and wrong. That’s how you get endless back-and-forth chains of vengeance and generational blood feuds and stuff. Two wrongs don’t make a right!

And those could all be reasonable points, except…

This entire story is about how great and badass eye-for-an-eye justice is.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take everyone who ever hurt you and make them suffer even worse” is practically the thesis of Season 0. You can’t make something look awesome when the protagonist does it and then turn around and make it seem evil and inexcusable coming from anyone else.

And while Kaiba does wind up targeting Yugi’s friends, that wasn’t part of his original plan. He’s surprised when random people start jumping out of the bleachers/the Kaibacorp employee roster and insisting that they won’t let Yugi do this alone. The writing uses his surprise as proof that he just doesn’t understand The Power of Friendship, but it’s also evidence that his original target was just Yugi.

“If you’re gonna side with my torturer, then you can have the same fate as him, I guess.” It’s not even that far outside the logic Atem’s been using all this time. Just because there’s only one main gang member who personally hurt his friend, that doesn’t mean that Atem won’t rope every random mook who gets in his way into the death game too. (Granted, this doesn’t really apply to Kaiba’s treatment of Grandpa. Or the offscreen experimentation/blackmailing. Or Mokuba, but…we’ll get to that).

…But like I said before, the big issue isn’t the events. It’s the framing. Maybe the point will ultimately be that if penalty games are wrong when the bad guy does them, then they’re wrong when the hero does them too. Maybe this is all leading up to a big reexamination of Atem’s moral code and some much-needed character development.

Maybe. Let’s keep going and see.

*Great Gatsby comic voice* Baby? What Baby

Death-T runs for 14 chapters, but Kaiba isn’t actually there for, like…half of them.

I mean, he’s technically there? Occasionally? He’ll show up long enough to dramatically play chess for a panel or so, or to stick his head on a TV monitor and provide some Helpful Death Game Hints. But for all practical purposes, he’s pretty much absent for the entire middle section of the story arc.

And, uh…let’s just say I 100% understand and respect the DM anime’s decisionto go straight from Grandpa’s heart attack to the final duel and skipeverything in between.

If Kaiba’s real goal is to beat Yugi at Duel Monsters, then all the death games leading up to that one are basically filler. And they manage to be just as contrived and nonsensical as any anime filler arc, without a fraction of the fun.

It’s largely a tonal issue. The writing swings wildly between grimdark dramatics, sentimental conversations about friendship where everyone hugs and cries (tbh that’s one of the few redeeming qualities of the arc), and “comic relief” where the “““comedy””” is all either bodily function jokes or sexual assault jokes (L̠̤̯͍̦e̮̪͎̞t's̞̮̳̱̰̦̲ ̲G͖͉̹̻̯͉͖e̜̝̗͓̟͚t̖͚ ͚̰̞̮̝̫͎I͓̜̦̳̭͚͎n̪̪͈t͍̥̰̼o͚͎͇̣̘̝ ̪̼̜̣̳G͈̠̫e̳̝̗̪ṋ͚̞͎ͅd͔̙͓̯̹e̯̺̯̩r͔̣̲͔̳̗ ̘͙P̖̦o̩̺͖͎̞̬l͎̺͕̹i͇̣̼̦t̰i̬̰̝͙̗̝c̜̼̺̪̲̞s).

Honestly, in terms of the “stanning and fairness” argument, there’s not much to talk about here. It just adds insult to injury that not only does Death-T throw my fave under the bus, but it’s really badly written.

The Mokuba Thing

Okay, let’s fast-forward through the filler zone and stoppp…here. 

In the context of the anime, where we know (and see multiple flashbacks demonstrating) that their whole life has been an “us against the world” story, this scene is tragic. Seto’s trust in people has been eroded so much that he even thinks Mokuba is conspiring against him? Their love and support for each other, which has survived through so much hardship, has finally cracked under the weight of this latest trauma? There’s a lot of dramatic and tearjerking potential there.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us bring our baggage from the anime with us when we read the manga. The vast majority of the western Yugioh fandom did start with DM. 

But if we look at this purely in the context of the manga–if we can pretend, for a second, that none of us have ever heard of the anime–this is the first time we see the two of them interacting onscreen. And none of those touching flashbacks of Seto comforting Mokuba and defending him from bullies and promising to be his father exist here. All we ever really learn about their relationship before this point is “They used to be a little closer when they were younger. Source: one (1) photo of them playing chess.”

So instead of serving as the tragic lowpoint of their relationship, this scene sets the baseline for it: Mokuba desperately wants to make his brother happy and earn his approval, while Seto responds with dismissal and cruelty.

In the anime (and to a certain extent in the later manga), Mokuba’s purpose in the narrative is to humanize Seto. But in Death-T, he serves the opposite function. Every interaction they have is an opportunity for Seto to kick the dog and prove what a monster he is.

And it’s all downhill from here.

………………

…So.

I have…mixed feelings about this.

On one level–a meta level–I think this scene serves the same purpose as taking that random high schooler from CwT and suddenly giving him ridiculous amounts of money and power and mustache-twirling levels of villainy. It’s a way of making the Experience of Death seem retroactively justified (and also a way of making the upcoming penalty game look fair).

On the other hand. It’s. 

Horrific.

This scene is supposed to make us hate Kaiba, and it does it’s job really really well.

Personally speaking? I’m of the opinion that trying to hurt the child under your care as badly as you conceivably can is a “don’t pass go, don’t collect $100″ kind of deal. There’s no coming back from that. There’s no fixing or salvaging this relationship.  

(God, this whole thing is wrapped in so many layers of fantasy that I’m not even sure what the real-world equivalent would be. Trying to beat your child not quite to death?)

Mokuba should not have had to continue living with his brother after this, any more than the Ishtars should have had to stay with their dad or Seto should have had to stay with Gozaburo. Mokuba forgiving Seto for this isn’t touching to me, it’s gut-wrenching. Every “heartwarming” brotherly moment in the later manga (all, like…2 and a half of them) feels hollow and sad.

As far as I’m concerned, this scene doesn’t “complicate” their relationship in any interesting or meaningful way. Their anime relationship already has plenty of complications–their sometimes unhealthy co-dependence, the fact that Seto is still a kid himself and he’s not really equipped to be a parent,Mokuba’s difficulty understanding that Seto can’t just “go back to who he was” before his trauma, the times when Seto is too caught up in his own pain to really be there for Mokuba, the manipulation involved in Seto’s takeover plan, etc. This just makes their relationship outright child abuse.

But hey, they hugged that one time in Duelist Kingdom, so it’s fine, right?

ExODiA iiiIIIIT’s not pAHsible

The final duel happens. The big Blue Eyes vs Exodia showdown.

*Bill Wurtz voice* So that’s pretty nifty, I would say.

It’s..? A genuinely cool and dramatic duel. There’s a reason it’s one of the, like, three Death-T elements the DM anime actually bothered to keep. Not much to say about it.

Sure was a whole lot of buildup just to end things with one (1) deus ex machina instawin card, tho.

The Tragic Backstory

So if all this happened because of a penalty game, what do you think the solution could be?

Did you say “another, even harsher penalty game”?

Ding ding ding!

This time, instead of torturing the fifteen-year-old, our hero puts the fifteen-year-old in a vegetative state as he begs for mercy.

Yaaaayy! 

Some fun facts about the Mind Crush that we don’t actually learn until Duelist Kingdom:

1. It lasted for 6 months

2. Mokuba spent that entire time alone, in the big empty mansion, with no parental guidance or adult supervision except the butlers and maids, caring for his brother’s comatose body 24/7

3. When Atem put Kaiba in that coma, he had absolutely no idea if he’d ever be able to wake up or not. He thought he could, maybe–Kaiba’s pretty strong, right? But he also finds the idea that Kaiba died in his coma and came back to haunt him perfectly believable. “Fixed,” dead…eh, it was kind of a coin toss.

But wait, the story’s not over yet! First we have to find out Why Kaiba Is The Way He Is (“Because your buddy tortured him last month” isn’t enough of an answer, apparently).

This is communicated in the most natural way possible: Mokuba just starts monologuing about all his brother’s deepest darkest traumas to a bunch of strangers his brother hates.

The claim that Kaiba’s backstory is “more complex” in the manga than it is in the anime has always confused me, because this is…it. These three pages are the whole backstory. I mean, in Battle City we do get one more passing line of dialog about how Kaibacorp used to be a weapons manufacturer and Gozaburo “sold Seto’s soul to the military industrial complex,” but other than that… The anime took these bare bones and fleshed them out significantly, but from a pure manga canon standpoint, it’s not a whole lot to work with.

But there’s still enough here to rub me the wrong way.

For one thing, this sequence is almost an exact parallel to two later moments in the manga: Pegasus’s backstory dump at the end of Duelist Kingdom, and Malik’s backstory dump mid-Battle City. In both of those cases, the purpose of the scene is to take a villain whose motives seemed cruel and inexplicable and finally reveal the reasons behind his actions. We’re supposed to be seeing these characters in a sympathetic light for the very first time.

But Kaiba’s motives in Death-T, uh, weren’t exactly a mystery. He already made it pretty explicitly clear that this was about the torture. So as a narrative tool, Mokuba’s monologue:

1. seems a little superfluous

2. seems like a way of taking any responsibility out of the protagonist’s hands. Kaiba didn’t snap because of anything Atem did, he just had a bunch of fucked up baggage that Atem couldn’t possibly have known about or accounted for. Who knew some people take it badly when you torture them??

3. seems to suggest that we weren’t supposed to be sympathizing with Kaiba before this point. If this is the big “oh, now that I know why he did it, I guess I feel a little bad for him :(” moment, then that means the part where he got tortured…wasn’t?

And, as always, there’s the issue of the framing.

The grace note of the monologue–the thought it leaves us with, the intended takeaway–isn’t “If only he hadn’t gone through years of abuse, in circumstances he had no real control over because he was a child.” It’s “If only he hadn’t brought all this upon himself by cheating.”

Even if we ignore the fact that it’s physically impossible to cheat at chess (which seems like kind of a big oversight for a gaming manga, but oh well, That’s Yugioh Babe)…

How can you possibly present a ten-year-old cheating at a board game in a desperate gambit to get himself and his brother out of an orphanage as his start of darkness?

Yet that’s exactly what the writing does. This is a story about how games “reveal the true hearts” of their players and bring karmic retribution down on anyone who doesn’t respect the game and follow the rules. The implication is that the child abuse Seto suffered was karma. He rightfully earned it by cheating at chess, just like he brought the Experience of Death upon himself by cheating at Duel Monsters.

Oh yeah, speaking of which…

Wheel of Morality, Turn Turn Turn, Tell Us The Lesson We Should Learn

What was the outcome of Death-T? What impact did it actually have? 

Did it bring about any big moral reckoning? Any questioning of the heroes’ values? Did Atem learn the difficult but important lesson “torture bad”?

Nnnnope!

Death-T is immediately followed by a series of episodic chapters that take us right back to the status quo like nothing happened. Atem keeps merrily handing out penalty games all the way up to the very end of Duelist Kingdom. When he does finally stop doing them, his decision has nothing to do with Death-T. It takes a comment from Pegasus about the Millennium Items having an “evil intelligence” to make him wonder “wait…I’m from a Millennium Item…I’m an intelligence…could evil…maybe include…torture????”

