#*posts a delirious rant like a insane person*

[robiny]

my genuine 100% serious highly delusional reasoning why tomgreg can happen : okay so first of all gregs a desperate bitch looking for attention and affection, he relays on tom to keep him financially stable and i think he wouldn’t stab him in the back like he used to, my opinion hinges solely on the basis that he didn’t do that yet (he had chances) and doesn’t feel the need to, because now he doesn’t view tom as a threat, but as? yeah great question, i think he’s repressing anything that is not perfectly friendly and platonic but at the same time feeling these emotions the same, he sees Tom as a friend and kind of accepted the way he is (intense and humorous, it’s like they got to know each other) He wants his attention and praise so he acts accordingly, but obviously there is something lacking in this friendship they’ve grown into and in his romantic endeavors………, what a man with emotionally absent mother and a joke instead of a dad, a man who also recently have come to some big wealth, would want? Would physically ache for? that’s right babyy the big AA (aforementioned) attention and affection! i assume nobody has shown greg this much of it for some time, tom swooped in and shook Greg around like a bottle of orange juice, he literally only wants loyalty from him and ahem submission… let’s be real, whereas greg seeks out love and stability, roy siblings are pretty much done with both of them, shiv is dealing in her emotionally detached way with the shivorce and tom is doing some thinking, that can go either way: 1)he’s reflecting on their marriage and questioning how much of it was just his effort for it to work out, feeling his affection towards her betrayed, and dismissed, 2)pretty much the same deal but greg somehow finds himself amidst of it (he kinda already did lol), tom finds comfort in his presence (we sometimes grab a drink… okay loser bitch), and how to get over someone quickly?

anyways im just hazarding some guesses, can’t wait to see tomshiv divorce trial where shivs lawyer brings up tomgreg sex tape as evidence

[sadrichie7]

Richie’s insane rambling time: VTSOM ⚠️SPOILER⚠️ edition

Ok, I feel like I’m the only one who is super curious about this fact? What is the “accident” Victor got into that caused him to loose his arms and eyes and why did it happen? I’m sorry but knowing what we know about this world there is no way it was just a simple “accident” there has to be more factors at play. I’ve been developing on my own theory on why and what could have possibly happened. (Keep in mind this is just a theory about what could have happens in why that have been formed in my tiny reptile brain based on the limited time I’ve known about the game, so knowing me it’s all probably completely wrong and I’m doing Olympic level mental gymnastics, but hey, that’s the fun of theories to me)

We only really get one instance about him talking about his accident (and by talking I mean dodging the question). It’s when Vanora first wakes up without her memories and we see him in the guest room with her. If the player chooses to ask about his arms and eyes, he gets noticeably uncomfortable by the question before replying “Well what can I say? There are things in our lives that won’t always go our way huh?” then shrugs off the question. Now he could have very well just been caught off guard by such a personal question and didn’t want to talk about something that brings back traumatic memories with someone he just meet or he knows is an enemy to Vincent, sure, but I still think that interaction says something

Ok, so my main theory is going off of the “Victor is the Chaser” theory. However I don’t think Victor would willing be able to betray Vincent in such a horrible way. From their college memories and flashbacks, their bond seems very genuine in my opinion. So why would Victor willing work for the person that ruined his “purpose in life’s” life. Now he could have been with Myers from the very beginning, has never cared about Vincent, and is just a very good actor. However that would mean he was like 18-19 at oldest when joining Myers and was told to keep an eye Vincent (whom was in college at that time to, he wasn’t a threat to Myers yet, he wasn’t even hired by them yet). I also doubt he would forfeit his memories to make Draco if he didn’t care about Vincent. So why then? I think he’s being forced to be the chaser under threat of something (if it’s his own life, Vincent’s, or something else entirely). I believe Myers had something to do with his “accident”. If Myers wanted to use him as a guinea pig to test the robotic limbs and eyes they may have fabricated an “accident” (similar to Vincent’s car crash), or they could have just called him into a room before brutally mutilating him and threatening him with something (like his life or someone else’s). So now he’s trying to help Vincent get his revenge on Myers (whom also wronged him as well) while reporting back to them against his will, likely trying to keep information as vague as he can. He may feel that his is in debt to the Myers corporation (to me it’s the most likely place that would have made something so advanced) for his arms/eyes and also follows for that reason. If I remember correctly he had his new arms/eyes before the G4 incident as we see in the flashback with Winston. Therefore his “accident” happened before Vincent was turned into a cyborg and had a reason to hate the Myers corporation. So he may have just been someone Myers tested on before then he was made to become the chaser to keep an eye on Vincent.

Again i may post a more clean and properly formatted version is this insane rant (I wrote this during a four hour car ride so I was pretty delirious lol) and going on my past luck with theories in works of media I like, it’s probably completely off and I look very dumb to everyone right now, but like I said, I think that’s the fun of theories when in comes to things like books, shows, games, ect. Putting together little puzzle pieces yourself and seeing if you happen to be right, and if your not, oh well! Theorizing about works of media and it’s world/plot says to me that you really do enjoy it! It’s just another way to show you’re so passionate and interested in it.

So moral of the story……. Theorize all you want about media and don’t be discouraged if your wrong! The fact you have so much thought to your theory in the first place shows how much you love that piece of media! Part of the fun of puzzles and mysteries is learning along the way, and it’s especially true with works like VTSOM. Don’t think your “not a true fan” or something if you didn’t subscribe to a certain theory or your isn’t correct. Hindsight is a powerful! So yeah that’s my rambling, it’s probably full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar but that’s how I do thing lol.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 315: I Didn’t Expect This to Blow Up

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi was all “guess which plot that you thought was dead is actually not dead and is making a comeback!” and we were all “EVIL HPSC??” and he was all “girl you know it,” and that’s the story of how we got a sexy Lady Nagant flashback with lots of guns and murder. Flashback!Lady was all “gotta murder peeps to preserve the people’s trust,” but then a little while later she was like “actually wait that makes no sense,” and so she shot her evil boss and they sent her to jail. Back in the present, Deku was all “okay fair, the hero system might in fact be a little fucked up, but hear me out... have you considered not helping AFO take over the world so he can murder like a bazillion more innocent people??” The chapter ended with the not-all-there Overhaul finally revealing himself to Deku, and I honestly have no idea where this is gonna go.

Today on BnHA: In what is unfortunately the single worst plan ever concocted by anyone in BnHA, Nagant is all “I’m going to try and get this Deku kid to panic and freeze up by putting someone in mortal danger.” Deku is all, “[doesn’t panic and freeze up at the sight of someone in mortal danger].” Nagant is all “omg no way.” Deku, who is now all of a sudden being so OP that even I have to acknowledge that it’s OP lol, is all “[smashes Nagant’s gun arm to bits]”, which sucks but is also really cool, and which also apparently makes Nagant decide that she actually likes this kid after all. Deku is all “NAGANT I REALLY LIKE YOU AND THINK YOU’RE GREAT SO PLEASE JOIN UP WITH ME AND STOP BEING EVIL.” Nagant is all “aw shucks (✿ •͈ᴗ•͈) well okay then” and everyone is all “( ･◡･) ✰ ( ˆᴗˆ ) ( ᵘ ᵕ ᵘ ⁎)” and then Nagant FUCKING EXPLODES LIKE AN EGG IN THE MICROWAVE AND FALLS TO HER DEATH!!!! except not really because Hawks saves her??? In conclusion, (a) THE FUCK, and (b) AFO TURN ON YOUR LOCATION I JUST WANT TO TALK.

so I have to tell you guys something, which is that barely ten minutes after I made that “please don’t send me spoilers” post the other day, someone replied to the comments in a stunning fit of “tell me that you’re twelve without actually telling me you’re twelve” energy and posted what seemed to be the copy-pasted spoiler summary from reddit or twitter or whatever lol. so here is my good news/bad news rundown of all that

good news: I have very well-conditioned ABORT!! reflexes and have trained myself to immediately look away from the screen (usually in dramatic fashion) as soon as I realize that whatever I’m reading is a spoiler

bad news: unfortunately as I was subsequently deleting said comments, I accidentally read the very last one

good news??: said spoiler was so unbelievably, absurdly over-the-top that I’m almost positive this person was just trolling. like, there’s just no way lmao

bad news: but in the unlikely event that it is true I will absolutely lose my shit I swear to god

(ETA: “NAGANT DIES.” that was the spoiler I read lol. like, literally all I read from the person’s comments was “My Hero Academia Chapter 315 Title: “Beautiful Words.” Chapter starts with...” and then I noped out of there, and then of all the comments to read as I was deleting, it had to be that one lol. I seriously was just like “SURE, JAN.” all “just how gullible do you think I am” sob. but I was wrong. a troll, but an honest troll they remain.

but anyways like I’m pretty sure Nagant isn’t even actually dead lol, so in the end this whole little adventure doesn’t even have a point to it, but for me it was a journey!)

anyway, so there are apparently two versions of the chapter today?? no idea what the difference is, but I’m going to go with the Bean version, because it’s the one at the top and I don’t feel like making decisions today

huh, so Overhaul is actually more coherent than Horikoshi was letting on

look at him having a whole back and forth conversation with her. side note, how is he still this jacked when he’s been sitting in a cell doing absolutely nothing for the past six months

anyway so he says he’ll go with her on one condition. I wonder what that condition could possibly be. do you think it could be the thing he literally hasn’t shut up about ever since he reappeared lol

yep! and damn -- maybe this guy will surprise me after all

still would be nice if you also felt a bit sorry for the little girl you tortured and traumatized, but this is something at least. maybe Deku will yell at him for that other stuff lol

(ETA: also can’t help but wonder if he wants to make amends because he put him in a coma, or because his plan was a failure and ended up destroying the family. just hoping you’ve finally had that “hurting other people is bad” epiphany dude.)