And even after the manga lukewarmly reverses its position to “torture sort of bad I guess,” it never really does anything with that revelation. None of the past penalty games are ever reexamined. No apologies are made. The Experience of Death is quietly swept under the rug, and the Mind Crush, when it’s brought up at all, is framed as noble act that “fixed” Kaiba (because “if you make someone suffer badly enough, you can hurt them into being a better person” is a great message).

Basically, we learned nothing from Death-T, nothing changed, and our takeaway is supposed to be “Atem was 100% in the right and Kaiba was 100% in the wrong, and also he’s an evil monster who deserved everything he got.”

Guess I Need A Satisfying Conclusion of Some Kind Even Through Death-T Didn’t Really Have One, Huh

Wow.

That was…a whole lot of words of Death-T rage that I apparently had in me zjkghzkkf. 

I tend to feel less justified about constantly harping on Death-T then I do when it comes to, like, the racism in Memory World, or the series’ general Miss O’Gyny. It’s not like “magical vigilantism” is exactly a real-word social issue that’s being reflected in this piece of fiction. I realize a lot of my anger pretty much boils down to “hey,, ! thats…my fave. stopp...being mean to him >:(”

But I also feel like the issues in Death-T aren’t limited to Death-T.

The manga has this…this thing where it wants to be able to pinpoint a few clear, unchanging moral rules (“cheating is bad!” “graverobbing is bad!” “patricide is bad!”) and just apply them neatly to every situation, without having to take into account any of that inconvenient stuff like “what were the circumstances of this specific situation,” or “how many choices were actually open to this person,” or “how much harm was done by this choice compared to its benefits in terms of basic human well-being.” Yet at the same time, that moral absolutism is somehow coupled with a reluctance to apply any moral judgement to its protagonists at all. 

The two points where that becomes clearest are Death-T and Memory World. And I feel like even when people acknowledge the issues with those arcs, they still want to be able to write it off as “oh, that was just a problem with the early chapters, it was fixed as the writing matured,” or “oh, that was just a problem at the end because of the mad rush to finish the story before it got canceled, it was never a thing before then.” But it’s not an isolated problem. It’s there at the beginning of the story, it’s there at the end, and it’s baked into everything in the middle.

…but anyhow. 

hey,, ! thats…my fave. stopp...being mean to him >:(

[ryanmeft]

Us Movie Review

Every year brings many horror films that provide the basics, and very few that rise above them. Get Out was widely praised as one of the latter; I disagreed, one of my more contentious opinions on movies. To my great satisfaction, the issues I saw in Jordan Peele’s first directorial effort are almost entirely absent in his second feature. If it just avoided doing things wrong, though, it wouldn’t be as good as it is. Whereas Get Out was content to insert some heavy-handed social commentary into a traditional formula and call it revolutionary, Us truly brings fresh ideas to the genre.

Much as Get Out was essentially a horror twist on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Us brings another outside plot to the genre, this one from superheroes: the heroic team who meets their evil doubles. We start in 1986, in a visually stunning sequence: young Adelaide (newcomer Madison Curry) is neglected by her dysfunctional parents (it is notable that we never see their faces for long) at an amusement park at Santa Cruz, so she wanders off. As a storm rolls in on the beach she makes her way to an abandoned hall of mirrors, complete with a scary pop-up owl and a fake-out for an exit. There, she encounters a well-worn horror trope: her reflection behaves differently than she does.

The movie cuts to the present day, and adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), who has returned with her family to their vacation house near the same beach (note that the family appears reasonably well-off, though not rich, a rarity for horror films; just last year, the entirety of the last Purge movie took place in a stereotypical “hood”). Her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) is a lovable oaf, brave and protective but not in a “grunt grunt, man tough” way. He’s assigned the job of doing some of the dumb things horror movie plots require to function, but because his character has already been presented as both loving and slightly dim, we mostly overlook these lapses of judgement. It helps that they do not occur with anything like the frequency they typically do. Daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) is on the verge of true teenagedom---she doesn’t want to hang out with the vapid twin teens (Cali and Noelle Sheldon) belonging to her parents’ sniping and materialistic friends (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker), but she’s also getting a bit too old for her younger brother Jason (Evan Alex).

Peele spends enough time on family dynamics---the pranks played by the siblings on each other, a hopeful lovemaking session between parents thwarted by pesky feelings, the singular joy of your kids not getting an old song that is just the greatest thing ever---that by the time we get to the scares, these people are well-established for the genre; in another twist on what is usual, it is the white characters who are bare outlines thrown in just to have someone to kill off. The Wilson family, on the other hand, are strange and complex people by the time their copycats show up on the front walk. They appear in red jumpsuits, holding hands, are unresponsive to Gabe’s commands, and quickly launch an invasion of the home. Once they have the family at their mercy, Adelaide’s double---named Red in the credits, though like most of the doppleganger names I can’t recall this ever being mentioned in the film itself---proceeds to tell a macabre tale I won’t reveal here. She then initiates a game, which is where the superhero comparison comes in. The doubles have come prepared, with a strategy to exploit the weaknesses and personalities of their prey; much of the rest of the film is a game of cat and mouse as each tries to outwit and overcome the other. The body language of these beings, which is meant to mirror and exaggerate the worst traits of their heroic doubles, is incredibly unnerving; physicality is too often overlooked in modern horror, though the template of the genre, The Exorcist, excelled in it.

There’s no attempt on the part of Peele to disguise the fact these things are some sort of dark copies of the heroes; it is explicitly revealed in the trailers and in the film’s title. It is a rather masterful bit of slight of hand on his part. We think the duplicate angle is the point of the film, but at the very beginning there is some seemingly unrelated text about there being vast lengths of disused tunnel underneath the United States; I held this in my mind through the first act, but such is the tension of the second that by the time it becomes important to the story, I had nearly forgotten it. Those tunnels turn out to produce an apocalypse, and end up providing a thrilling third act that grants us a great, unexpected mercy: something different for horror. I don’t dare discuss it in detail, for in it Peele’s script and direction, Nyong’o’s stunning ability to act convincingly while playing dual roles that are both fighting each other, and the incredible camerawork of Mike Gioulakis come together in a way that, by itself, may cause me to go see the movie twice in theatres, a rarity. Suffice it to say the dopplegangers are flesh and blood, and that the resolution does not feel like cheating. The final twist could be seen coming a mile away, but it is at least well-earned, and notably more morally ambiguous than how it is usually used.

The visionary elements of Get Out whose visionary-ness I questioned were mostly concerned with the supposedly deep subtext of the film. Some saw endless layers of meaning concerning the place of African Americans in our society; I personally thought the “slavery is still a thing, guys” point was incredibly obvious. Us eschews direct 1-to-1 metaphors in favor of a few different possible interpretations, all of which could be true at once. To a history buff like myself, the idea of our doom coming from underground places we’ve forgotten of course recalls the old adage about those who fail to learn from the past. Masks are employed to suggest the ways we hide ourselves, while an excess of rabbits seem to represent a cycle of life, suggesting the film’s antagonists devour other life the same way they feel they themselves have been devoured. I could discuss this all for some time, but the reason the movie works is because, whereas taking Get Out’s metaphors away would leave the film toothless, this one is excellent even if you completely overlook them. It functions as a film first, and doesn’t need to sermonize on society to grip and terrify us. That it does that, and does it effectively, is evidence of Peele’s creative evolution.

Verdict: Must-See

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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All images are property of the people what own the movie.

[vera-invenire]

VnC Liveblog - Chapter 4

.All chapter liveblogs are linked HERE.

The Case Study of Vanitas, aka, It’s Probably A Really Bad Idea To Get Into  Fights With People Called ‘Hellfire Witch’, Boys, I’m Just Saying

Not much to note in the cover art this time -- we’ve got Vanitas’ standard imagery in blues and blacks, with emphasis on the hourglass earring and his eyes. And the gears, through after the airship we haven’t really had much else that was very steampunk-ish in the story. Maybe that’ll change in later chapters.

Re: the eyes -- we know that most vampires have eyes that glow red when they drink or use their powers (I think that’s how it works?) and they have a link to the crimson moon, but Vanitas is human, so even though he’s got a connection to the Vampire of the Blue Moon, his blue eyes might just be a coincidence. (re: for the  a e s t h e t i c) (though the color matching with that hourglass is a bit suspect on the symbolic level, so who knows)

We get a bit of a peak at the dynamics in Dante’s crew before we jump back into the action --

Johann is very camp. I wonder if the matching suits were his idea. I like his relationship with Dante, though. Riche seems to be their junior member -- at least Johann is looking out for her.

Uh-oh. Luca’s heading back into the fray.

Chapter title: Memoire 4 Love Femme Fatale

Well, ‘femme fatale’ is Jeanne, that’s pretty clear. But ‘love’? Eh? Are we introducing a romance? Or is this the protective love between Jeanne and Luca?

So, Jeanne’s chasing Noé down the back-alleys of the -- was it the riverfront district? Warehouses, we’re surrounded by warehouses.

She catches his foot!

Noé intercepts! \o/

(’may i throw you back’, pfff)

But Vanitas is no slouch himself, even if he is back to being carried like a kitten.

We already knew that Vanitas was aware of Jeanne’s reputation, but this exchange makes me think he knows a bit more than surface level rumors. But he doesn’t seem up-to-date with the no-killing influence Luca has on her.

Vanitas tells Noé to follow the plan (which we are not privy to) as Jeanne finds them again.

'No’, ‘I refuse’, must be Noé‘s favorite words, he says them so much.

(Can you imagine baby Noé just constantly saying ‘i refuse. i refuse.’ all serious-like whenever someone tried to make him put down his blankie, cuz I’m imagining it, lmao.)

Note: Noé‘s teacher is a scary badass. (also what’s he holding? a cane? a switch?? oi, what was Noé‘s training like)

Meanwhile, Noé feels like he’s finally getting the upper-hand --

Uh-oh.

Pride goeth, etc etc

*sports announcer voice* That’s gotta hurt.

But why’s he looking at his hand? I didn’t notice him holding anything before.

“Now... let’s see.” He and Vanitas still have a plan to enact. Also, hi Riche!

So we haven’t had much time with these three yet, but I’m starting to get a feel for their priorities. Dante would never, ever in a million years admit to anything like fondness for Vanitas, or vice versa, but underneath all the mutual sniping I think there’s a small bond there. A teeny tiny one.

Whereas with Johann -- he honestly doesn’t care about Vanitas one way or another. If V were to be killed in front of them, I think Dante would be shocked and frozen for at least a second while Johann would say, ‘welp, it’s been a lark, toodle-loo’, grab his Two People, and get them all the hell out of there, not bothering to look back.

Riche, I don’t know enough about yet. She mostly registers to me as the rookie of this trio, tbh.

Yes, antagonize the massively powerful warrior who just threw Noé through a brick wall. That’s a good plan. (is this the plan, that would be a terrible plan)

Ooo, history, I love history. I especially love MochiJun’s history and how layered and batshit it can get once the reveals start to hit.

So the vampire-human war happened a long time ago -- how long ago, we don’t know. We know that BlueVampire!Vanitas was alive during that time. We know that Jeanne was alive during that time, but was then put asleep.

(Why? Some thoughts: she was a weapon of war and put away when peace came; she went off the rails and had to be subdued; her being put asleep was a condition of some kind; she wanted to be put under, etc. There’s no way to know what really happened yet, but it’s interesting to think about.)

We also now know that BlueVampire!Vanitas used to tell Vanitas stories about the war that clearly didn’t leave out many details. But that wording...honestly, it sounds like maybe Vanitas was a kid when he heard this? Telling stories is something you usually do with a kid, which might make sense because.human!Vanitas doesn’t look that old. Anything that happened more than a few years ago would slide into ‘kid’ territory.

Which makes me wonder...did BlueVampire!Vanitas raise human!Vanitas? Or teach him, at least? I’d be a neat parallel to Noé and his teacher.

(what if they’re the same person, bwahahaha)

Anyway, back to Vanitas taunting the highly aggravated weapon of mass destruction.

Oooo, he’s about to pull out a special move. And he -- dropped the book?

is that thing really there, or is it, like, symbolic

oh shi-

The gloves are literally about to come off...!

That kid’s got horrible timing.

Ohoho, someone woke up from their nap. Was this part of the plan or is it an interesting complication?

Ow.

...IT WAS A TRICK, you sly dog.

also vampires are monsters, huh? or just curse-bearers and bourreaus? i think this distinction may be a biiiiit important. (is this why you’re always so shocked when Noé does/says something decent, oh boy)

LMAO, oh god, I hope this Greek chorus follows Vanitas around all the time just to drag him, wouldn’t that be amazing

Damn, boy -- he really knows how to work the superior disdain, doesn’t he?

I’m still shaky on how these true names work. Do vampires just fall into types, and that’s what gets warped? You’d think something called a ‘true name’ would be more individual than that.

Oi, Jeanne, you aren’t watching? Though I like Dante being all, ‘whatever, I’ve seen this show before.’

ahahaha, OOPS.

That’s what happens when you let your grandstanding get away from you, bb.

oh hey, look who was lurking nearby and NOT HELPING AT ALL.

“...you must be joking.” in this kind of context is like, one of my favorite lines.

Also damn, Jeanne is a badass.

Yeah, saw that coming.

She really shouldn’t have let Vanitas see how distracted she became when Luca wandered into danger.

*snorts* The Greek chorus doesn’t lie.

It’s a bluff, though; no way would Noé agree to harming the kid.

oh my god.

(”don’t forget to cover his mouth as you would a hostage, like so” akfdsajkfhkjf)

Noé, you are too innocent, too pure.

And she folds like a house of cards.

I don’t think even Vanitas expected this plan to work so well.

Oh, a little bit of crazy eyes there. This is gonna be a Thing, isn’t it? Vanitas, who, as far as we know, owes his loyalty to nothing and no one uses this to kick Jeanne while she’s down.

Heh, wonder what’s gonna happen when Vanitas finds something he wants to protect.

That is definitely a plotting look in his eye. He just saw how to use this to his advantage.

1. um what

2. hey, is this the first time we’ve seen him bare handed? It’s nice to know he doesn’t have actual claws under those gloves.

3. speaking of which, is that ‘my strength is suddenly gone’ bit because there IS something magic-related about his hands, or is she just in shock?

4. that is a very unnerving look. Vanitas, what are you doing

...holy crap, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??

Vanitas what are you doing

Shit, this is why the chapter was called “Love Femme Fatale”, oh geez.

dante, why do you look the most freaked out out of everyone?

Alright, I know Vanitas has been set up as being utterly unscrupulous, what with the lying and taking a little boy as a hostage and using a bloodthirsty monster to do his dirty work, etc, but seriously, someone needs to introduce him to the tenants of the #metoo campaign. Sure, fine, she tried to kill him two minutes ago, but this feels like a line too far.

...

Yeah, this ain’t real. The disdain, the fear, the calculation from before -- that was genuine. This is another bluff.

And I think I know why he’s doing it. Fighting Jeanne made it very clear that she is waaaaay out of his league, strength-wise. He only won through guile, and it’s a trick that might not work again. This woman has a well-earned, blood-soaked reputation, and she was gonna walk away from this fight seeing Vanitas as an enemy to herself and Luca.

But Vanitas saw her weakness -- she lets her bonds with those she cares about distract her. She’s a killer, but she’s sentimental. Emotional.

So, if you’re Vanitas, how do you deal with this, knowing that Jeanne the Hellfire Witch might become a problem for you down the line? How do you plan to defeat a potential foe who is so much stronger than you, someone you could never hope to defeat in a fair fight?

Apparently, if you’re Vanitas, you try to seduce them.

Even if the actual seduction part doesn’t work, you can still mess with her head just enough to make her confused, maybe make her a little more likely to hesitate when it’s time for the gauntlet to finally come down.

And a split-second’s hesitation could be all Vanitas would need to make his counter.

(sidenote: i still think it’s  h i l a r i o u s  that Dante is the most outraged about all this kissing and love declaration stuff. Noé apparently can’t hear any of this at all, which I think is very convenient. We don’t get to see his reaction to this kind of game until later, apparently.)

Uh-oh. Looks like this kid is powerful and very, very pissed.

“A large-scale “formula” revision” mmhmm, okay, what’s that supposed to mean? Am I getting an explanation for the magic system yet?

Looks like it’s not just Luca keeping Jeanne from going off the rails -- she does the same for him.

Look at that. She’s throwing death threats but now she’s blushing, she sure as hell wouldn’t have been blushing before he kissed her, the stupid plan is working.

And honestly, aggravation and confusion are probably going to work better than actual tender feelings in this seduction. He’s going to play this role to the goddamn hilt.

Look at that face, the jerk.

Alright, that’s a better face.

Noé has no idea what he’s getting into, the poor soul.

(he didn’t have much of a presence in this chapter, did he. maybe Jeanne is mostly going to be a Vanitas subplot instead of a Vanitas-and-Noé subplot)

Apparently we’ve traded one killer on the streets for another. And even more intriguing -- he recognized this killer. ‘Course, now he’s dead, so I don’t know how useful that’s gonna be.

Whimsical creature of darkness! I did not miss you.

The true threat is revealed with a name -- “Charlatan”. But, you know --

(Charlatan: a person who falsely pretends to know or be something.)

-- which makes me think there’s proooobably something else behind this guy. He is a fake, after all. (Though, hey, ‘charlatan’ is a nice contrast with Vanitas the doctor, don’t you think.)

That’s all for chapter 4! What a night, eh?

Next, CHAPTER 5.

[oneeyedscarecrow]

apropos of nothing (except remembering that I need to write this up at some point) lemme tell you about earth 451 Jack. under a cut ‘cause this boy has a lotta backstory

his dad either died or left too early to remember; he was raised by a single mom, a nurse named Suzanne, who grew up in France and still fondly remembered it (feeding Jack’s own love for France, especially Paris, later in life). Suzanne never knew she had a son, not a daughter, but she supported Jack being a ‘tomboy’ and sympathized with him over being bullied at school. They were extremely poor; that, combined with school being a generally miserable experience for him (being an obviously queer kid with a mood disorder and probably some other comorbid disorders doesn’t make for a GREAT school experience) encouraged Jack to drop out as a young teenager and start looking for any kind of work he could do, hiding it from his mom. 

Gotham being what it was, that work was always usually illegal; acting as the ‘tiny person who climbs in through vents and stuff’ in crimes, stuff like that. Jack tried to stay away from the more violent work, but being a tiny perceived-as-female teen meant he wound up fighting often to be taken seriously, and learning he had to be vicious to earn respect. Still, he tried - and the first person he killed, he wasn’t even supposed to kill. It was an accident; the man wasn’t supposed to be home, Jack had terrible trigger discipline and the gun just went off... Terrified, Jack did his best to lay low after that, but some people have the worst luck. The guy he’d killed was connected to the Court of Owls - a minor member, but they had to show that nobody connected to them could be touched without consequences. In a few days a Talon showed up; killed Suzanne, shot Jack and dropped him into a convenient vat of chemicals, and went home satisfied with a job well done. 

As you may have guessed, Jack wasn’t dead. He crawled out of the Gotham River (which the chemicals were dumped straight into. Yay pollution!) a while later, discovering that the chemicals had apparently increased his ability to heal - not significantly, but enough to save his life. And he was bleached, which was weird. He was also having a massive nervous breakdown, but that’s more from watching his mother die and almost dying himself. 

One bad day doesn’t make someone a Rogue. More than that, he was fifteen at the time. He dragged himself to the home of one of his few friends (Teresa, more on her someday) and she gave him a place to stay temporarily while he went through his breakdown. Then... he had to find a way to stay alive. He didn’t feel like he could leave Gotham, even if he wanted to; it was all he knew. After a year or two of recovery and beginning to present as a guy (he was already learning to use makeup to disguise his new bleached state, he could fiddle with his appearance a little; and needing a new identity gave him an excuse to do what he’d always secretly wanted, use the name he preferred) he started working at a chemical lab. No concrete end goal, but he wanted to understand what had happened to him. (He never would, but in the process of searching he’d create a poison that left a rictus sardonicus on the victim’s face. He’d file the formula away, horrified yet fascinated by it.) 

He had always had difficulty with his moods but it was around then he started to have long, serious periods of suicidal depression. The main thing that kept him from killing himself was the feeling that there must be something, some reason he had survived when the odds were so thin. 

Jeannie was a librarian, and a friend of Teresa’s. They met when they were still both young (barely over twenty) and got married young, which surprised everyone; most of all Jack, who was attracted to dudes 80% of the time and didn’t expect to find anyone who was interested in him period. But Jeannie genuinely liked him; they shared senses of humor, he sang to her and she gave him books to read until he finally caved in and read them and things seemed like they might be going good. 

Aaand then Jeannie mentioned that she was researching some odd events in Gotham over the years, and Jack realized that she was building up a big ol’ file of evidence that the Court of Owls existed. And she was good - Jeannie was a tenacious researcher and made connections few would; she’d practically compiled half a list of members by following the hints and putting together facts from centuries ago. After about fifteen panic attacks, Jack tried to explain to her that these people were not to be messed with. They seemed practically omnipotent. She needed to stop or bad stuff was going to happen. But Jeannie refused - she needed to keep pursuing the truth. 

And one day Jack clocks out of work to hear that she’s dead.

It takes a while for the news to sink in. But the more it does, the more confused he gets. Because if it was the Court, he knows he’d be dead too. If it was the Court, it would have been something worse than a bullet, if it was the Court - and he realizes, it wasn’t the Court of Owls. It was practically an accident. A stray bullet from a drive-by shooting, directed at someone else on the block. Jeannie just happened to step out the door at the wrong time. 

And if it had been the Court, Jack might have just finally committed suicide, or he might have lived in fear the rest of his short life. But it was accidental, it was random - or no, not exactly, because the people in charge - the rich and famous that made up the Court and their favored, the judges and the crooked cops and the businessmen - they never had that kind of luck, did they? They were rigging the system, hoarding all the good ‘luck’ for themselves. People told him that people just died sometimes in Gotham, that there was nothing that could have been done, but that wasn’t true. It wasn’t random. It was a rigged carnival game. Jack hung around their apartment for a while longer, thinking about that kind of thing for a while, then he dug up Jeannie’s partial list of Owls and got to work.

He didn’t intend to live. He was sure he’d kill one, maybe two people and the Court would take him out. But he wanted to make sure he took out at least a couple people and terrified the shit out of the others, so he took his time coming up with a persona; digging up that poison and perfecting it; coming up with ways to get into and out of the places Owls lived. And finally, one warm summer night, the normal radio broadcast cut out and a slow, mournful voice cut in.