anyways so now Nagant’s arm is transforming again, and this particular transformation happens to be the only truly unsexy thing that Nagant has done thus far so I’m just gonna skip right on ahead lol

aaaaand we’re back to the delirious ranting

buddy. just. read the fucking room, guy

wow she really is aiming at Overhaul, then. those theories were spot-on

damn she’s really out here all “it really fucks with kids’ heads when you kill people right in front of them and make them blame themselves” like yo

I’m picturing her saying all this in a very loud stage-whispery tone while making very significant eye contact with Deku lol

uh oh but wait

um. okay. who’s gonna tell her. Nagant I might have some bad news for you about the kid you’re trying to capture here. specifically about the way he tends to do the opposite of what you’re thinking that he’s about to do

holy shit

so it’s basically just “tap x repeatedly to charge up your attack” lol

and okay, so that’s cool and all, but is anyone else wincing at the thought of what that must be like on his knees. oh to be young

anyway, but so to the surprise of basically no one, Deku did not, in fact, freeze. I am very sorry, Nagant. he’s just like this

LMAO

someone wanna tell me how getting yoloed in the fucking ribs by this fucking slingshot kid moving at literal sniper bullet speed is in any way even remotely better than getting hit by the bullet itself lol

(ETA: this is 10x funnier now that we know the bullet wasn’t even gonna hit him lmao.)

anyway so now Nagant is having an extended “!?!?!?” reaction about how Deku just moved with no hesitation, and I’m starting to get an inkling of fear that the rest of this fight isn’t going to go very well for her and maybe that’s what all the “hoo boy” is about

oh my god Deku are you about to Gomu Gomu no Rocket yourself at her you insane little man

now Three is popping up again and he’s all “I see you’ve learned your lesson and are now only using three quirks at once instead of five” like with all this effusive praise about how great and badass Deku is and sob, okay, yeah. this chapter is basically one of those machines that shoots tennis balls at people, except instead of tennis balls it shoots hot piping discourse

OH MY GOD

YOOOOOOOOOO but also, NOOOOOOOOOOO

lol oh my god it’s literally two opposing reactions at once wtf. do I love this or hate this. like just for once can Horikoshi actually let a badass lady character win their fucking fight without getting their arm ripped off, BUT ALSO fucking look at that absurdly cool “SMASH” onomatopoeia though. it looks like it’s about to float right off the page holy shit that’s some seriously good art

anyway so is this really the end?? do I need to break out my ಠ_ಠ faces

lmao okay yeah I can definitely see how this would piss a lot of people off

he basically one-shotted her and she’s all “damn this kid is so amazing that I’m about to do a complete 180 turn on all of my previous angst” lmao. Horikoshi is really shounening it up today

on the plus side though, maybe this means there’s still a chance for her to join up with him after all? unless that spoiler was true lmao, then all hell is gonna break loose

YESSSSSSS

OH MY GOD AND HE SAYS THE BULLET WOULDN’T HAVE DONE MORE THAN GRAZE OVERHAUL ANYWAY, wow, I’m actually more relieved by that than I would have expected. I mean I would have forgiven her either way, but it means that there was still more hero in her than she was letting on

YES!!! FUCKING YES, THANK YOU

lol but I mean, it’s also like, “oh so today they get to have brain cells”, thank you so much lol. sometimes it’s really hard to tell which times we’re supposed to question these character decisions that seem dumb, and which times we’re just supposed to full on embrace them and switch off our critical thinking

but okay, so in this case it really was Nagant going easy on him on purpose, and not just her fucking up for no good reason even though she used to do this for a living and was the best in the game. and I know in this case it’s probably just Horikoshi giving us some consolation headpats to soften the blow of her losing so abruptly, but you know what, shit. I’ll take it

also you guys the light is coming back into Deku’s eyes again for just a moment here and I’m having feels about it?? the way it still comes back when he’s reaching out to save someone, and following his own hero path instead of the much darker and lonelier Christopher Nolan path that’s been laid out for him instead that he never wanted?? it’s both reassuring and also very sad

YESSSSSSSSSSS

DO IT LADY OMG PLEASE?? PLEASE COME BE HIS NEW IRRESPONSIBLE ADULT SUPERVISION YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO

AHHHHHHH SHE’S GONNA DO IT AHHHH

p.s. I am now absolutely scared shitless that that spoiler was actually true sob. swear to god, I will throw this manga into a fucking volcano. but we’re almost at the end of the chapter and this seems just WAY TOO GOOD to be true fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck f

UCK

NOPE NAH SEND IT BACK, NOPE, NUH UH, DIDN’T ORDER THIS. “GULLIBLE” OKAY FUCK YOU?? “COUNTERMEASURES” NOPE, DON’T NEED ‘EM, WE’RE ALL FINE HERE. WE’RE ACTUALLY GOOD SO YOU CAN JUST GO, OKAY. PLEASE

fuck, lol, I don’t wanna do it. I don’t wanna scroll down what have I ever done to deserve this oh my god

WHAT THE HONEY-ROASTED FUCK

WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING VOLCANO IN ICELAND THAT I KEEP SEEING ALL THESE PICTURES OF. WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT. LET’S GO

ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW

can someone please give AFO a really good, sharpish kick in the balls. just really let him have it. I’m so tired, what the fuck

-- ARE YOU KIDDING ME LOL WHAT

bro. I was literally going through my Excel folders to find the spreadsheet about female characters in BnHA that I made back when Midnight died. was gearing myself up for a wholeass rant. and honestly I might just let all of that continue simmering on low to keep it warm just in case lol, because to tell you the truth I have absolutely no idea what’s happening right now

my girl straight up does not have a face. she used to have a face. people usually need those, idk. like, even if she’s alive, her gorgeous eyebrows are definitely not making it out of this and I’m gonna throw a funeral just for them

how the fuck did AFO just blow her up?? how did he know what was going on?? and if he had a quirk that could explode people at will, why is this the first we’re hearing of it?? you’d think that might have come in handy at Kamino or Jakku, like what

(ETA: present!me, who’s had more than three hours of sleep and can now actually remember facts about the series, would like to remind past!me that AFO gave Nagant a quirk, and so this is probably just more Vestige shenanigans now on his part. that’s also probably why Air Walk suddenly stopped working out of nowhere. still doesn’t explain why he doesn’t go around blowing people up more often though but maybe he thinks it’s gauche.)

Hawks just straight up out of nowhere. just Mirioed his way straight into the chapter just in time to be too late sob. here I was looking forward to seeing your face when Deku showed up with his new best friend. can’t believe Horikoshi deprived us of that moment

on the plus side, WELCOME BACK, HAWKS’S FEATHERS. I have no doubt that in this chapter of Deku being an almighty threequirk-mastering god, and Nagant losing anticlimactically only to be immediately blown up because girl characters in BnHA can only be cool for one fight and one fight only, there are still some people who are focusing solely on the “how dare Hawks get his wings back when he is a MURDERER this is an outrage what about CONSEQUENCES” discourse, and to hell with all the other discourses lmao

anyway, so yeah. wow. and now it’s just occurring to me that maybe the real reason why Overhaul is there is so he can get a head start on that amend-making by actually doing a good thing for once in his life, and using his quirk to heal Nagant. assuming he can still do that

and so now Horikoshi has got me out here actually rooting for Overhaul. you know what, on that note I think I’m just gonna go ahead and call it a day sob

[philosophicusabicus]

Diaries in the Loony Bin

The Loony Bin is a group of individuals who could be called “friends”, but maybe that’s too suggestive. At any rate, this group has a diverse set of opinions on politics and sports, with voices across the political spectrum and through many sports. The intersection of politics and sports, in contemporary society, is met with disdain; however, the members of the Loony Bin seek to make it an acceptable space of discourse. Every week, when the asylum isn’t particularly chaotic (there can be no promises as to consistency of date), an entry will be posted, documenting the developments of thought and culture within these walls. Where many see lunacy as a vice, it is seen as a virtue here. The diary herein is will capture all of the voices of this group, but it will use only one narrator, striking many different chords and tones. Topics will change with rapidity, so be always on edge. Though, nothing will get too toxic, as most topics will be treated rather lightly, aiming at parody. We’re in the Loony Bin after all.

Entry #1:

Where saner minds prevail in the Loony Bin, there is the same old chatter about Brady; about how the Bucs will repeat; about the prospects of Tampa’s young roster. But, in the deeper corners of the Loony establishment, there are whispers of a new team in town — a team in the same conference which has been biding its time of late. The St. Louis R… Los Angeles Rams. This team has the defense of a Trump supporter pressed about another investigation; and they have Stafford now, who can be a completely average version of himself and still be better than Goff. They made the playoffs last year with the latter under the gun: by trusted and tried Loony bin logic, there is no world where they don’t fare better this year.

Alas, as we approach the eve of the NBA Finals, we would be remiss not to reflect on the curious outcomes of the playoffs we have just witnessed. The Suns are on the cusp of their first finals in 28 years, walking over a series of teams who were hobbled to their bones. 1st round against LAL, practically no AD. 2nd round against Denver, no Murray. 3rd round against LAC, no Kawhi.

Is anyone else seeing a curious trend here?

This is like the string of upsets that led to the election of Biden in 2020 — think Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona, among others. Speaking of Biden, nobody can say they’re overly happy with what he’s accomplished in his term so far, but then again many are still aboard the “anything is better than Trump” bandwagon. So that mass is just easy to please.

I have a story to relate. A guard patrolling the halls on a foggy evening last month overheard in a ward unit a patient on a delirious soliloquy. Ranting and raving was usual for this patient deep into the night, but this rave, this was different. “Trump’s rhetoric.. his mannerisms.. his behavior.. it is unfit for the Presidency. Nothing need be pinned on him from a legal standpoint for it to follow that he does not meet the standards of the Chief Representative of the United States. If you were to quantify the number of immoral exhibits he has demonstrated, however insignificant, they would add up to a hefty sum: a demeaning and vicious personality. A personality unfit for such a high position. If we have to pick political poison, let’s pick the lesser of the poisons.” The guard began to hear an uncorking of caps, a sloshing of potions, and a loud thump of a corpse, crashing to the floor.