“Tonight, at precisely twelve o’ clock, I will kill Henry Claridge. The Joker has spoken!”

His debut’s very much modeled off the very first appearance of the Joker in 1940; at the time, Jack was far from what his persona would eventually become. He was considered terrifying because he looked like a dead man walking, painted into some semblance of life; barely ever raising his voice over a hoarse mutter, with a humorless laugh and a grin that resembled the rictus grins he left his victims with. He wasn’t described as the Harlequin of Hate for nothing. Everyone could tell he was pissed off about something, but nobody knew what. Put that together with his occasional erratic behavior and black humor, and the easy explanation of ‘well, guess he’s Mad’ began to emerge. He was more successful than he’d anticipated, but he still would have wound up dead - whether at his own hand or the Court’s, through a corrupt cop or paid-off prison inmate - if it hadn’t been for the other new kid on the block. 

Batman deeply confused Jack, because... well, what the fuck, I thought I was the only dude out in a costume, is this going to be a trend? They wound up becoming active at almost the same time, so both of them had expected to be alone in this ‘let’s create a persona and head out for Justice’ mindset. Regardless, Batman captured Jack and he was sent to Arkham - an old, little-used asylum for the criminally insane - and so he survived. And after he broke out and made another pass through the Court, they were too shaken to retaliate immediately. So he survived. And then new people started showing up, in their own costumes, and Jack realizes that he’s apparently not a dead man walking; he’s part of the new wave of the future. 

Against all odds, Jack started to cheer up. 

At this point, he’s part opportunistic criminal (although those crimes are generally geared towards money and jewels), part extremely violent vigilante, part bizarre philanthropist. He sees himself as not quite a force of chaos, but as helping chaos be more fair, and he deeply hates anyone trying to recreate the Court of Owls or anything similar. He still has periods of deep depression and struggles with suicidal feelings, but he (and by extent, the Joker persona) got significantly happier once he started finding reasons to stay alive. His sense of humor became more apparent, and pretty soon people forgot it wasn’t always part of his persona. 

and he’s still deeply confused by Batman.

[laymlone-blog]

Fatphobia (20.12.19)

Fatphobia is a systematic dehumanising of fat people that takes on different forms from media representation to microaggressions. 

Usually, people try to say ‘nicer’ ways for fatness like ‘curvy’ or ‘plus sized’. Plus sized is particularly problematic. 

If I am plus sized - what’s so plus about it? The extra, like something you can just take on and off. Ever heard of the “dream measurements”: 90-60-90 (hip/waist/breast) with about a 6’0ft/180cm height? That’s the bullshit standard for female supermodels. 

Google: Twiggy

Some people have never walked into a shop and found nothing in their size and it shows. 

The racial aspect of fatphobia lies in biological essentialism, and especially the creation of ‘BMI’ (Body Mass Index).  BMI was invented in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. This was the same time people were putting forth bullshit ideas about ‘criminal types’ - equating looks to criminality. It specifically targeted disabled, poor and dark skinned people.

BMI is a mathematical formula (BMI = weight (kg) / height)  based on an ‘ideal’ human body; in this case, a Caucasian, able bodied, cisgender Male. This was used in the 19th century as a measurement of fitness to sterilize POC, Indigenous people, disabled people, poor people, immigrants and other marginalised minorities. 

It’s connection to eugenics leads on to the next point of health and fatness. 

The connection between fatness and unhealthiness is forced and upheld by rigid norms in households in the western world. With things like ‘Fat Camp’ being implemented in America to deal with the capitalisation of poverty by the fast food industry, fatness is strongly seen as a negative. 

To some assholes, a fat person is barely a person, they’re a walking heart attack waiting to happen. 

A good quote from @ lex_about_sex on Twitter:

“I feel like the go-to-stock response about fatness “you can be fat and healthy” that’s true - but 

Fatphobia is not genuinely about the concern for health and that response legitimises it as a concern

It’s okay to be unhealthy! Unhealthy people deserve respect too!

Instead of continually vesting in the poor healthy/good healthy binary let’s unpack “why” we think it’s okay to debase people for being unhealthy and how it really is ABLEISM which is ultimately a byproduct of capitalism which measures validity via “productivity””

^^ I love this. 

Fatness is fatness - whether it is healthy or unhealthy, a fat person deserves to be treated like a person. 

Now, the stigma, how does it build up? What does it look like?

Let’s think about stereotypes of fat people in media:

The rich, fat asshole who doesn’t give a shit about anyone

The comedic female side character who takes all the shit and probably has good one liners

The old, warm granny

The Black, fat woman who knows how to cook up a feast

The angsty fat girl who sees her fatness as the main thing stopping her from doing anything

The really girly and frilly fat girl who’s bubbly personality makes up for her fatness as ‘ugly’

The guy who likes fat, salty girl because he has a fetish

The fat guy, who happens to be disabled in some way, in some wierd adult cartoon show and has a tendency for violence and being ‘unintelligent’ and has a ‘hot’ wife and kids

The fat kid, who lost weight and is now hot and desirable - ‘the ugly duckling’

The fat person with no morals and probably gets eaten by the end of the story

A bully who is bullying others because of their insecurity about their fatness

The rich, fat king/noble who feasts whilst the peasants are poor, frail and starving

The beer belly abusive step father

I honestly can’t think of many others. 

But yeah, we have these images instilled in us. 

Other shows obsessed with weight loss and gain: Biggest Loser, Supersize Me etc. 

When is the last time you saw a fat girl being completely and utterly happy about her size without being frowned upon? When was the last time you saw a sexed up, healthy version of a fat guy? 

You see so many ads telling people to lose weight, but what about putting on weight? Except pregnancy - which then tells you to lose the weight you gained during pregnancy with a ‘bounce back’.

Skinny people being afraid to be fat, and fat people being afraid to be fat. 

Fuckkk, the skinny characters eating whatever they want because they have a ‘fast metabolism’ but if a fat person ate the same things - ‘they could lose weight by cutting that junk’. Fuck that. 

Oh, getting on a weight measure scale and FEARING putting on weight. The skinny one looking in the mirror and grabbing at a slightly tubby stomach ‘oh my god, I am SO FAT’. 

One thing I want to touch on briefly is the gender aspect, yes it’s difficult for men, women and non binary people. But, the way young girls are brought up, spoonfed media about fashion, girl power and skinniness, thin barbies to play with instead of cars etc. Women are under the misogynist stereotypes. Men have different pressures on them, but fatness is also masculinised. What I mean is that there are different expectations for ideal bodies, but men are (mainly white guys) encouraged to take up space via their bodies, voices and presence whilst women are expected to be as small as possible and be desired by dudes. 

So if fatness is somehow masculinised, what does this do to feminine bodies? It makes them invalid. It creates a sexless idea around fat women. The objectification of feminine bodies disempowers fat women from two angles. 

However for MOC who are really pressured to keep a slim, ‘fit’ figure to be classified as a ‘man’. Fat men are a product of gluttony by over masculinity - they get what they want but have got too much. The stigma around dark skinned, fat men is shown in representation of Black/Brown men being large and angry, abusive or on the other angle being emasculate and feminine. 

It differs when including gender, disability, class, race etc. 

Fatphobia at its core is a White, middle/higher class, able bodied, heteronormative, patriarchal tactic to objectify certain bodies and dehumanise people that doesn’t fit their ‘ideal’ for productive citizens of a capitalist society. 

Fat Acceptance movement has been going on since early 2019. It’s not about ‘liking’ or ‘glorifying’ or ‘beautifying’ fatness; it’s asking to respect fat people. 

Simple basic, fucking respect and inclusion. 

It’s not encouraging skinny people to be fat, it’s saying: it is ok to be fat.

What, you're gonna see a women empowerment post, and say it’s telling men and non binary people to be a woman? Of course fucking not.

It’s about R E S P E C T. Respect. 

Say it again: respect.

Okay, so what can you do?

STOP using ‘fat’ or fat references as insults 

STOP commenting on people’s weight

STOP only including thin people in ‘inclusive’ events

Remember where you have seen fatphobia in your life

Call out your friends on their bullshit

Follow fat people on social media (actively)

Look at the racks when you shop, and see what bodies it prefers and think about it

Don’t determine health by appearance

Throw away your fucking scale

Weight loss doesn’t equal fitness journey

Fuck you and your unsolicited health advice

Don’t buy bigger clothes if there are clothes that fit you right there 

Call it out when you see it

Follow the hashtags fat activists use: #fatacceptance 

It doesn’t matter if a person is healthy or not, just fucking respect them. 

HASHTAG: #fat and angry

Resources:

https://www.them.us/story/these-fat-men-in-fashion-are-tired-of-being-left-out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkWjdnc77Mw

Sykes, Heather, and Deborah McPhail. "Unbearable lessons: Contesting fat phobia in physical education." Sociology of Sport Journal 25.1 (2008): 66-96.

Al-Adawi, Samir, et al. "Culture to culture: Fat-phobia and somatization." Handbook of behavior, food and nutrition. Springer, New York, NY, 2011. 1457-1473.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/03/diet-advice-and-tiny-seats-how-to-avoid-10-forms-of-fatphobia

https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/44828/1/plus-size-mannequin-nike-telegraph-fat-woman-fatphobia

Forth, Christopher E. "Fat, desire and disgust in the colonial imagination." History Workshop Journal. Vol. 73. No. 1. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Strings, Sabrina. Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. NYU Press, 2019.

Russell, Constance, et al. "“Fatties cause global warming”: Fat pedagogy and environmental education." Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (CJEE) 18 (2013): 27-45.

http://ravishly.com/fat-camp-survivor

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/new-statistics-reveal-the-shape-of-plastic-surgery

Monaghan, Lee F. "Body Mass Index, masculinities and moral worth: men's critical understandings of ‘appropriate’weight‐for‐height." Sociology of health & illness 29.4 (2007): 584-609.

https://elemental.medium.com/the-bizarre-and-racist-history-of-the-bmi-7d8dc2aa33bb

https://youtu.be/HXGwJevjOfs

https://cocainemodels.com/requirements-modeling-height-age-measurement/

Norman, Moss E. "“Dere’s Not Just One Kind of Fat” Embodying the “Skinny”-Self Through Constructions of the Fat Masculine Other." Men and Masculinities 16.4 (2013): 407-431.

Bailey, Courtney. "Supersizing America: Fatness and post‐9/11 cultural anxieties." The Journal of Popular Culture 43.3 (2010): 441-462.

Usiekniewicz, Marta. "“Dangerous Bodies: Blakness, Fatness, and the Masculinity Dividend." A Journal of Queer Studies 11 (2016): 19-45.