There was a rampant disease going around the property, from hall to hall, greensward to greensward. Its many and various symptoms included: involuntary association with Big Tech, amnesia about mortgage loans and student debt; anxiety related to pressures of the labor and financial markets; headache and fever regarding quality of romantic life; and a strong preoccupation with taking selfies.

The Bin was in lockdown and every non-faculty member had to isolate in their respective wards. Hence, if the patients were to communicate to each other, a new way medium had to be contrived: they call it “Loonygram”.

As I understand it, though admittedly I understand it very little, one performs some kind of slippery action to facilitate the correspondence between users. From what I have gathered though, it has little chance of success without being a certified maniac. Many prefer the pleasure they derive from their own babbling monologues.

While a doctor was trying to rationalize his patient one day he got carried away on a sermon of his own: “Why the fuss over kneeling anyway? Just because some action affronts a symbol you respect, doesn’t mean the intention was to disrespect that symbol. Differentiating actions and their outcomes from intentions goes a long way out there. There was no intent to disrespect what that American symbolism; that was just a byproduct of an effort trying to gain respect for another symbol: social equality”

The patient, strapped to their chair looks helplessly up at the doctor and asks “So… that helps me in here how?”.

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t. Look, it aint all rational out there either, if you catch my drift”.

The patient scrunched his eyes circumspectly at the doctor before his attention was drawn to a fly buzzing on the adjacent wall.

These are curious times within these walls. An episode occurred on the Loony grounds one morning in which one patient wandered over to another, unprovoked, and yelled “my team is winning it all this year!”. The other patient, startled, replied “w..who is your team?” “w..what sport is this even?”

“I am at liberty to express myself; I have the first amendment behind me after all!” cried the provocative patient.

“Indeed, you do. But only where it doesn’t infringe on the freedoms of others” observed the second patient.

“And at what point is that?” jeered the first patient.

“Frankly, I’m not altogether sure. But let’s come to this decision mutually before you spam me with your raptures about the Yankees. Your favorite team is the Yankees, ya?

“How could you possibly.. know?”

“I saw you in the cafeteria last October, forking your pork chops like a feral animal; not long after Gleyber struck out for the 5th time that night either; I saw it in your eyes.”

How that altercation ended remains to be seen, since I merely borrowed it from the journal of another author, who has been missing ever since.

In other rumors, it is with great pain and sympathy that I report an exorcism which took place some time ago in the health dormitory on the fifth floor, all dust and eerie. The patient was being consumed by the demons of his loyalty to the Cowboys.

The pastor on hand, tending to his duties as exorcist, was on the verge of performing his most solemn task, when the possessed man said, as he foamed at the mouth “Elliot… Elliot”

“Excuse me? Elliot? What… Elliot’s going to be the most overrated running back in the league? I’m with you there” laughed the pastor, stuffing a hankerchief in the man’s mouth to muffle his screams.

“Dak. Dak. Dak. Back”

“Dak or not, there is a constant with the Cowboys. At the end of every regular season, they’re barely scratching playoffs.” applying the shock therapy he was taught in his vocational school.

“D..depth a..and.. youth.. a..at receiver” coughs the patient as he loses consciousness for the final time.

“Death and youth make a believer? That’s some sound philosophy my man. You’re impressionable when you’re young so that makes sense, and you live with more respect and appreciation for life as you get old and nearer to death. Truly well spoken”

“This one is one of the better cases, Mary” the doctor says as his assistant walks through the doors.

Tensions are up to a fever pitch these days. Just yesterday, two psychiatrists were shoving each other over whether the condition of the patients is binary or not.

“Their conditions are binary!? That is a very limiting way to view things. If the patient does not want to identify their condition as “sick”, and feels like they want to be labeled ‘sort of sick I suppose’, then the more power to them.”

“No, that is infeasible. If we do not have a clear threshold for their condition, then how can we administer their treatments? At what point? It would be arbitrary.”

“There is no essence of “sickness”; you can’t just define it in any terms you want, just so that it aids your goals; besides, they’re not really sick, sort of.” The insane man, lying on the bed for the entire course of the conversation, just looked blankly and confusedly at his doctors, thinking “so the stories you hear on the outside are true, these people really are Loony huh?”

Some disturbance is happening on the floor below me now, so I must close this entry and I will write another day…

[kyliwrites]

the exit's the other way

ship: davekat (no quadrant/all quadrants; established relationship)

prompt: "you know what!? fuck you. i'm out of here."

"*name.*"

"WHAT?!"

"the exit's the other way."

setting: earth c (canon universe/post-canon, no epilogues)

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are just the absolute god damned best at riling loud, insufferable aliens up to the brink of delirious rage. Because the way their gray cheeks flush and their eyes darken is so perfectly entertaining, you take it upon yourself to annoy them into paradox space and back.

Karkat, for example. All it takes is the bare minimum of poking and prodding at his favorite romcom actor and SHABAM. Little guy's all fuming and everything; you can see the puffs of smoke coming out his ears and the attractive way his fangs slide out over his lips. He's glaring in that wide-eyed furious way of his, anger hot enough to brand you right on the asscheek like a motherfucking cow. Moo, bitch.

You hardly insulted him, but Karkat's like that: hypersensitive, petty, an asshole, totally adorable when he's mad. He's got his flaws (who doesn't?), but with you, he doesn't try so hard to cover them up. You love him all the more for that.

Presently, he's ranting about the flaws and inaccuracies of some human film you alchemized into existence for him, and he's been doing so for approximately four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. You haven't been paying much attention, if you're being honest, because you've been too busy mentally recounting everything else about those four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Why? Narrative reasons, yo.

You tune in at the last second and catch his metaphorical hands instead of the hilariously unironic picking apart of whichever movie you picked for him (you can't even remember at this point; you've spent all three years since the game ended finding progressively shittier films, if only so you can experience the pleasure that is Karkat's ranting).

"-and are you even FUCKING listening, douchenozzle!?" Comes Karkat's infuriated, raspy interjection. It throws you bodily from your thoughts, and you blink from behind your shades in an effort to clear your head.

"Nah," you answer honestly once you've regained your bearing. "Shit got more boring than watching American football with the boys on a rainy Saturday night. Dude goes in for a tackle and skids across the field tragically. Eight jocks in a row go flying and it's like a god damn bowling alley up in this bitch. The boys start swearing like some motherfuckers, but you, a renowned Football Connoisseur, shake your head solemnly rather than go batshit insane over the slip-n-slide conga line like, you know, a normal person. Football people, bro. No humor. No sense of irony."

"I understood approximately FUCKALL OF THAT, asshole. Speak English or Alternian, thanks a whole fucking lot. What gog damn language was that!?" Karkat looks you up and down with a scrunched up expression, as if deciding where to maim you first. You straighten involuntarily underneath his gaze.

"...S'called Texan, m'dude."

He recoils melodramatically. "Texan!? Is that a joke or some bullshit? Some kind of dead language you somehow learned? Where the fuck is the TEXAN and who came up with a name that hideous and disgusting?"

"No, Karks," you wheeze. "Texas. The people from Texas are Texans."

"Why do I care about your overcomplicated alien linguistics!? Answer my question, Strider," he demands, crossing his arms. His nails, bitten down yet still sharp and threatening, dig into his sweater.

"I'm from Texas, dude. You know how there were, like, different dialects on y'all's murderplanet? English is kind of like that. Texans have huge accents and are famous for being racists, people from Jersey are famous for being the shittiest people, Alabamians marry their relatives, etcetera etcetera."

After a moment of thought, Karkat nods seriously and says, "That explains why you're such a xenophobe."

You choke. Of all the things you'd been expecting him to say, it definitely wasn't that. You reply eloquently:

"W-what!?"

"You heard me. You fucking space racist."

"Oh my jesus shit, rude," you protest vehemently. "I am not space racist." Not anymore, at least.

Karkat flashes a rare fanged grin at you, his eyebrows lifted, and you realize he's only joking. The smile is gone as soon as it came, one of those blink-and-you-miss-it gifts. "Space racist." He nudges you with one elbow. You nudge him back.

"Dude," you say, "don't make this a thing."

He pushes you forcefully, hard enough for you to have to grip the arm of the sofa you're sitting atop to remain seated, in response. Oh, it is on.

You tackle him and he lets out a paralyzed squawk when you roll off the couch and into the floor. He lands on his back with an "oof," and you pin him down by the shoulders. He bares his teeth, but the smile breaking out over his face ruins the effect.

"Get off me, asshat, I'll fucking kneecap you," he barks, still grinning like an idiot.

"You won't." You're grinning like an idiot, too, to be fair, except yours is more fond than shit-eating. Dave Strider, maximum sap. Whod've thunk.

He surges forward suddenly, without warning, and uses his legs to flip you onto your back; it knocks all the air out of you, but you manage a cackle and a "fuck you" anyway. He pins your arms above your head and sits on your chest.

"Say fucking uncle, Strider."

"That's not how that game works!" You wheeze. "You don't even know what an uncle is!" He smirks—the sight makes your heart flutter like the cat getting showered in affection meme. The thought distracts you and you briefly ponder making a Karkat version, but you aren't given the reins to think very long because he flicks your nose.

"Ow! Dickhead, that hurt—"

"Dickhead yourself! Your fucking bony ribs are digging into my ass!" He wrinkles his nose and shifts, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit.

"What ass?" You demand in jest, which is the worst thing someone pinned beneath the person they are making fun of could possibly say. He narrows his eyes and you manage a "shit wait no" before he snatches his hands away.

You've lived together for all of three years, four months, and seventeen days. He knows your weaknesses as well as he knows his own, your fears, your discomforts. He knows what you like, love, and hate. He knows when to push and when not to push. He gets you better than anyone, even your own psychoanalytic twin sister (you'll have to blame that one on the fact that she and her wife don't leave their house unless they're going to the alien procreation cave).