[idealisticrealism]

Blindspot recap 2x14

(Aka the one with Rich and the secret society) 

Aaaah okay so I have had basically zero available time to do this review and this is the latest I’ve ever gotten it posted (still before the new episode though so at least there’s that) but please to not assume my lateness is reflective of my feelings for this ep because honestly my love for it knows no bounds

So if you have time before the new ep, see below the cut for a lot of screaming over Rich haha

Okay firstly let's not talk about how old I was in 2001 and how very NOT college-aged I was because that would make my gigantic crush on Rich just a little awkward haha. But omg this scene. The music and the remote control car with the laser and their OUTFITS omg and okay I desperately need to know what is going on with that goatee situation bc it looks so wrong and I don't know if that's just because I'm used to the beautiful beard or what. Given the time it would take him to grow that beard back, have they literally just put a prosthetic over his actual beard to make it look like unshaven skin?? I need to know. Hell, I’m gonna ask Ennis, he'll probably tell me lol. Tbh that guy has gotta be sick of seeing my name on his twitter notifications by now haha. But also lbr I kinda have a hard time believing Rich (or Gord, rather) didn't get straight A's anyway? I mean he's a genius, after all. Though I guess he had other, cooler things to spend his time on rather than study. Probably involving more lasers. And then aaaahhh they're caught (lbr those outfits are a crime in themselves haha) and while I didn't expect Rich's charm (lol, if it can be called "charm") to work on cops (or campus security?) literally who the hell tasers someone just for being irritating?? I assume that was a bit of artistic licence bc a cop would get strung up for doing that here. Plus you cannot tell me that Rich wouldn't have had lawyers (or law student friends, idk) all over that. But anyhow.

Reade. Dude. Get your shit together, because you're a damn mess. And so is your apartment, since you and your lil drug honey have apparently trashed the place. And now you're gonna be late to work, again? Ugh. He needs to grow a set and tell Nikki to leave and stay gone. Maybe he should get Tasha to do it since she's clearly got more balls than he does...

Speaking of being a mess, here's my poor baby Weller, who is messed up for a slightly more legitimate reason (or a myriad thereof). And so wait, a whole weekend has passed since the last ep? So Weller's only just telling Jane and Nas now? What was he doing this whole time? Maybe he was having a bender of his own in his apartment... but ugh Jane is immediately reassuring and tells him it's not his fault and that there was nothing he could do. Because she's nothing if not a supportive wifey. (Wait maybe he already told Jane over the weekend and he’s just telling Nas for the first time now. It’s possible so I’m running with it haha). Anyway he's clearly torn up about it though and you can tell his ~THING~ with Shepherd is building into what's going to be an epic arch-nemesis showdown at the end of the season. But for now, Nas has magically conjured some property records for 'Ellen Briggs', including places in Wisconsin, Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey. That's a decent number of states to have lived in?? Though I guess the whole army thing involves a fair bit of shifting around. With this new info, though, they can send Jane and Roman to the places and see if they trigger any memories, since they might have lived at some of them too. Which is kind of a bummer because it means that Jane's gonna be off with Roman and Nas and isn't gonna get to hang with her buddy Rich much :( 

Ooooh update: Ennis answered me, apparently they saved the '2001' scene for the end of filming, then shaved his usual beard down to the chin beard. Tbh I am personally offended by the murdering of that beautiful beard but he assures me it lives again now haha

Anyway back to the case, Patterson has just interrupted (which is perfectly acceptable/even welcomed whenever Nas is in the room) to say there's a tattoo they need to see. And ugh Weller's reaction is the sweetest, going all concerned big bro and telling her she should be at home. But by the look of things, she had the weekend off, which is a pretty good effort for her? And ugh she saw a doctor who cleared her medically but it's clear that she still needs to be checked out psychologically and ughhhh my baby I hate that this has happened to you. But anyhow because Patterson's a genius, she'd already figured out that the tattoo contained an equation which, for reasons that I am not smart enough to comprehend, would solve itself today and somehow involve Lithium and a secret society at Jameson College called Daedalus. Of course Rich went to a college that shares a name with one of my favourite alcoholic beverages. And again we have a perfect moment where Zapata gets to shine, explaining who Daedalus was and then adds "stop looking at me like that when I know things". Damn straight, Reade, show your awesome partner some more respect. She's a smart lady. And then he makes a joke about the college kids maybe mixing lithium with jager and doing shots and lbr Reade with your newfound proclivities you don’t really get to judge anyone for what they put in their body. But anyhow Patterson brings up a list of the Daedalus members, and who else appears on it but Gord Enver, aka Rich DotCom. The team manage impressively well at suppressing their groans-- though lbr, Weller was actually pretty quick to say that they needed to bring Rich in. He didn't even look for alternatives. Like sure, Rich does like to talk, an he has a soft spot for the team, but... aw Weller, were you missing your hairy homie?? 

Okay Rich has been onscreen for all of a second and I already can't deal with this. The others all there awaiting him like some kind of royal welcoming committee-- and he definitely ACTS like returning royalty. I'm so intrigued to know if his newfound religion(s) was just a spur of the moment thing when he heard he was going back to the FBI-- maybe he was like "hmmm how can I annoy them even more than usual" and then turned to his cellmates or whoever and was like ‘hey I need to borrow your stuff’ lol. Or maybe he'd just been bored in prison and the library was fairly limited? Either way literally everyone's faces here are precious, especially Jane, who I think tends to be more perplexed by Rich than anything else (probably because she knows she shouldn't like him but does). Speaking of faces, Weller's "hurry the hell up you idiot" face as Rich is praying in the interview room-- which looks like a very fun version of praying-- is priceless. Rich freaking ending his prayer with 'bless this mess' earned my first shriek-laugh of the episode, followed closely by the second when Weller asked for help and he answered 'say no more' and gracefully slid the bible/Koran (can’t see which) across the table. Honestly as much as I love all the characters on this show, Rich is always gonna be a special case for me. I just adore this little shit. Speaking of which, he's refusing to help on grounds that he's already busy investigating ‘the spiritual plane’ and ugh everyone here knows he's gonna help them, that he WANTS to help them, but he can never make things easy. Weller tries threats, Nas tries insulting him (you have much to learn Nas, lol) whereas Jane just gets straight to the point, showing him the formula and the tattoo on her back, knowing it will shock him free of his play act. (Though I love that he throws in "let he who is without sin..." to Weller when Weller is getting judgy. You know, he has a point weller, you aren't exactly innocent either buddy) Also omg "Oh Gott im Himmel" Aaaahhhh Rick speaking German is an instant favourite thing for me. Two things I love combined haha. And good lord, there is too much to love about this scene. Weller's "I'm already distressed" (possibly the most truthful thing he's ever said), Rich trying to cross himself with cuffs on then quoting Matthew '24:7', then getting to ominously foretell an impending war.... please make him a regular, writers, I need it

And then ugh yes we're in the bullpen which means Rich interacting with the rest of the team (while Jane rolls her eyes at him in the background lol). Patterson explains-- with interruptions from Rich, naturally-- that lithium is getting super pricey so technically it would be cheaper to invade another country (by deliberately starting a war with a fake terrorist attack) and steal theirs. They just don't know which country, or who's planning it. Tasha catches on first which is funny bc she's actually often the one most... in tune?... with Rich. She tends to be able to cut through his bullshit to the bottom line of a matter and I think he digs that about her. Also Weller is having trouble pronouncing Daedalus correctly haha. But anyhow Rich points them towards a guy called Zack Riley, who was one of the guys who broke into the college with him back in the day and who Patterson seems to have a little geek-crush on. Which Rich is not at all pleased about-- maybe he's worried about losing his spot as their favourite (term used loosely) billionaire computer genius lol.

And then what's this?? Rich insists they need Boston too, since he's also a member of Daedalus and can help.  Mmmhmm, I'm sure that's the reason, and not that Rich is trying to win him back haha, since these two definitely seem to be in the middle of a spat. But even better than Rich and Boston's relationship is that of Patterson and Boston-- the moment she walks in and sees him she literally makes an "Ughhhhh" sound. Oh my precious little supergenius sassmaster nemeses, this is gonna be gooood. And so it turns out there just happens to be an Alumni event on at Jameson right now that will be the cover for a secret Daedalus meeting, and since they already have two members, why not sneak in? I love that the conversation immediately gets derailed by Boston and Rich bickering ("how many times do I have to say I'm sorry??" "ONE time!" omg) before Weller tells them they'll be taking dates. And ugh Boston is being all belligerent like he's not going to help them and then bam Weller tells him he can have him transferred to a prison near LA so his parents can visit him more easily, and ugh he didn't have to do that. He could have made threats, like he made to Rich, but instead he recognised a way that he could make Boston's life better and offered it to him. Ugh my baby. Rich doesn't need any threats or bonuses; though he says he'll do it for spiritual reasons, as always, he's totally in it for the game. (And secretly for his love of the team and wanting them to approve of him)

Ughhhh Weller and Jane having their own private little conference in the corner of the lab (while Rich and Patterson fight over the touchscreen thing like siblings, which was all apparently ad-libbed and I'm delighted about it) and ugh Jane wants to stay and be with the team in case they need her but Weller asks her to go with Nas and Roman to the houses instead, because getting a lead on Shepherd is his biggest priority but he can't do this, only she can, so he's relying on her. And she recognises that, which is why she agrees to go (but before she does he grips her arm and looks at her with those expressive eyes and ughhh look at these two being a unit againnnnn). Then mom heads off while dad stays with the kids, assigning Patterson to Boston-- it's hard to tell who's less pleased about it, but I'm in love with Patterson's comic-con line (particularly since I met Ashley at Comic Con last year). And then omg "Rich, you take Tasha" "Which one's Tasha?" hahaha cmon, like you don't know, Rich. You love giving her as much shit as she gives you. You two are practically buds. But he's right, she's really not his type. There's only one person in the FBI who is (I'm excluding Jane from this because I don't think he considers her to be FBI). Though tbh I think even if Jane had been there as an option Rich would have still chosen Weller just for the fun of making him uncomfortable lol. 

And so this episode gives us one of the greatest gifts of the show so far: Weller and Rich, out on a date. Which so far has entailed Rich 'helping' Weller out of the car, and Weller informing him that he has just drunk water with a tracking isotope in it so he can't escape them. I love the "You are so controlling... Why do I keep coming back to you" because he really doeessss. He keeps coming back. And well, Weller is a control freak haha. Oh but the real brilliance comes from the other pair, Patterson ignoring Boston's politely extended hand as she gets out of the car and then implies that he and Rich broke up because Boston's 'the worst person ever' and ughhh I love the antagonistic relationship between these two. At least they can get through the door, though, whereas Rich and Weller are turned back due to something Rich did to piss someone off in the past. And Rich is all "Oh well. Hey let's go check out the carnival!" like this is a real date and ugh he is the cutest??? Literally how can anyone not love this man. Instead, to his disappointment, Weller makes him find a way to sneak in-- aka though old hallways/tunnels that he used to use to sneak in hookers. And then they have a ~moment~ as they bond over their mutual prankster school days. Well, at least Rich thinks they're having a moment. Weller just has slightly less heat in his voice when he tells him to shut up. Then they get to the door, which no longer has a handle, so Weller kicks it open. Literally kicks it off its hinges, in fact, and while I know Weller is strong, that was a VERY solid old door. No way its hinges would give like that. But anyhow luckily no one was on the other side of that door, because they'd be out for the count right now. And after such a dramatic entrance, security is immediately onto them-- but then an old friend vouches for Rich and sends away the guards-- before looking properly at Weller with what can only be described as a 'hubba hubba' gaze. Rich promptly introduces him as his HUSBAND Kurt Enver (*shriek laugh*) and lays his head on his shoulder. Weller valiantly tries to roll with it, but the other guy is like ‘nope, this guy's got hooker written all over him' and oh Weller, I bet you never expected to find yourself in a situation where you'd prefer to be Rich's husband??? And then they talk about his burly arms and how the other guy would 'back that stallion' and calls him a meat trophy and omggggg there is nothing I love more than hypermasculine men experiencing what it's constantly like for women to be treated like sex objects by other men. Although lbr I think Weller's enjoying this a tiny bit bc he didn't have to smile at all during that conversation-- he could have just stood there all strong and impassive-- but he was practically grinning and ugh this is the beeeessssst. Also he then talks to Zapata and Reade over the comms and man I hope they heard that whole conversation because that would make my day. Btw as a sidenote, they say that the party guest that tried to keep Rich out had a pharmaceutical company that raised the cancer drug prices by like 1000%. And again, this show is totally unafraid to pull things from the current news and pass judgement on them... 