So, that's why he decides to tickle you. Because he knows you throw an absolute shitfit when it comes to being tickled.

You hunch your shoulders when his hands descend upon you and try to roll yourself into a tight, impenetrable ball to escape his fingers, but he's fucking relentless. He knows how sensitive you are; it's the perfect revenge.

In between your wheezing laughs, you can barely manage words, but you cough out a "dude," "bro," and "dudebro," then, finally, "Karkat," before he pauses, rasps, "You did this to yourself," and raises his hands threateningly again.

You blurt, "Uncle! I'll say uncle just don't do it please dude I have never done anything wrong ever you know this right? I—"

He leans forward, silencing you. "Take that bullshit you said first back, Strider, or your plea to your human familial figure is null."

"Fine! Fine, I take it back. Listen, bro. You definitely don't not have an ass. Like, in fact, that ass is so ripe I can't believe anyone would ever accuse you of not having one. That's so fucking disrespectful. How dare those blind motherfuckers? I'm waving my fists at them right now. I will singlehandedly smite all Karkat's assphobes, my man. I'll raise my assphobe smiting trident and pulverize all these thotass sons of bitches right here, right now. I'll do it, I will. I'm no coward. I'll protect that magnificent rear with everything I have, dude. Those glorious buns. The assnihilator—"

"Shut the fuck up oh my gog I can't believe I fucking brought this upon myself." Karkat rolls off of you and clutches said glorious buns. Apparently your ribs really did hurt his ass. Huh.

"You did bring it upon yourself," you agree. And then, because you still aren't done pushing his buttons and want to be an insufferable piece of shit, "So, you didn't say what you thought of the movie."

He opens his mouth, clamps it shut hard enough for his teeth to clank together, repeats the motion a couple of times. "I—Dave—You fucking—No. You know what? Fuck you. I'm out of here."

You burst into the horrid laughter of a hyena when he scrambles to his feet in one furious motion; he's back to grumpy scowling and cussing you out in the amount of time it takes for the underpaid McDonald's employee working the back of the store to flip a shitty one hundred percent not-beef burger patty.

He stomps heavily away—in the direction of the kitchen, you note, which only makes you cackle harder when you realize he didn't do it on purpose.

"Oh my fucking jesus god. Karkat!"

"WHAT!?" He yells without facing you.

"The exit's the other way."

He comes to an abrupt halt, slowly turns around, and begins marching back, in the right direction this time.

You're too busy flailing on the couch (you can't even remember pulling yourself back onto it) to give a shit when he throws himself down beside you. You do, however, give tons of shits when he pulls you into a very exasperated smooch that simply screams "shut the FUCK up you absolute godless heathen of a space monkey."

You are not opposed to "shut the FUCK up you absolute godless heathen of a space monkey" smooches.

He draws back and rolls his eyes. "Are you done yet, bulgemuncher?"

You are, as established many times, an insufferable piece of shit, so you say, "Dunno. Do I get to kiss you again?"

"Not with that attitude you don't."

You kiss him anyway, because god dammit he's your boyfriend and you demand kissing rights. He doesn't protest; instead, he wraps his arms around your neck and relaxes, just a little.

You could stay in his arms forever, you think.

[lordsireno]

SOUL EATER AUs

As the title says, a collection of all the AUs I came up with but never got around to writing. See under the cut because oh shit there’s a few thousand words! Warning for violence/injury/death.

Build God, Then we’ll talk AU

               In a world built on secrets, a mad scientist is commissioned to build god. (Years ago people took down Death, the main god of power in the world, and witches, weapons and humans were free to rule themselves. They built a city on towers with networks stretching beneath. Some foolish people used a fragment of Deaths soul to create a weapon, however only made a beast of madness that escaped into the depths of the city. Years later and the skilled scientist and soul expert Franken Stein is commissioned to build a weapon with a smaller fragment of Deaths soul. He works and develops a vessel, but cannot awaken the soul he had sewn to it. Students Maka and Soul use their demon hunting to explore the underground, and discover the vessel. They perform a soul resonance, and Maka enters the souls room, a black void with a white skull mask. For waking him, he gives her a number and says to summon him whenever she needs. They leave, but Stein knows what happened, and now with an awake vessel he can present to the council. Other notes; Mare works as Steins assistant to keep his madness in check, but she’s fallen for him. The council is kinda upset with being presented a limited power child, but he insists it was the only way to make the soul bond and guarantee it doesn’t turn to madness, since it can be taught. Not wanting to spawn attachment, or simply call it ‘A fragment of Death’, they end up calling it Kid. They agree to the terms, giving him private tutors and letting him stay with Stein for observation. He does at one point leave from a lesson to assist Maka, who is struggling in a fight against a Clown. Once he helps in destroying it, they talk, Maka and Soul surprised at the appearance of their powerful friend. Kid returns to find his tutor mopping about how he’ll be fired. Stein learns of him running off, and when Kid states ‘He had a promise to keep’ Stein figures it was to help Maka, her being the only other outside contact. He threatens that he could disassemble him if he shows too much free will, but Kid counters that while his mind is blank, his origin and desire to help Maka is engraved in his soul, and that if they tried with a new fragment they wouldn’t have the same success. ????? Marie secretly just want this child shapped being to be treated as a child, so she does things that mothers would do and Kid is like “? Um yes uh thank you?”… ????? It comes to a major battle against Asura, and he and Kid are in a tug of war with their souls, each trying to absorb the other for power. The most drama would come from Kid losing, his soul fusing with Asuras and his body being left limp. The battle continues, but an internal battle of Order and Chaos goes on. )

“Breaking the Rules” AU from tumblr

It’s the dystopian future, and all forms of music/dancing/art/etc. have been banned due to its strong influence to lead people down ‘dangerous’ paths of life. Character A has always been a model citizen, but there’s something alluring about the artsy, suave Character B that’s making Character A reconsider the rules. (A:Maka, B:Soul)

Dark city Glory AU (Audio: Glory by Panic! at the Disco)

               Death City, the dark pool of gathering that hosts both evil and its hunters. One of the main gatherings of Demon hunters, searching for posts on the latest targets. Maka is the new kid in the city, teaming up with the strange man Soul Eater in an attempt to prove she’s as good as a hunter as her mother was. But the strength of witches is growing and the latest power trip drug ‘Black Blood’ is turning people mad, it takes a lot to survive in the cities confines. (Maka and Soul have just started as partners, and quite often team with the God hunting BlackStar and Tsubaki. They take job from mission boards to hunt down demons and witches, keeping corrupted souls and returning good ones to the pool in the town square. Pure souls corrupted by BlackBlood are getting common, giving people madness boosted power. During a mission Soul is infected when injured. Liz and Patty are deep into the cities black market and deal drugs and weapons. Death is trapped beneath the pool, collecting souls. Kid and Asura keep the balance between Order and Chaos, however after being infected with BlackBlood, Asura gains enormous power boost and takes out Kid and a massive section of living quarters. Survivers are gathered and Natsuki got to Liz for backup medical stuff. Liz personally deliveres it and gets asked to help change a patents bandages, but it’s Kid and in a delirious state he rants about what happened. Liz knocks him out and just nopes on outa there, but later Maka comes asking for information on Black Blood. “I was simply aiming to be a great demon hunter, and now I’m working with a bunch of misfits to reinstate a god. Not where I saw my career going.” )

Road Trip for Gods AU

               BlackStar convinces Maka and Soul to go on a road trip to the rare event of Gods entering the mortal realm for a few months. (Maka researches how to identify a god, Star just wants to fight one. They encounter Kid, who has already recruited Liz and Patty as his weapons and is currently just checking out how mortals live. Star goes at him, but can barely keep up, even when its Kid’s first fight with his new weapons. “You just fought a god with new weapons who has only existed for 17 years. My brother is 800 years; my father is thousands of years. Do you really think you could take on an actual god?” Anyway they both kinda stop fighting, but they start following Kid because a) Star wants to meet real gods “Not just some BABY god” and Maka and Soul are just like “Dude this happens so rarely like hell we’re not learning all we can from you” and they actually all happily travel. So then at one point Kid is meeting with his brother, so the others hide a little way away, but as Kid talks to him it seems Asura has embraced his madness and decided to actively rule the humans. Kids like “bro nah lets get you home” and Asuras like “FUCK OFF YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOURE NOT DAD” and snaps Kid’s neck, throwing him onto the ground and running off. Everyone is all OH SHIT. And they’re all in shock. They set up camp and take Kid with them, but Patty feels uncomfortable about the angle his head is at, so despite Liz’s protests she twists his head so it sits normally. A little while later and he starts to move again, one eye opening and looking around. Turns out his body just need to be properly aligned for it to heal. “Alright which one of manage to figure out how to fix me? Patty? Well, good job, your promoted to my fight hand. Liz your demoted” ”This is no time to joke around! We thought you were dead!”)

MMORPG AU

               The worlds biggest and longest running MMORPG has started a new major event. (In the game you can choose from Meister, Weapon or Witch, with some mixing exceptions. The easiest way to get stronger is to pair a meister and weapon and take on missions that way. Maka and Star are childhood friends and play the game with their internet friends Soul and Tsubaki (Soul makes fun of Maka for using her real name) they also befriend Kid along with Liz and Patty. A new story event starts with the escape of the Kishin, and subsequent missions tracking down those who let it escape, helping NPCs with madness incidents etc. Most of the main events are time based. At some point the team fails a major event and they decide that with the amount of time left on the event they wouldn’t be able to train up to a decent level. Kid is furious they’re giving up, for which they joke (“I bet you’re one of those nuts who does nothing but spend time on their computer”) and all log off. The server rolls over. When they log in the next day the world landscape has changed. Flooded by madness, the NPCs are dying and going insane. Everyone is confused and goes to the head NPC, Death, who issues all the main missions. He laments how everyone failed to stop the witches and the Kishins power has grown. A new timed mission shows up and no one can contact Kid. Asking players who were on during the server switch, the claim they saw him enter the last mission but not return. They enter a mission and fight a madness creature, the fight is tough but they scrape through. The remains reveal Kid, who had been infected himself. He admits to being an NPC, and that this isn’t just a game to him, but a literal fight for his home )

Consult with you (not so) local doctor AU

               One day Maka finds her father has been missing for a while. Being informed of his whereabouts at the local hospital, its discovered he’d had an encounter with a kidnapper who takes their victims, performs surgery and then leaves them back where they found them. Like a curious sod, Maka tells her school friends, and then convinces Soul to go out looking. They two are attacked but some random hobo, leaving soul badly injured. A man comes along and offers to help, taking him back and stitching him up. Maka is thankful and discovers that this is the kidnapper, however he only kidnaps people he thing have medical problems, such as taking her father to fix his poisoned liver. They’re free to go so long as they dont out him. They agree, however do tell their friends of the tale. BlackStar is sad it wasn’t aliens, but wonders if the doctor would give him a free check-up. Kid is dumbfounded they’d even gone out looking, and refuses to go along with their antics, however does somehow get dragged along for a visit. Stein agrees to give BlackStar a look over, and the other three meet Marie, who Stein helped, then allowed to stay so long as she helped around the house. Stein returns and does a bit of a creep, pulling up Maka’s top to remark about her skin, running his hands down Soul’s chest saying that he’ll need a check-up in a while, and grabs Kid’s head which he freaks at (“I didn’t know you were afraid of Doctors.””I’m not afraid! I just prefer to keep visits to a minim around people of those…dispositions.”) but everything is chill. Later on Soul convinces Kid to come along to his check-up, since Maka is busy. Due to the late night visit, Kid closes his eyes for a moment, only to open them and find the Doctor leaning against his chest (“?!””Is this…how your heart always sounds?”) The doctor gets excited about finding out why his heart beats at a slow rate, and promptly knocks him out, pushing Soul off the table and starting the experiment. Soul eventually wakes up to a covered body on the table, is organs laid out and even hanging from the lights. He freaks and runs from the room, finding Stein rummaging in the shelves. He asks wtf is going on, and Stein says he got a little excited with his latest subject, who had an oddly simplified organ system. When Soul wants to leave, he realises Kid isn’t there, and Stein says he can’t leave, considering what he’d done. Scared, Soul threatens with the fact his family or friends will come looking. Later, Maka and co do visit, but Stein says he hasn’t seen them. (He’s just hidden them away) more time passes and they’re being questioned about anything that might lead to where they are. Maka and Blackstar eventually admit to knowing the Surgeon, and the police go out. No one is there. (Stein moved, and eventually have comes across Maka, saying he’s disappointed she outed him. He takes her to Soul and locks them in together. Soul explains what happened and they try to think of a way to escape. Later, Stein shows up and after a “what are you planning to do with us?!” he like “Im letting you go.” He says he’s no killer and would have to release them eventually and shows them that Kid is back in one piece, they just have to promise they’ll never out him or he’ll “make them a permanent fixture of the lab”. And they leave. And a while down the road Soul freaks like what the fuck we were held prisoner by a madman and we’ve gotta pretend like nothing ever happened. And Kid doesn’t even speak he just stares and everyones freaked out. )

Fallout AU

               Soul thought he’d be stuck in his boring little life inside the boring little vault. That is until an odd group of raiders break in and take him to the outside. (His vault is filled with talented socialites, but the test was to see if weapon blood could create better people. Raiders, with Sid the ghoul at the front, come in looking for people with weapon genes. They take a few including Wes who have inactive weapon blood, but mark Soul as he had recently discovered his weapon abilities. Theyre taken to Death City, and while most are locked up, Soul is taken and spoken to by Asura and Spirit. The tell him that theyre group trains weapon, and that his options are to stay and train, or go out in the wilderness to find his way home. He’s pretty quick to decide to stay, getting away from vault life exactly what he wanted. If the other vault dwellers don’t show to be weapons, they can either live in Death City or try to make their way home. Maka is asked to show Soul around, and shes excited that she’ll get to train with an actual scythe, having dabbled in other weapons. (Okay so the conflict is the Gorgon sisters experiment on humans to create weapons. Medusa’s latest experiment gives remote control over the young reaper Kid, tapping into his soul perception to target, and then commanding him to involuntarily reap their souls. Liz and Patty work for the witches, at one point trying to recruit Soul to their side but escaping from the fight. Their other job is to guard Kid, who they befriended. When they discover that they’re planning on using Kid to attack Death City, Liz and Patty go there to ask for help, the others obviously suspicious.) 

From Tumblr: You are Death, and you have just accidentally taken someone before their time. In order to hide your mistake, you decide to live in the person’s place until the day they were supposed to die.                (Kid thought he was doing his best to lighten his father’s load, but was still just an inexperienced Reaper. He didn’t mean to reap the boy, but a taken soul was a taken soul. So now he was stuck masquerading as the boy until his death date in several weeks, however his roommate was much too clever and much too observant. (Kid has to pretend to be the cool leather jacket wearing, motorbike riding, only-if-it-interests me Soul Evens. He finds that Maka, the boys roommate, is an intelligent student who may have been questioning her feelings for Soul. He does his best to avoid people, but Maka gets nosey, and Star gets loud, so he finds himself having to befriend the boys friends. And Maka actually starts falling for the new Soul whos actually interested in hearing about her studies and who obsesses over the symmetry of their house. At one point he comes up with the lie of having hit his head when out biking, and having trouble remembering things. He keeps living and does make friends. The day before the reaping date Maka kisses him, and the next day she finds a letter asking her to meet in the park. Feeling conflicted, Kid reveals himself and tells Maa the truth, before leaving .) He convinces himself to say by thinking that having him disappare would cause to much havoc, and he refused to admit he messed up to his father. He keeps the soul on him, being able to gleam feelings and mucel memory from it. The next day, after Maka yells at him and rushes from the house he analysies the house, studing the room, the phone and computer, Makas room and then outer location he find Souls goes to. He sees its his turn to cook dinner, and does what he can with the contense in the fridge. Maka returns and is slightly surprised. He says he’s not talking due to a sore throat, and after checking for a tempriture, she berates him for staying uot late. They eat while Maka talks of her day, and Kid listens intently. ) Soul was doing online classes, so Kid des his best to get average grades, and also has to deal with his job.

[gawdheads]

The land of “Do-as-you-please”

I began looking for some solitude at a high point in the city. Bucaramanga is not a good place for skyscrapers, geography and economy are not too into them, but the landscape is as beautiful as you can imagine. Since I was a halfling, I always loved to be in Cabecera, a good zone for the first shopping malls in Bucara, full of the best sites for chilling out with good restaurants and bars, nightclubs and a groove of ostentation based on simplicity. You see more cabs than fancy rides; cool ambience for cool people, but do not attempt fake your grandeur ‘cause there’s no need to portray the best version of yourself in our city. We can easily tell who is what and what is due.

Once in Cabecera, I went to La Quinta, a traditional shopping mall. Took the elevator, then the electric staircase and made it to Cinnamon. Despite the nice aroma coming from the ovens and the coffee makers, I got to see the sun dying behind Palonegro’s ridge, a old battlefield during the thousand days war.

A video posted by Víctor Andrés Zaraza Méndez (@lechedeculebra) on Jan 3, 2017 at 2:37pm PST

The hot air couldn’t be running fresher: this is summer for us. My bagpack’s always full of books, some have more minutes to be held than the others, but I cannot leave my place without taking ‘em for the road, whether a bus or a cab, life is healthier when in company of a written story. Once at the terrace, opportunity came for some english teaching texts, a journey to Senegal from one of the greatest storytellers in L.A. and the newly revived 80′s symbol of anarchism: V for Vendetta. Reading this masterpiece took me even further when I came back home, after sharing a coffee wiht my beloved granny, my cousins, Singing Julianne and Danna, and my aunt M.Y. That new standpoint of understanding’s related to my daybreak movie on Cinemax channel, possessed by insomnia: Perfume, the story of a murderer.

Open to this kind of interrelation between art’s children, I found a way to link them all, being aware of my surroundings, coming to this words of siblinghood.

VFV’s book three is “The Land of Do-As-You-Please”, depicted as the pointer ‘bout to make the domino effect collapse. This title is constantly related to what the world should be: no mental limits, no frigging barriers, no rules to break or follow. In a way, freedom might wear a mask with all these but the Do-As-You-Please brings more concern over our human condition: doing something implies that creativity would be submitted to delirious trends of grandiosity. Harmony would become that white line nobody dares to cross. The surfacing question’s: are you strong enough to be master of your domain? A cataclysm might be the outcome or the unexpected return to ashes. In God’s abode, the lord sees his creatures to swarm in their own desires, most of them, irrelevant at all.

Nightfall. The city delves into everybody’s hard day; no mist to freeze people’s fatigue on their home but what else do they need if the landscape talk by its own: long gone heroes found their heart in the land the ourt fathers grew. I followed the old advice that comes with the question: wanna see things clearer? Sure, I want to. Go take a look at a higher spot. The win will tell you where north is, where hope remains, where the words go and become promises. Broken promises.

A video posted by Víctor Andrés Zaraza Méndez (@lechedeculebra) on Jan 3, 2017 at 3:22pm PST

Time to make it home after the farewell. I’m staying at my parents house, an hour away from La Quinta, a house that feeds on our souvenirs; dunno if you do it but I can’t avoid giving each place its personality. I’m sure you’ve felt the groove, dug it and sometimes rejected it. My parents’ house knows when I’m coming, she’s jam-packed with a lot of things, making her look heavy and slow, but she’s cool ‘cause she’s still alive and doesn’t rank like forgotten ones do. See? Like people. Just like us.