Shepherd lived in Robinhood lane? I bet she picked it because she felt she was a Robin Hood that was helping the poor by taking down the rich. And lol Nas wants to go inside to see if it triggers anything for them and Jane is all 'what if it's a trap' and Nas goes 'With you two? I'll take my chances.' And wow that's the first likable thing she's said in a long time. Tbh she's right, too-- if I had to be ambushed, I'd want to have the mayhem twins there to protect me haha. But ugh Roman and Jane are unable to believe they could have grown up in such a normal looking place rather than like a barracks or something and it's so sad? And then Roman gets so upset because he can't remember anything and when Jane says 'I know how you feel' (which she does tend to say a lot) he yells 'then why don't you FEEL it??" and ugh damn Luke just SELLS all of Roman's emotions and I'm just so impressed with how good he is. But He has a point-- Jane doesn't feel what he feels, and that's partly because she's had time to adjust (she was definitely very upset in early S1) but also she knows things that he doesn't know. She has answers, and that makes a huge difference. I love that even when he gets aggressive, Jane doesn't back away-- she moves closer, speaking gently to him. She just wants to soothe him, but it's not possible, not when he's still missing so much of himself. And definitely won't be possible when it's revealed that she zipped him, because mannnn does he wanna kill Shepherd for that, so thing are gonna get really ugly when he leans the truth.   

WELLER INSTIGATES THE DANCING. I REPEAT, WELLER INSTIGATES THE DANCING. AaaaaaahhhhHHHHHH. Rich is craning his neck trying to see who their target is talking to and Weller is the one to pull him onto the dancefloor so they can surreptitiously (term used loosely since they're a little distinctive) move closer. I love these two, and I love that Weller's letting himself 'loosen up' a little. Tbh I think a part of him does actually like Rich. It helps that Sully and Ennis get along so well because they are just totally able to sell all their interactions ugh. Then they head up to the office to find the target's hidden laptop, and Rich monologues about the guy having stolen something from him, but in doing so practically set him on the path to being Rich DotCom. But think about that, Rich-- if he'd never wronged you, sure you could maybe be a rich famous computer wiz like him, but you would have never gotten to work with this team or meet your 'husband' Weller, or be here playing super spy right now.... so maybe he did you a favour?

Alone in the van, Zapata and Reade finally have a moment to talk, and she calls him out on not being himself today. Thankfully he doesn't just brush it off like he did a few days ago-- I think he's recognised that he needs to get out of the quicksand pit he's in but he can't do it on his own. So he tells Zapata, who he knows won't stand for it. And she won't; she's pissed and incredulous that he would be stupid enough to date (term also used loosely) the ex of the murderer who he helped to flee the city. Weller interrupts their conversation but I'm at least comforted by the fact that Zapata won't let this go. She will get Reade back onto the straight and narrow even if it means camping on his couch and sending away anyone that knocks on the door, dammit

While Rich and Weller find the laptop, Patterson and Boston are trying to figure out how to get the password off the key fob that the target carries with him at all times. After a bit of sniping, Boston has an idea, and grabs Patterson's hand to pull her over to the guy and introduces her as the love of his life, which confuses the guy (I loved his "I thought you were...", though hey cmon, bisexuality can exist, buddy). And lol Patterson is gushing over him which isn't completely fake? Like she did seem like a fan earlier. But meanwhile Boston has picked his pocket and shows her the code over the guy's shoulder, and of course she memorises the dozen or so digits in a moment and then is like 'okay great to meet you byyeeeee' haha before telling Weller the password over the comms. Nice work, team. Except for some reason the guards are suddenly headed their way, which is unfortunate. I do love the parallel to the hacking at the start, where Rich is on the computer and the person with him is like 'we gotta go!'-- and like that time, they get completely busted. And then when Zack (their target) comes in, Weller's about to reveal himself (not in the way Rich would enjoy) but Rich speaks over him, convincing Zack that he was there to steal back the software that he created and which made Zack rich. But omg I’m in love with his shouty voice and the fact his middle name is Meredith and Weller's FACE (literally this look of shock needs to be a reaction gif because it's AMAZING), but lol it all totally works, and Zack sends away the guards and apologises to Rich that he feels that way but makes it clear that he didn't steal anything-- they developed it together and he asked Rich to join him to complete it but Rich stayed to finish college, taking the 'safe way out', and you can see ffrom Rich's face that it's true. And okay Rich said earlier that nobody likes a prequel but seriously I would watch a whole movie about this backstory. For real, show, give it to me now. But anywho turns out their target isn't actually their target after all-- he no longer has any reason to need lots of lithium as he sold that part of his company-- and then he even offers Rich a spot on his team. Naww Rich wants to beat him up and it’s adorable

Aw Jane brings Roman and Nas back to her place to give Roman a chance to settle himself beore they look at any other places. Ugh she's such the caring big sister, getting him water and trying to soothe him and making Nas give him some space. She's so cute and self-conscious about her safehouse (still feel weird about her being back in the same one, given the bad memories of That Night) and he throws back that at least her doors can open when she wants-- and she tells him that they didn't always. Roman's situation is tough because I can see how much it would suck to be locked up and treated pretty much like a prisoner, but at the same time I'm just like 'please be patient, they're trying to trust you' and ughhh it just sucks for everyone involved. And then he seems to try to settle himself, and looks around, noticing the frickin huge bouquet of roses on the table beside the couch. He asks who Oliver is, which means she hasn't talked to Roman about him yet, which is kinda disappointing-- I want her to tell him all about Oliver and Weller and her feelings and I want him to be a confidante for her (and to help her realise that Weller is still the one she wants lol). And then the flowers trigger a memory-- he's in a flower van watching Weller and a dark hairded woman having lunch, and sends a text that says the target (Weller?) is in sight, and gets one back from shepherd telling him to proceed. Aaaaahhhh but with whaaaatttt

So their target isn't Zack, but it's still someone within Daedalus. Patterson uses a camera hidden in a makeup thingie to send video back to 'lenny and squiggy' in the van-- who can also apparently hear her and Boston's conversation, meaning they can hear him complaining endlessly abut Rich but also hear her blow up at him about all the things she went through with Borden and David and ugh my baby has been holding that in for so long. And then lol 'you feel better?' 'kinda'. I love that Boston was the one to be able to help her in a way that no one else had been able to, because while they were gently trying to coax her feelings out of her he just set off a mini explosion which finally let her breathe once it was off her chest. And then by moving back to his problems he shifts the focus off her. I love these twoooo ugh

Meanwhile Rich is also more focused on his own problems-- in his case, acknowledging that he did chicken out and give up on the software in order to finish his degree. But dammit I need more backstory here-- were there other reasons he stayed behind? A mother who desperately wanted to see her son finish college? An elderly grandparent that he was the carer for and couldn't just move to silicone valley and leave them behind? Weller tries to get him to refocus but instead Rich is the one trying to make HIM see clearly-- "don't waste your life on missions. You grab Jane now before somebody else does (...)" and ugh Weller's face. His mouth moves like he's trying to find the words to deny it all and tell Rich to shut up but he knows Rich is hitting the mark. He still wants Jane even though he knows how much he shouldn't. I wish we'd gotten to hear what he would have said in response to that, but then we're interrupted by the beginning of ~the ritual~. And then omg here's another shriek laugh as he says "this better not be a sex thing" and Rich replies "if it is we should probably go along with it right? Don't wanna blow our cover" and omggggg the look Weller gives him. I love these two SO MUCH. I decided to name them ‘Welch’ (I've seen WelCom around which is good too). Ennis approved of Welch tho so I'm sticking to it haha. 

Meanwhile Patterson and Boston managed to avoid being stuck inside for the ritual and are currently sneaking somewhere, and she gives him shit about ‘Boston Arliss Crabb’ being his real name-- she'd thought it was an alias like Rich's, but while everyone here knew Rich as Gord, Boston was just Boston-- and he retorts that she can't talk when her first name is.... aaaand she interrupts him because she sees someone up ahead. Dammit, writers, you're so cruel. Just tell us her name!! Clearly it must be something either quite unusual OR something totally whitebread and boring, since he's judging her for it. Personally I've always stuck with Tiffany, just because I like the thought of her having a super girly name (and one that does seem to get unfairly associated with being an airhead). 

Anyhow Weller and Rich try to leave to go join them to follow this guy, but the guards block their way--- so Weller kicks both their asses and steals one's gun, before heading for the exit with Rich in tow. I love the guy that pipes up "Oh you're definitely banned now, Gord" to which Rich throws back "Oh, suck it, Phineas." Which will now and forever be my new insult hahaha. And then I love the clever little aside "What's wrong with rich people?" "We get bored". Yep, that explains a lot of things happening in the world, doesn't it? Anyway mystery guy heads into another building, pursued by Patterson and Boston (though Boston pauses briefly to admire some art outside) and they step into the deserted building-- only to find him right there waiting for them. They try to talk their way out of it (cue another shriek-laugh at Boston’s "We came in here to have sex with each other" and Patterson’s little "Oh") but unfortunately their acting isn't that great haha. Their fighting is pretty good though-- Patterson takes on the guy with a gun while in heels and wielding just a crowbar, while Boston valiantly tackles the other guy and risks those delicate artist's hands to punch him in the face multiple times. Weller calls for Reade and Zapata, then tells Rich to hold out a hand-- Rich gets all excited thinking he's gonna get a gun, whereas I am inexplicably expecting them to just hold hands-- but instead we're both disappointed as Weller cuffs Rich to the art sculpture out front. But ugh he does it to protect him because he knows he's about to be running into a firefight and doesn't want to put Rich at risk??? Awww my babies do care about each other. I love the subtle nod to gun safety that Rich makes as Weller runs off too. No one can ever say this show isn't at least a little political. But omg Weller gets in there to help but Patterson and Boston have pretty much got it sorted, with her stomping on her guys hand in her heels to get his gun and Boston knocking out his guy with a can of paint. The grin and thumbs up that they share is the MOST ADORABLE thing ever. Are they friends now because I would be so happyyyyy

Outside, Rich's friend from the party finds him cufffed to the sculpture, jokingly asking 'a little trouble with your date?' which lbr is not that far off. But then poor Rich makes the mistake of being honest (that never works out well, bro, you know that) and admits to working with the FBI-- then immediately knows he's about to get a gun pulled on him since he's just found the bad guy. Who does pull out a gun, but just shoots the cuffs to free him, and can I just say I totally called it that Rich has a very girlish scream lol. Thankfully the guy 'needs him alive' for whatever reason so we're safe for now. He also knows that he's Rich Dot Com oooohhhh plot twistttt

Jane and Roman and Nas have found the restaurant where Roman was watching weller. In a strange display of trust (has Nas given Roman some of that tracker water too? I bet she has) she walks off to check in with Weller, leaving Jane and Roman alone-- conveniently meaning that if he has another flash, Jane will be the only one to witness it. Which he does-- he sees a couple hugging in the doorway (they look a lot like one of the couples that was dancing near Weller and Rich actually... same extras?) and then remembers Weller hugging the woman before she got in her car and Roman crashed into her with the van before smothering her. Okay firstly how do you have a crash in the middle of NYC in daytime and then SMOTHER the victim without anyone seeing?? And secondly that kind of asphyxiation leaves evidence such as finger bruises around the mouth-- she wouldn't even need an autopsy to note that. And thirdly oh my godddd she died on the way back from meeting Weller, which means he would have absolutely blamed himself, like 'If only we had met soemwhere else or picked a different day or if I had done this or that differently’ uuughhhhhh my poor babyyyyy why must he suffer so muchhhhhhh

And ugh Roman immediately tells Jane that he killed Weller's friend Emma (ugh in the memory he soothes Emma, telling her it's okay, and ugh thi is awful for everyone involved) and Jane is so horrified that they both had ties to Emma's death, since Emma would have known that Jane wasn't Taylor. And ugh my precious Roman wants to tell Nas straight away, which shows he's already a better person than he was before the wipe-- but Jane won't let him. She's protecting him from Nas and from repercussions of what he did, but she's also protecting Weller from getting this news abruptly thrust upon him. She promises that she'll tell him, and god I hope she will...

Poor Rich is being forced to hack into a computer at gunpoint, in order to open some kind of thing that gets them the stuff they need for a dirty bomb. The bombing itself will be blamed on the poor dead Bolivian guy lying on the floor in the corner-- and so the team is proved right, someone was trying to start a war between the US and another country. Rich is adorably doing his best to talk the guy out of it, saying that the FBI knows the truth and that he'll be caught, but the guy says that once there's been an attack on their own soil, "the truth isn't gonna matter". Wow, again with the politics. This show packs a very subtle punch. And omg Rich is still refusing because he may be a criminal but he doesn't hurt people (generally. I know he did kill that guy in 1x09 but shhhh) and then the baddie SHOOTS HIM IN THE FOOT. Oh Richy my baby, you don't deserve this. Thankfully the team will soon be to your rescue, bc they're tracking you right now (they think you went on the run, so disrespectful of them) and they also found a key thing from the campus lab-- which the tracker says is where Rich is, plus the baddie, whose phone they tracked. Of course hubby immediately jumps to the rescue, finding Rich while the other are still searching. Then omg the baddie grabs Rich and threatens Weller that his 'buddhist friend will get his third eye' and of course Rich has to correct him that that's actually a Hindu thing and both of them yell for him to shut up haha. But ugh baddie is using Rich as a shield and Weller apologises and says he can't let him get away, and Rich is all ‘uh that's okay, why are you apologising’--  and then bam Weller shoots him in the leg, causing him to drop and leaving the baddie exposed, who immediately surrenders (bc lbr, if a guy is willing to shoot a member of his own team, he'll sure as hell shoot you). Weller immediately calls for an ambulance for Rich though, so at least there's that. And lol Rich still manages to give him a jibe about being too obsessed with the movie Speed, which is a cool throwback and is just overall really cute and ugh these two

Nawwww Patterson and Boston deciding maybe they don't totally hate each other after all. And then she sees him looking at the nameplate on the sculpture-- he'd actually made it, back in 2001. I can't quite see how it represents 'Wind through the pines' but then I'm much more of an impressionist fan than a contemporary/abstract fan. But aw she calls him talented and asks how he became a criminal and he looks at Rich and says he followed his heart. Naaawww I ship itttt     

Awwww Mom and Dad visiting their lil boy in hospital. Such a brave boy. And omg Jane is such a sassmaster: "Redemption is its own reward" ahahahahahaaaa oh man I love their relationship. But lbr, there's totally gonna be a knock on Rich's door sometime soon and a nurse will come in and give him a little package that was dropped off for him, and he’ll open it to find a little plastic medal with HERO stamped on the front and he will cherish it FOREVER. Also lol when she pats his thigh does he say "geeez that's close?" aka being mildly sexual or am I just mishearing him saying “geez that hurts”? But then just as mom and dad are about to leave him all alone in the big scary hospital, he entices them with solving another tattoo, revealing that he knows exactly what they're up to-- which is fascinating?? Does he know why they're trying to solve them? How far does his knowledge go?? Will this turn out to be one of those things where someone could have found out all the answers they were seeking just by asking the right person? (like Weller showing Jane the yearbook that led them to Shepherd's real name?) And then ughhhh he only asks for Boston to be moved to minimum security. This guy is too cute sometimes. Also lol "I'm here every other week" yaaaasss please come back every week lol. I love that they've set him up to come back, ugh thank you writers

Oooh Patterson's read up on Dr Sun, apparently she was present in Nas's team at the NSA when the Sandstorm mole was revealed, had even expressed concerns about the person herself. But that doesn't mean we should trust her! Dr Sun is almost as shady as Nas is, definitely do not tell her ANYTHING. 

Lol Reade, coming home to a clean, empty apartment is a GOOD thing. Tell you what's not a good thing? Cocaine!! Gawd man what are you dooooooinggggggg. You need to see someone abput this self-destructive behaviour (not Dr Sun though) before you combust!

Awww Jeller strolling through the corridors together, joking about Patterson and Rich, being all super cute... and then he asks about Roman and she clams up. NO JANE NO. YOU KNOW WHAT LYING LEADS TO, PLEASE LEARN YOUR LESSON AND TELL HIM BEFORE HE FINDS OUT SOME OTHER WAY. YOU'RE ALREADY IN THIS SAME PREDICAMENT WITH ROMAN, DON'T BOX YOURSELF IN ON ALL SIDES UGHHHHH. Seriously honey you need to go to his apartment later with more beers, sit him down and tell him everything. He's not the same out-of-control guy that arrested you, I swear. Ughh. But ugh then he admits he actually kinda maybe enjoyed spending the day with Rich (oh how Rich would weep with joy to hear that) and then they bond over the fact that Weller got to shoot him, something they have all low-key (or high-key) wanted to do since the moment they met him haha. And ugh this is such a cute little jokey moment (remember when they couldn't even bear to look at each other and now there's heart eyes everywhere again ughhhh) and lbr Weller might even have been about to offer to get some drinks or something when they are-- as always-- interrupted, this time by a text from Oliver. Which in a way I'm happy about because it led to the casually awkward (or awkwardly casual) little exchange about her going on a date and gave Weller the opportunity to realise he doesn't really like the idea of Jane being out on dates with people who aren't him. Bet Rich’s warning is ringing in your ears now, huh buddy??

Oh I forgot this scene even existed. Apparently Nas and Weller can't figure out what the Truman protocol is, other than there might have been some meetings in the 40s. And then woahhhh here's a twist with the next scene: Borden is working with that Zack Riley guy, who is apparently a key player in Sandstorm's Phase Two! Boom. Hope this means Rich can come back and engage in some kind of hack-war with him to defuse the missile....      

Anyway phew done with like twenty mins to spare, time to get my livestream set up for today’s ep! 

[zeondevoll90]

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[crimsonblackrose]

Usually how my enjoyment of something goes is I consume media and then come here to see what other people say. Usually there’s something. Not always a lot but something. But I just watched 20+ episodes of a cartoon and there’s nothing I can find. And I’m in shock. I mean I guess I get it. It wasn’t good. But it was calming to watch after long days of trying to get my life together during immense change. 

It kind of reminds me of old cartoons where there’s no character development and it follows the exact same formula from episode to episode.I guess I’m spoiled at this point by newer cartoons that have these things. I had so many questions that didn’t get answered and I’m still in utter shock by how the season ended. 

Okay, so don’t laugh I just finished watching Polly Pocket. You know, that little toy where an entire world fits in this little plastic container and everything’s really tiny? Yeah, that Polly Pocket. They made a cartoon of her in 2018 and in the USA the entire thing is up on Netflix. (And it looks like it got green lit for a season 2)

So we have Polly Pocket who is an inventor and quite possibly the most athletic parkor kid ever. Her family has held a secret locket that’s gotten passed down through the generations. Her grandmother passes it along but it’s broken and Polly fixes it then learns she can use it to become small. Her grandmother warns her it uses a lot of energy and to not over do it but is glad she was able to fix it. (And leaves small but no one ever explains how she gets big again) She ends up sharing it with her friends Shani and Lila. 

Shani is nerdy but shy and with a great voice but needs a bit of encouragement. 

Lila is into fashion and trends. (And that’s it. Every comment or side quip she has is about clothes or style)

Every episode has Polly and her friends doing something, possibly losing the locket and then a bit of a panic to find it again. She tries to live up to her family’s history of using the locket to secretly help people (Like shrinking her grumpy neighbors house, repairing and repainting the entire thing and then returning the whole thing to it’s correct size while he’s been distracted, or by sneaking into a retirement home to throw a Halloween party because the nurse refuses to allow her residents to do anything but play bingo) and then every episode whether it needed the conflict or not has Gwen and Griselle Grande. And oh boy are these weird villains.

Gwen is a ditz, that’s it. She lives with her Grandmother Griselle who use to be roommates with Polly’s grandmother and has been after the locket for years. Why? Because she’s obsessed with miniatures and wants to shrink the entire town to complete her collection. That’s it. 22 episodes of that being the big bad of the series. A grandmother chasing little girls trying to steal their magical locket with no backstory beyond just really liking small things. So she spends a lot of time trying to capture or trick the girls and it just gets old fairly fast without any change. There is one episode where the girls decide to help Gwen become popular and you’d expect there to be a moment where while she’s free of her grandmother’s influence you’d learn more about her but instead she also just wants the locket. You don’t learn what happened to Gwen’s parents or why she’s living with her Gigi. Nothing. Also apparently Griselle is rather rich so like ?????

No one ever gets the locket for long enough to really cause too much damage let alone to see what they’d actually do with it once they have it. It remains a secret that Polly and her friends keep that their parents and families never learn about. Though it feels like in every episode the characters learn essentially the same lessons over and over again. Friendship and families are important and to listen to your friends and do good things. But the side characters and even Polly herself are pretty one dimensional and to go through 20+ episodes with little to no development in any character is a bummer. (except maybe Nicolas) I had higher hopes. 

Now for why the ending of it left me shocked. Spoilers if you want to actually watch the series. 

So the final two episodes are broken into parts. The locket stops working, grandmother visits and Polly is mean to her friends. She’s gained a new friend rather late through the series, Nicolas whose whole deal is he’s a paranormal investigator who figures out her secret (which was maybe one of the episodes I actually really liked because it was one of the few collection of episodes with a continuing plot of Nicolas realizing something was up and then learning/figuring it out) He’s offered the chance to share with the world everything he’s learned about Polly Pocket but instead he chooses to just be her friend. 

Anyway with the locket on the fritz Polly keeps shrinking and growing and then pushes her friends away because even though they’ve been with her every step along the way, saving her and her saving them they’re not Pockets. They decide to help her anyway and find her ancestors little tiny notebook and steal it from Griselle (trade it for a sandwich) and it explains how Littleton (yeah that’s the name of the town) was founded and how her ancestor got the pocket and used a special stone to grown and shrink and that there was a source in Littleton which is why it was turned into a town. 