T.V. is on. The face-off is between Salander and Grenouille. Opted for the second one. Long ago I watched the film adptation, found it fantastic, hoped to doing it again but for six years I didn’t get the right time, till Salander almost gets in the way. I love her temper, Lisbeth’s, her grit, her shrewdness, her haunting gaze. J.B.’s talent is awesome too and since it was a personal promise, I get lost in his murderous story. Fictional, gripping, insane. Whishaw at his best.

There was a moment where I realized that my passion to express my opinion is an anomaly. I found that most of my enlightened moments as a writer, as a stroyteller, as a teacher came from a judgement. My views have been well reviewed, for sure, but this openness gets needs a groove, without sounding moody or dissenting. Then my head yammers: “Hey! Are you always like this? You’re always having a big statement for everything?” My mouth utters: “Hell no! There are some things that I might miss.”

But Paris ain’t distant. Paris ain’t far if the people of this town share the same rant that Suskind depicted. Mankind can be loveable despite there are moments that you start to understand that if you let the rats grow together, sooner than you think, you will have an stampede. These motherfuckers only fear the spreading fire that terminates them. That’s why you shall never feed ‘em with trash: it will make ‘em stronger, more dangerous. A spark that ignites their shit-hole, that’s what they need; could be a match or a lighter, don’t worry of how they’ll burn. Their piss is their own fuel. That’s how these poor bastards lived in th City of Lights, a trend that sickened many subsequent generations.

When you follow J.B.’s path you also understand that you don’t have to get obsessed easily with something or somehow you will be killing the wrong fella one day. J.B.’s story confirms that there are two kind of murderers: accidental ones and idealists. Law’s weak for both anyway. Justice always strikes hard on the accidental ones just to give a visible example of how eficiently she sweeps trash away. The span of attention they get is minimum, compared to idealists; these weirdoes with a soulless existence, are given the longer trials, being depicted as the strongholds of evil, but they’re also forgotten as quick as a whisper disappears. Accidents can be prevented: logic is useful.

The ideas can be tracked, their owners want to be found and show the world what they have been capable of. They wanna prove that they are above the rest of us, like living in a sentry box of distorted images; they wanna prove that they are superior to mankind by opening a forbidden a gate of hell, one that leads to horror and derision. Evil’s derision. Insulting.

But, as the film kept rolling, I managed to find how wrong they are. I realized that suprarealism is overrated. Nihilism had its time. And hope is far more poisonous than death itself. Ideals are toxic when you don’t have a strong will to overcome the odds and get the right things to walk tall. In the end, Grenouille portrays this damnation that masterminds refuse to avoid: one life, one thing to achieve. Where was the old guy telling him: dont become too obsessed with something or you will be killing the wrong fella one day.

There are greater pleasures that sex cannot give. Ideals for real.

“V for Vendetta” is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” is a novel written by Patrick Suskind; the book adaptation for the silver screen was directed by Tom Tykwer, and starred by Ben Whishaw. All pics taken from Pinterest.

[aurimeanswind]

2016: A Year of Experiences

Originally, I wanted to close out 2016 with a personal essay, much like I did with 2015. What I was writing turned into this weirdly spiteful representation of my creative frustrations opening and screaming to the heavens, and as much as I like it, to some degree, it’s also weirdly rant-y. It seems angrier than I feel, and I don’t know if it’s a proper way to start off a fresh, new year. I continued to chip away at it, but sitting here, on the tail end of recording all of the game of the year content, I want to change it. I want to scrap it and start from the beginning. My next personal essay will come, and it will in some way be loosely based on what I had written, but I don’t think that spiteful piece is what I want to put out there as my ending note to 2016, which comes very late only because of how unendingly busy I’ve been for the last few weeks. I want this final thing to be relatively polished, and positive.

I know 2016 was a rough year for us all. Whether someone you respect in an artform was taken from the world, you went through incredible prejudice or like... you lived in the United States or Great Britain, it was a rough spot. I can’t ignore that. I can’t put blinders over that and not address the trials and tribulations and instead focus on the positives in my life. It was a bad year, I think, in general for humans, for people, and for the rights of diversity.

Instead, I want to focus on a handful of experiences I went through that enriched my life. Experiences and meetings and time spent amongst friends that made my year, overall, a ‘banger’, so to speak.

Let’s start from the beginning

PAX East 2016

For people who don’t know, PAX East is my favorite show. My favorite industry event. Full stop. It’s amazing. Even more so that E3 now, which I’ll say I have not attended in person, but PAX is this community, friendly show that I just love, and my one trip to PAX West didn’t stick with me nearly as much. And so: PAX East is the best. Always where my heart is.

But something awful happened last year: I didn’t manage to make it to PAX East for the first time in four years. I missed PAX East 2015 and it really broke my heart. Spun me into a bad depression. I was absolutely not letting it happen again this year. I made the magic happen, got the money together, and even though there was a compromise, I got myself and my cohost Tony Horvath to PAX East 2016.

That compromise, you presumably ask? Well, it was sharing the hotel room we were in with 10 other people. Yes, 10 other people, all (save for one) from the Kinda Funny community, which after Kinda Funny Live has become my psuedo Internet family, which is uh... Well, it’s a lot of people for a small, two-bed bedroom. Yes, myself, Tony, Trevor, Xyger, Kaylie, Sean, Fred, Jack, Vicki, Joe and Karyssa all squished ourselves into one room. We became The PAX11. And ya know what, for all the rough edges to that situation, and the sleep-deprivation that came from sleeping on some real shitty flooring, it was so much goddamn fun that I don’t regret it.

Jackie T here. @ALFighter27 looks like a piece of artwork. Like a Greek God chiseled out of the palest substance. pic.twitter.com/DS251Kyt0n

— Fred Sullivan (@Fred_Sully) April 23, 2016

Note that in this absurd picture above, I am holding my inhaler in my hand because I was laughing so hard from our absurd, Kinda Funny-esque Jack “Jackie T” Tretton impression that I desperately needed it.

The show also serves as one of the hardest working shows I have ever worked. I’ve only ever really worked PAXs, but being the only one writing for this PAX East, I put in the work. My year off had spurned me to kick things into high gear, pumping out multiple previews and pushing more for that dream I still find myself chasing. Trevor Starkey and I shared a beautiful moonlit night at the IGN party, talking, connecting, and getting totally drunk, making Trevor one of few internet friends to see me truly cranked out of my mind. That, I think, was our biggest bonding moment, walking deliriously back to the hotel after drinking our fill and having a great time hanging with our industry friends.

That dude is really great.

May Madness - Dinner First

May was a really busy month for me. Coming off of PAX, I was hungry for another opportunity to network, to see my internet friends, and to reconnect with all the lovelies out there that I dearly missed.

But something happened just before I’d ship off to San Francisco for Kinda Funny Live 2, a week away with some of my favorite people. Greg Miller was on a stealth trip to Baltimore Maryland to see a developer, and after putting the callout on Twitter asking what the good spots to eat in the Maryland area were. After some quick DMs, we had a dinner date to eat at my favorite restaurant in Baltimore, The Woodberry Kitchen.

Even showing up dressed as nicely as I could was a weird experience. Seeing Greg Miller in Maryland just in general was a weird experience. And then the three and a half to four hours we spent talking over dinner and dessert, about just everything from family, to the industry, to Kinda Funny, to what I could do to break into the industry to... Well, everything. It was the moment we really clicked together as friends and hit it off, and for me, it’s probably the best night of my life. It’s a weird thing to say, especially considering he may read this at some point, but the dude really inspired me get out there and pursue doing something I love. He is a force of positivity in my life and I really love the guy; he’s an inspiration, not just to me, but to over a hundred-thousand others.

Had a lovely dinner with @alfighter27. He's good people and will be a name in games... whatever you call this. So, follow now. #groundfloor

A photo posted by Greg Miller (@gameovergreggy) on May 20, 2016 at 7:58pm PDT

<script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFp0PfcnuWP/

I could go on and on about the night, but I don’t want to belabor the point: Greg Miller is an amazing dude and friend, and I love him to death.

May Madness - Kinda Funny Live 2

I don’t know what else there is to say about Kinda Funny Live 2. It was one of the high points of my entire being, mostly because I got to spend a week in the city I’d like to move to, I get to stay with Barrett Courtney and Alyssa Shimoda, two people I very much consider family, and I got to spend a week with my second family.

Seriously, shoutout to Barrett and Alyssa. I think it’s generally a rare occurrence to meet someone and have immediate chemistry with them. I’m lucky to say I have a great number of those people in my life, Barrett being one of them. The first time I met him I liked him, even if he thinks he didn’t leave a massive impression on me. He’s smart, and well spoken, and really needs to stop smoking cigarettes. Alyssa: all the same. She, too, welcomed me into her home, and we bonded over the important things: cats and Harry Potter. These two were a highlight of the weekend.

And Tom Hawkins. Who I love. I mean jesus christ.

I just want someone to look at me the way @TomHawkin5 looks at @ALFighter27 pic.twitter.com/niCwd4HyBR

— Sean🌪 (@SeanTwisters) May 28, 2016

Look at this. I love this man. He loves me. It’s just meant to be.

I could name limitless people I spent time with at Kinda Funny Live 2. It was an amazing weekend. And I can’t take the people that made it for me enough.

Friendly Visits - Brandt Ranj

Greg Miller wasn’t the only friend to swing into town last year though. Best friend and fellow Breakfast Bandit Brandt Ranj also did. He’s another character that I just talked to, and immediately bonded with. Sure, it may have been our mutual love of Majora’s Mask that did it, but Brandt’s two visits to my homeland this year, in June and again in October, were two very high highlights of my year.

Brandt is that special character that just brings out the best of me. Whether it's his grounded look at the world, his worldly perspective he has from all the traveling he’s done, his work ethic, or his sheer mentor-like guidance and confidence in me, or some culmination of all the above, he’s just a beacon of strength for me in my personal life. I can’t say enough good things about him, and I’m so glad him and I will be continuing our weird Waffles vs. Pancakes podcast in 2017.

Friendly Visits - Roger Pokorny

Oh and Roger Pokorny, student of the hip-hop arts came to Maryland too. How crazy is that! This 17 year old kid road a bus down from Long Island to spend a few days with me, which we spent playing Batman Arkham Asylum (his favorite game) and listening to Hamilton. Another human I have that immediate and innate bond with, I fucking love Roger Pokorny.

What’s terrifying is him and I are generally the exact same person, he’s just more hip than me. And way cooler.

I adore that kid. He called me his mentor and I almost cried. My bond with him is one of the strongest I’ve been able to cultivate in 2016, and I can’t wait to see all the cool stuff he does. He’s really one of the most talented people I know, and even though he hates the pressure it puts on him, I know he’s just going to get better as time goes on.

Him and I suffer from a very similar flair of self-doubt I think, and I hope he knows the belief he feels for me I reflect back to him tenfold. He’s gonna kill it.

As a young man myself, it's rare to find youth so charming and humbling. @rogformer is a delightful person, someone who even called me his "mentor", which is insane, and I had the pleasure to spend the whole weekend with him making cool things. This kid is 17 and reminds me in almost every way of myself. I adore him, and am lucky to know someone so talented and funny and kind. He is gonna take over the world some day, and hopefully he doesn't fire me when he does. All the <3 Roger. #groundfloor #rogformeroftheinternet #irrationalpassions

A photo posted by Alex O'Neill (@alfighter27) on Aug 14, 2016 at 2:06pm PDT

Podcast Half-Time

Remember when I mentioned Trevor Starkey? Yeah, well decided to go along with the bit and have me on as his first ever guest on Trove Talk, his podcast he launched this year. God knows why, but it’s a fun little origin story.

I always get so embarrassed when I see myself on other podcasts. You know the one way you can tell I’m nervous? I exaggerate everything. I exaggerated a few things of my origin throughout this episode, and I feel so embarrassed about it. But I was nervous! Honest! Especially being the first guest on a podcast. I just get all self-conscious and exaggerate little details because I think I need to sound better or else I’ll look lame. But it evens out after I get in the groove of things.

Trevor is an amazing friend and a fun interviewer, just because he genuinely is curious about his subject, and always digs deeper on Trove Talk. It’s a show worth listening to.

Oh and my boy Cameron Abbott? Yeah, he made me be the first guest on his podcast too. Again, I don’t know why, but you can see my debut on the Knotty Gamers Podcast as well, and I appeared on a little .5 interlude podcast too.

I love Cameron, and it's an honor to be welcomed so open-armed onto so many podcasts. I will say, if there is one thing I feel confident in my ability to do, it’s to podcast. I can do the hell out of that one thing for sure.

ExtraFunLife

So ExtraLife was weird this year, huh? I mean, a bunch of people flew from all over the country to come hangout with us for it. I plan on getting the archive videos up for it at some point this month, I just have a lot of other video stuffs to work through as well.

But man. I don’t know why Joe, Tyrone, Danny, Andrew or Damien flew across the country to hangout for Irrational Passions ExtraLife 2016, or why Justin, Jarrett, John or Troll drove all the way to maryland for it, but good Christ was it a good time. We made a paint can, we raised a bunch of money for kids, I ate a habanero, put some amiibo in my mouth, and Daniel Juarez nearly murdered Tony live on camera because of a Destiny raid. So uh... It was a good time!

Seriously though, it was a blast, and hearing all the people that want to come to ExtraLife THIS year tells me... Well, it tells me we’re gonna need a big space.

PSX And Family

Then, since this wasn’t already an eventful enough year, my Internet family had to go and do the incredible: they had to split-fare my way from Maryland to Anaheim for the PlayStation Experience 2016.

Danny Juarez really came through for me. Ya know, I’ve talked a lot about special people with a special chemistry, and Danny is another person I count amongst that. It’s almost not fair. In fact, it’s actively not fair, that I get to have all these people that I understand. That I think understand me, or at least a part of me.

It’s really hard for me to be close to someone. I have so much self-doubt and self-hate in me that it’s sometimes too overwhelming and all-encompassing to really trust some of my friends. Just about everyone I’ve mentioned in this post gets past that though. They get me. And I’m so thankful for that.

Because of Danny and a select group of amazing people, I got to go to PSX. Though I think there was more of a cloud of discomfort over that event than most others, I still got to spend a great deal of time and truly bond with Danny, someone I absolutely love and am privileged to consider a close friend. We got to share dark truths and my discomforting feelings about the videogames industry drunk in our shared bed on the first night of PSX, and that’s one of the biggest highlights of the weekend for me.

I can’t thank that family enough, for letting me stay with them, to Griffin, Nick, Steven, Damien and Danny, and also the people they chipped into to help me fly to PSX. I mean fuck, Brandt Ranj contributed and he didn’t even go to PSX! He just wanted me there! That sly fuck.

In Short

2016 was a fucked up year. All these great experiences tell me two things: I live my life with an enormous privilege. That I get it easy because I have many who love and support me where a lot of others can’t say the same. I’m so lucky. I’m so thankful.

And the other thing is I have the best internet family of anyone out there. These aren’t just my “internet friends”, these are my friends. My family.

You guys are my rock.

And the third thing I take from all of this: I gotta work even harder to earn this love and respect. To earn making my dreams happen. To get there. Because if so many people believe in me, so many great people, you sure as shit know I’m not gonna let them down.

[ecotone99]

[NF] The Midnight Ramblings of a 20-Something Nobody: Entry 1

As I sit here and type this draft on my phone, the time is currently 11:24 pm. Another wave of existentialism is washing over me as I lay flat on my bed in the darkness of my room.

“My personality isn’t suited for this,” I think to myself breaking the quiet of my mental fortress. “I’m not worthy of whatever the hell true love is.”

Taking a moment to scan my own body for imperfections, I delete the most recent, half-written paragraph and replace it with this one. The low illumination projecting from this dark mirror before me gives a light-borne silhouette to the creature that lurks behind these fingers thumbing this passage into existence in the desperate chance that maybe someone will hear, will understand, and will reach out to pat me on the shoulder and pull me from my delirious stupor.

Only 10 minutes have passed since I started writing and I was no closer to the truth than when I came up with the absurd idea to begin writing in the first place. Who would have thought that a post meant for r/foreveralonedating would end up here instead. I certainly couldn’t have predicted it, not even now as I write presenting like I do have another place for the echo chamber my thoughts preside in.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I think once again hoping the answer will come if I just ask over and over despite knowing that I’m merely an ask away from insanity’s definition.

“I’m so off-putting upfront but so personable in the back... why can’t I bridge this gap? Why was it that only one other person was able to find that connection? And why did she end up leaving— burning that bridge along the way?”

It’s all so strange; I can’t understand life anymore, but not in that suicidal way. No, this is, more simply put, baseline perplexity in the vast, hollow well we know life to be. How is it that a space so unfathomably wide can only end up holding so little? Why is our little slice a mere cup to an ocean? I as a 22 year old college graduate don’t have these answers, and neither, it seems does anyone else.—

I pause now, 20 minutes into my delusional rant of self-realization and madness founded in past trauma that never made its way to the surface, at least not properly. Though the windows were closed, the midnight grasshoppers were far from silent, and above the churning of wind and rattle of machinery, their presence was still made clear.

It was in that moment I recalled a spider I had set free only hours before. Using a plastic cup and cat-like reflexes, I caught the frightened demon and released it into the garden out front. As I walked cup in hand to the portal separating my cave of a workspace and the long-abandoned outside world, the realization of acceptance washed over me in a strange way. This spider’s life was in my hands, and as she scurried for a moment before freezing, most certainly afraid for her life.

I didn’t know her life and she didn’t know mine. We had only met a minute ago when she scrambled across my ceiling, yet here I was feeling both sorry and envious of her, that she had to trust that I would allow her to carry on and that her life would be unfettered by my own internal quandaries and trifles. Woe is the human condition that we were set to look upon ourselves and feel shame.

As I cast the spider into the garden and returned to my den of isolation, I couldn’t help but think that we knew nothing of each other; not just the spider and I, but the woman who formerly knew me, and everyone else I’ll never meet. I have been cursed with the burden of being solitary, though it goes against all that I’ve wished for and dreamed of.

As my conscious returned from the gap in my thoughts, the time had now passed to 12:08. I had made it past midnight, and the extent of my internal panic has begun to shrivel and wither into a tired old man inside a 20-something’s body. The nights are getting long and the ramblings more intense.

“Why can’t they understand me?” I as again. “Why are my thoughts like a scattered ash or a broken vase? Why do I feel so alone despite all that surrounds me?” I sit in silence, not thinking at all. No time seems to pass, yet everything I knew before gets cast into the abyss of time in an instant on repeat until all things cease. The world goes on and leaves us all behind, so there’s no use dwelling on what stops us from play catch-up with the rest.

At this point, an hour has flown by, and I still feel none-the-wiser for delving too deep into my own disrupted conscience. As the strength of my eyelids and tips of my fingers begin to fail me, I recount the reason I was writing in the first place: I just want love. The kind where I can be understanding and understood. The kind where talking about God and science go hand-in-hand as a conversation, not a debate. The kind of love here affection can be felt through presence alone and prosperity is gained through the loving trust of one another. A simple life where things may not make sense, but they make for one hell of a story. A life where I can cry tears of joy instead of the bitter, silent ones that rock me to sleep these days. So little means so much.