Polly and her friends and grandmother head off to try and get a refill only for Griselle and Gwen to capture Polly’s grandmother. The rest find the source of the special rock crystals (They’re called Pockite) and see a woman trapped in them. They free her and she has a similar character design as Griselle and instantly goes after the locket. The kids manage to free themselves with the locket and escape as the whole place starts coming down around them and they leave the woman, Gruesome Grunwalda, who had used the locket to grow to a normal size in a cave that’s only exit is tiny. Which means they essentially left a woman they removed from stasis to die. It shows at the very end that she’s been so infused with the pockite that her eyes are glowing at the end because she survived the cave-in and vows revenge. Like Polly and her friends don’t have a clue if that woman survived at all but they show no remorse or concern, don’t even try to save her.  Way to go dark in the last episodes of a kids show.

[ilovefrancefan]

Based on a true story. The pay was standard. Room, board, and 150 euros per month. “Room” was a single on an 8th floor walk-up, with a communal bathroom in the hall. “Board” was lunch 6 days a week. The salary, less than $6 a day, largely went to the all the other meals I had mistakenly assumed would be included. But I wanted to stay in Paris for the summer, so I moved in the day after the interview. The room was a classic chambre de bonne, with a single bed and unobstructed view of Sacre Coeur. Bonne is short for bonne à tout faire, “good for doing everything.” As such, the advertised governess job was more housekeeping than babysitting. “We’ve never had an au pair,” Mrs. Dimas told me. “We are not rich. We can barely afford you.” She showed me how to vacuum the walls, which were covered in fabric. “My husband is a perfectionist,” she said, adding that it was he who insisted the bedsheets be ironed. The French word for perfectionist, when talking about cleanliness, is maniac. Pronounced “mahn-YAK.” She had a confidence, even when lying, that led me to double-check the driver’s license she’d sometime leave on the kitchen counter. Just 29? There were two children. Four-year-old Patrice, dark-complected and moody, and three-month-old Sidonie, blonde like her mother, and the subject of a christening in the works, with family coming from all over. I would arrive to clean up the breakfast table and get Patrice dressed for school while keeping an eye on Sidonie, who dozed off with a belly full of formula that we made with Volvic bottled water. (Madame herself drank Contrex, which was said to be slimming, while her husband, who owned a restaurant, preferred Badoit, the salty one that aids digestion. I found this very sophisticated, and was trying to decide which water brand best reflected the Parisian I was trying to become.) After dropping Patrice off at nursery school, I’d go back to the apartment where Rose-Annette, as Mrs. Dimas asked me to call her, would go over the housework to be done that day, ensuring I understood the words on the list. She would pull me a coffee from the noisy espresso machine, and then make a production of getting dressed and leaving. Rose-Annette returned for lunch most days around 1 or so, and we ate together. Usually Sidonie would be down for a nap. Rose-Annette showed me how to steam vegetables in the pressure cooker, and to bake clafoutis with fruit fresh she’d bring up from the market. “I can’t believe Americans buy mayonnaise,” she said one day, mixing a dab of mustard into her homemade mayo. I said, “I can’t believe you French eat horse meat.” I wasn’t sure if the playfulness I intended came across. “I adore horse meat,” Rose-Annette said. As a post-script, she added, “Vous.” She corrected me anytime I used the informal word for “you.” On Bastille Day I was “verifying” the laundry (no holiday for the help, so I was following instructions to check every button and zipper before ironing and hanging the clothes). Rose-Annette was picking out blue, white and red outfits for the girls when the phone rang. I guessed it was her mother, because she didn’t seem to have many friends. After confabbing on the christening, slated for September—something about how many pounds of candied almonds to order, the traditional accessory for baptisms—Rose-Annette took the phone into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. “What am going to do when she goes back to America?” I heard her say. “I won’t have any help! I don’t know. Maybe it’s good. It’s getting too cosy.” I was better off than the other au pairs that I met at the playground. Some would smoke, or vape, while our charges played, and we’d all wolf down snacks intended for the kids. I was the only one privileged to call madame by her given name, and to drink rosé with her at lunch. “We polished off a whole bottle,” I bragged to Birgitta, whose family used cloth diapers and made her serve dinner like a waitress. The families looked down upon us, and we upon them. “What kind of work is it that you do?” I asked Rose-Annette over lunch. “If only!” she said. In the ensuing sentences, she may or may not have told me. I missed a lot while pretending to understand. What did become clear, though, to my surprise, was that she wasn’t working. It was a full-time job to get her old position back, she said. First, she needed her papers. The word was similar to “husband” and “baptism gown.” Not in the way it sounded, but in that I heard it a lot, and was aware of its importance in this household, but never saw it. Of course, everyone in France talks about papers. It’s a bureaucratic country where one in five people works for the government, mainly shuffling documents. Everyone needed papers, no one had the papers they needed. Even I lacked papers. My visa had expired in May, not long after the final exam of the Sorbonne’s extension program. I was technically an “illegal,” as were most of the other au pairs at the playground. But none of us were concerned about it. We were white, and our host families were comfortable and connected. We had nothing in common with the bands of Afghans who would also congregate in parks, sitting in a circle, quietly passing around food. “I just purse my lips when I walk past a police station,” Birgitta said. We pulled French faces and imitated the high voices our madames used, especially when speaking to their husbands. Chasing papers, and the stamps to validate them—that was a whole separate task, conducted in separate offices or buildings–sent Rose-Annette out of the house most days of the week. The manila folder, where the papers were collected, migrated around the apartment like a mobile religious object. She took a day trip to Brittany to look through boxes in her parents’ house. All she found there was her old monthly metro pass. She made a cute embarassed face when she showed me the photo-booth image on it, of her flashing a peace sign, and wearing the skunk-stripe hairstyle popular in the aughts. “Awesome,” I said in English, and we slapped hands in an off-center high-five. “She’s meeting a lover!” Birgitta squealed. The love life of our madames was a big topic at the park. “No,” I said. “Not Rose-Annette.” For one thing, she primped more for her husband’s return from work than she did for her morning excursions. Rose-Annette was moony over Antonio, her Nino. She liked to stop in and hang out at the restaurant he owned, she confided to me, until he told her she’d have to put on an apron. “That, no!” she laughed. By August, the bottle of rosé was de rigueur at lunch. “My parents are being difficult about the christening,” Rose-Annette told me. “My father still cannot accept that I married a Portuguese man.” She shrugged her shoulders and lowered one eyelid in existential resignation. “Because of them, I couldn’t let Antonio gain nationality by marrying me. He had to be naturalized before I said yes.” I thought about this as I finished off a bowl of berries in sour cream. If Rose-Annette resented her parents’ disdain for Nino, why did she subject him to their requirements? That seemed so French to me. Rose-Annette loved to consider herself an outsider for having a foreign husband. She found it deliciously outrageous that they allowed Patrice to keep her hair cut in a short buzz. But, with their pastel candied almonds–”they’re expensive, butone must,” she had explained–they were as bourgeois as any of the other parents we dished about at the playground. Sometimes at lunch, after a couple glasses of wine, I got an urge to ask her about French traditions, specifically how she came to reject some and emulate others. But even if I’d had the language skills, I didn’t dare, and I would stand and pick up dishes. “Instead of attempting to change the country during your junior year abroad,” read a pamphlet handed to us at orientation at the Sorbonne, “try to understand and respect the cultural norms in France, even if you disagree with them.” I wrote home to my sister, “Rose-Annette doesn’t even buy baby food!” When the baby started eating solids, I spoon-fed her veal puree’d with butter. My last chore each evening was to wax and buff the girls’ navy leather shoes. A heatwave began. It was exhausting speaking staccato French all day. Going home to the States would be like taking off roller blades and walking without fear of wiping out. My au pair comrades started dropping out of sight, accompanying their host families on vacation to Normandy, Provence, the Riviera. Rose-Annette’s handful of friends also decamped, or so she said. The two of us took to watching a soap opera after lunch. “I’m different, she said during a commercial for a cut-rate airline. “I’d rather take a vacation in winter to someplace warm. Nino can’t leave the restaurant, and I prefer not to desert him.” I bought my return ticket online and, after bringing Patrice home from the crèche, slipped Rose-Annette a note across the kitchen table with the flight information. She gave me a “What am I going to do?” face that was endearing, even touching. She opened a bottle of Brouilly—a red served chilled—and invited me to stay for dinner: cervelles d’agneau. I wondered if I should go get my dictionary. Instead I walked to the living room, where Patrice had turned on the TV. I said, “We’re having lamb brains tonight.” She shot up her fists in the air and said, “Oui!” Back in the kitchen, Rose-Annette said, barely audibly, “My paper chase is coming to an end.” The manila folder, which I hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks, had materialized in her hands. “You’ll go back to university,” she said, curling the tab at the top, “and I’ll go back to work.” Now was my chance to get clear on her profession. Teacher? Secretary? One of France’s 13 million bureaucrats? She didn’t seem to have any passions beyond family and food. The theme music for a game show came on, and we both turned toward the TV. I raised my eyebrows. “Ah, oui!” Rose-Annette said, bringing over the bottle and two glasses. “Scoot over, Patrice.” As I walked down the stairs from my chambre de bonne the morning of the 31st, I wondered if Rose-Annette would give me a tip, or a gift, with my pay. Maybe we’d have a coffee together and she’d give me the day off to finish packing. She was dressed, with her cross-body satchel strapped on. “My mother is coming to stay for a week,” Rose-Annette said, clasping her hands to her head. “You think my husband is maniac? My mother is worse.” The list of chores began with vacuuming the walls. “I’ll drop Patrice at school so you have time for a top-to-bottom,” she said. I don’t know if I’ll be back for lunch because I’ve got one last stamp to beg for.” I blinked at the list. “Wow,” I said. “So you’re really going back to work.” She nodded yes, wild-eyed, and called for Patrice to put on her shoes. Sidonie was acting up. I couldn’t clean and entertain her at the same time, so I turned on the radio loud and let her wail. I sweated like crazy scrubbing mineral deposits off bathroom tiles. When I finished, I taped up the nozzle of the Cif, the white cleanser. I loved the smell. There wasn’t anything like it in the United States. As I was burying it in my purse, I heard the front door, and I froze. Rose-Annette appeared in the apartment hallway, looking alarmed. “She just started,” I said over the din, jumping up to turn off the radio. “I’ll go get her.” I calmed the baby by changing her diaper. I gave her a clean outfit, too. When I came back out from her bedroom, Rose-Annette was hunched over, opening a bottle of wine at the kitchen table. She looked up and said, “Are you OK?” “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Sorry. Just a little frazzled about my flight tomorrow. I want to get everything done.” Rose-Annette reached out for Sidonie with one arm and pulled off her satchel with the other. She smelled the baby’s neck and rocked her. I heard sniffling. “I can’t believe it,” she said, her voice an octave lower than normal, and gravelly. I suspected something serious, something about Nino, maybe. She couldn’t be that worked up just because the baby had been yelling. Or even that I was leaving. I tried to think of an excuse about the Cif, which she may have seen me steal. But then the baby stopped crying, suddenly, and I thought about Rose-Annette’s confidence, which had impressed me when we’d first met. I took a step closer and put my hand on her shoulder, a barrier neither of us expected to be crossed. With a face that reminded me of our soap opera heroine, she closed her eyes and leaned into my hand. She mumbled, “I lost all my papers on the metro.” The post Short Story: The Paris Papers appeared first on .

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