While my internal thoughts find so many conflicts within my own words, I write them down here as I feel. Now at the early time of 12:29, my mind has placed its own bookmark. For now I’ve quieted myself, but there’s no telling when these quandaries will return. But until then, these are the midnight ramblings of a 20-something nobody who’s world mean nothing to anyone but himself. He can accept it, but doesn’t smile and brush it aside... not like he could before.

submitted by /u/Magicallouis [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/34BejnP

[viralhottopics]

6 Insane Ways Movies Are Trying To Be Authentic

A great artist knows that the most important details are the ones their audience might not necessarily notice — like the soft clouds in the background of the Mona Lisa, or the surprisingly detailed scribblings in John Doe’s notebook in Se7en, or the recipe for The Antidote that I’ve been hiding in my articles for the past few years. (“Antidote for what?” you might be asking. Don’t worry. All will become clear soon.) This is especially true of movies, that often hide the weirdest and most interesting work in the places nobody bothered to check. For example…

6

Everything In Zootopia Is Moving All The Time

What most people don’t realize about animated movies is that most of the frame isn’t actually animated. There’s usually a single static background with a few animated cells on top of them — this is clear in low-budget TV cartoons, where the moving frames tend to have a slightly different color from the immobile background, but it’s more cleverly hidden in big-budget Disney movies because of that aforementioned big budget. The reason they don’t animate the entire frame is, of course, because that would be insanely fucking time-consuming. It’s way easier to have one still picture while Batman or Scooby-Doo conduct their slapstick antics on an entirely different layer.

Unless you’re making Zootopia, in which case — for the first time in Disney history — absolutely everything is moving. And by “everything” I mean, in fact, “all the things.” Every shadow shimmers. Every car sputters. Every strand of hair twitches and wafts in the wind. All 30,000 leaves on that tree are moving, thanks to technology developed just for this movie.

Part of the reason this is so crazy is, as made clear in the first paragraph of this entry, it’s completely unneeded. As humans, we’re pretty dumb, and aren’t likely to notice that maybe that bush back there doesn’t have an ant crawling on it. But Disney had to push the boundaries, just like they always have, to create a living, breathing, utterly convincing world that is so magical and wondrous that it never even had to get around to explaining what the hell the predators eat in this universe. A fox can’t live on blueberries, guys.

5

John Carpenter Hinted Who The Thing Was With Eye Light

The Thing is a movie about a shape-shifting alien who infiltrates a team of rugged, hairy, stern men. The interstellar beast picks them off one by one, feasting on their sweet, succulent, deeply heterosexual juices, until only the manliest — Kurt Russell and Keith David — are left alive. One of the nerdiest film debates in modern pop culture is about the order in which this happens — The “thing” is indistinguishable from a human once it takes that human’s form, so a lot of the tension comes down to figuring out who can be saved and who needs to be consumed through cleansing fire. It’s sorta like being out to dinner with a bunch of your friends and one of them keeps farting.

Director John Carpenter specifically shot the movie so it’s unclear in what order who gets infected, and whether Russell or David are infected at the end. But it turns out there’s one detail that Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey kept secret until recently, and it has to do with eye light.

“Eye light” is a camera trick that puts a slight gleam in an actor’s eye, giving them slightly more life. You can see it here, with Keith David’s character Childs:

And here with Kurt Russell’s MacReady:

But not with David Clennon’s Palmer — who, in this scene, is revealed to be The Thing.

…Which, again, was intentional. That’s supposed to be the hint. Now, does this completely change the movie? Spoiler alert: Nope. I rewatched it, specifically watching for eye light stuff, and I didn’t notice any great foreshadowing or crazy hints. But it’s quite possible I’m just not smart enough to put the whole picture together. Since this is a whole new tool available for our collective movie-watching, feel free to post your wacky eye-light-based theories on my Facebook wall, after you’ve rewatched the movie of course.

4

Gangs Of New York Has Period-Appropriate Dialects

People love to offer their opinions on whether movie accents are “good” or “bad” because people love to pretend that they’re smarter than they are. A lot of folks ripped apart Charlie Hunnam’s accent in Pacific Rim because he talks like a mush-mouthed victim of a botched neural surgery, apparently not realizing that his real accent also sounds fake (also also that movie is perfect, and none shall dare criticize it before me). Everyone talks weird, and it all sounds insane, so can anyone really say what a “good” accent even sounds like?

Of course, and Tim Monich, the dialect coach for Gangs Of New York, managed to do the impossible by researching dead dialects — that is, ways of speaking that no living person had ever heard with their own ears — and teaching it to modern actors. “But how do you research a dead dialect?” Easily! Well, no, not easily at all — with incredible difficulty, in fact: Monich studied old poems and newspaper articles that were mocking the dialects to try and deduce the way people of the era spoke. Then he forced Liam Neeson and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk that way.

At one point, Neeson’s character called a bunch of his enemies “nancy boys,” only for Monich to clarify that the correct term for the era and location was “Miss Nancies.” Which was a huge relief for all the 19th-century New York hooligans in the audience, who totally would’ve noticed that sort of thing.

That set points to something else pretty cool about the film’s development. Those buildings you see in the background? They haven’t existed in over a hundred years, so Scorsese had most of 1860s New York rebuilt from scratch in Rome, because “had most of 1860s New York rebuilt from scratch in Rome” is the kind of predicate you can be the subject of when your name is Martin Scorsese. I’m allowed to make those kinds of stupid grammar jokes when my entry is about dialects, okay?

Anyway, here he is poking around the place, rambling like a crazy old man. The poor camera operator can’t keep track of what he’s even talking about. That is one of my favorite videos in the world. I honestly like it better than Gangs Of New York.

Oh, and speaking of dialects…

3

Arrival Makes Way More Sense Than It Needs To

Arrival is a sci-fi movie about figuring out an alien language and, spoiler alert, using it to see the future (it’s also one of the best movies I’ve ever seen oh my god go watch it so good). And since I brought it up, I know what you’re thinking: “Wow — did they actually invent a language that I can use to see the future?”

No. But they did do absolutely everything else. You know those weird circles that the aliens use to communicate? Yeah, that functions as a consistent language. You could learn to read and write in it just from watching the movie enough, if you’re that kind of person.

Then, they wrote an actual computer program that could interpret the language they made up. The stuff you see in the movie where a computer analyzes the symbol? That’s not just random, science-looking animations. That’s a program, written just for the movie, interpretting a language that was also written exactly for the movie, in real time. Science consultant Stephen Wolfram even came up with a scientific explanation for how the aliens travel. It involves quantum! All this despite the fact that 99 percent of audiences would’ve been fine with the explanation I just gave (which, if you’ve forgotten, is just the words “It involves quantum!”).

But you see, it really seems like this movie was made for that one percent of geniuses in the theater. There’s even a part later in the movie when Amy Adams is standing in front of a white board covered in physics jargon:

All those equations are relevant to the problems her and Jeremy Renner’s characters are facing in the movie right then, but — here’s the kicker — that wasn’t what was on the board when they shot it. Due to an oversight during shooting, the whiteboard was accidentally covered in high-school level physics, so they had Wolfram come up with a bunch of equations to use and then super-imposed them into that scene with computers (a process made especially difficult because of Amy Adams’ hair).

All so that every physicist who saw this movie could finally enjoy a sci-fi flick without ripping their own hair out in frustration.

2

The Witch: All The Materials And Music Are Authentic For the Time Period

If you haven’t seen The Witch, stop reading this article and go watch it right now. (Then come back and finish reading. I need your click-dollars to finance my underground squirrel-fighting ring.) If you’ve seen The Witch, then oh my god, how good was it? Sorry for fanboying out for this entire column. I promise I’ll get myself under control for next month.

Part of the reason people love The Witch is because it’s so beautiful. Well, there’s a reason for that: Like Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, it was shot almost entirely with natural light. Which, for indoor scenes, meant they had to use as many candles as possible.

I say “almost” entirely because of one scene involving a crow, which had to use a flickering lightbulb, since fire would’ve scared the crow. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not going to spoil the scene with the crow. If you have seen the movie, then there is not a sliver of a chance in hell that you’ve forgotten the scene with the crow.

On top of that, all the music was recorded with period-appropriate instruments, using period-appropriate techniques. Which is not something anybody would ever notice but certainly helps the movie feel unique. Even the story itself — and lots of the dialogue — is based on real accounts of witchcraft and possession from 17th-century Massachusetts. When Caleb is in the throes of a fever/possession, his delirious ranting is word-for-word the rantings of 17th-century children who were, allegedly, possessed by Satan. Making this officially the most metal movie anyone has ever seen. Also I’m going to move on because 400-year-old dead children aren’t very funny.

1

Meryl Streep Can Do Everything

Meryl Streep is so good that it’s become a punchline. People genuinely worry that she’s too burdened by how good she is, and that people expect perfection from her and take it for granted when she delivers. And after some research, I’ve figured out her secret: She’s not actually pretending. Like Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa, she’s doing all this shit for real.

The first, and most famous, example is her portrayal of Sophie in Sophie’s Choice. First, she learned German. Then she learned Polish. Then she learned to speak German in a Polish accent. Roger Ebert (whose opinions on film are unassailable) described it as “the only accent [he has] ever wanted to hug,” and I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds pretty positive?

But okay, accents are whatever — we’ve seen lots of accents in this article already. Fine! How about the freaking violin? That’s the hardest instrument to learn, according to people who argue about this sort of thing on the internet, and she learned to play in a matter of weeks.

Most recently, for the movie Ricki And The Flash, Streep learned to play guitar… from Neil Young, because that’s who teaches you guitar when you’re Meryl Streep. Jesus, between Streep and Scorsese, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that rich people just seem to have more opportunities to do cool stuff than people like me. Maybe I should become rich? Anyway, Streep then practiced with a band in a bar for months. By the time she actually got around to shooting the damn movie, she had ripped her fingers open on the strings.

Alright, enough gushing about cool stuff I like. Let’s end this article in the best way any article could ever end: with a video of Neil Young and Meryl Streep jamming out on a stratocaster that probably cost more than my fucking car.

Let’s be real. I drive a Civic.

JF Sargent is a senior editor for Cracked and the only writer you can trust. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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